An immersive mismanagement experience
June 12, 2024
No one wants to work in an org that’s hopeless or doomed.
World's Best Newsletter Archive
Director means something
January 10, 2024
And pretending it’s a title or a pay bump without a new set of responsibilities is a disservice to everyone.
You don’t have a culture problem, you have a management problem
June 14, 2023
Culture handbooks don’t produce culture, people do.
Standing alone at a cocktail party
May 17, 2023
So much of the hard work of management is unsexy. Unglamorous. It is a grind, and often thankless. And nowhere is this more true than in performance reviews.
Who gets Humperdinck?
November 2, 2022
For many bosses, it’s clear that the more you look and talk and vibe like Elon, the more permission you’ll get to be capricious and abusive and cynical.
Doing all the work
October 5, 2022
Accountability is a big, heavy word. It manages to be about management, and feedback, and operational excellence, and culture all at once.
Let us feed you
September 21, 2022
Delegation fails at work when the hand-off is incomplete, and also when the hand-off is too complete. And once you know that, you can get better at this fast.
The opposite of coherent
June 29, 2022
So here we are. Faced with this disastrous ruling. And it makes us wonder: how coherent are your organization’s actions on this one? We heard about the relocation policy, what other actions are they taking? Do they line up?
The unloved doc with all the answers
June 1, 2022
The org chart is a power map. Not figuratively. Literally. It is a map of relationships, reporting structure, and accountability lines. When we talk about issues being structural, this is where that structure shows up.
Pretend it’s a business
May 4, 2022
Faced with an extended stay in the squishy place, a lot of execs are opting out. They are making decisions with the information they’ve got. Trading liminal for solid ground anywhere they can find it. And, for a lot of workplaces, shit is about to get real.
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.
Long on empathy and short on patience
August 25, 2021
We told leaders to be empathetic. We told them to be understanding. And they are doing that. They are phenomenal about understanding the conditions for underperformance in their teams. But it’s not working…They are patient to a fault.
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