New York’s hottest club is Competent Management
March 23, 2022
The massive competition for talent has every HR and Talent leader running after the same ball. And the visual effect, from up here on the hill, looks a lot like Bunch Ball.
Archives
Everyone’s a great manager until they start managing
March 9, 2022
It’s easy to dip into “I would never talk to my team like that. If I were in charge, I would be a way better boss than that.” That smug satisfaction about what you would do if you were in charge? Well, we understand the appeal.
The perks are great and the work is fine
February 23, 2022
Faced with that blandness, a lot of leaders are pushing back-to-office plans. They have nostalgia for the flavour of a packed and humming office, and feel like if people would just get back in there, it would fix things.
You only get punked when you don’t expect it
February 9, 2022
If we’re right about this prediction, the amount of energy coming at you is going to be intense. The question to ask is: do you have somewhere for that energy to go?
Okay, but what about managing up?
January 26, 2022
What’s to be done about the boss above me who doesn’t know this stuff but needs to? How do I get them to show up for me so I can show up for my own team?
Bad advice you shouldn’t take
January 12, 2022
Resignations. Competitive talent markets. The structure of the org chart. All of these things can feel bigger than you, as an individual leader trying to get things done in your organization. We get that. But be skeptical of any advice that takes them as fixed.
How to predict the future
December 29, 2021
Assumptions and predictions are two tools to get at the same thing. Both try to crystallize how you think about the world today, in case it changes. But writing down an assumption is passive, it’s descriptive. Making a prediction is active.
We didn’t build *that* Better boss
December 15, 2021
People send us the links in part because, haha, you build better bosses. Here’s the literal CEO of Better and seems like he could have used some management training. Hardy har har. But some of them also want to know, “Is this normal?” And if so, how often does this happen? And why?
Not quite out of office
December 1, 2021
We know that rest is transformative. We can point to periods of downtime in our lives as the places when we got to clarity. Where we had space. Space to breathe, and to take stock.
The cost of doing business
November 17, 2021
Every organization has costs, but there’s a lot of power in how they’re labelled. The labels people use bake in assumptions about whether those costs are internal or external. They tell you who we think should pay those costs.
Math you will actually use
November 3, 2021
None of the tools work until you let this one in. Here it is. You can’t fight math.
The masks are off and the masks are off
October 20, 2021
We’re in the midst of a massive renegotiation of the rules of work. And the central focus of that negotiation isn’t back to office plans, or international salary parity, or vaccine mandates. It’s power.
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