Lower your expectations
September 4, 2024
We have been to a lot of corporate all-hands, gatherings, conferences, and un-conferences. Some of them have been incredibly well-run. Some of them have been a rolling shit-show.
World's Best Newsletter Archive
Okay, call it a come back
August 21, 2024
There is some design work to do if we want to build new connections, and rebuild the ones we miss.
Find the through-line or make one
May 1, 2024
“How do I set goals without a strategy?” Or “How do I get my team working on the right things, when no one has told me what the right things are?”
What to do when everyone’s eyebrows are glowing
October 4, 2023
You can’t outsource interpersonal connection to the interns, and your team can’t outsource it to you.
The future of work is in pieces
August 9, 2023
When we talk with bosses about their work today, we don’t hear about commutes. We don’t hear about summer hours, or four-day-work-weeks, either.
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right
July 12, 2023
How do you know? How is it that you can listen to someone talk about work and consistently know what’s going to happen next?
Before your next offsite
April 19, 2023
The best thing you can do. The magical transformative thing you can do to improve your odds that something amazing will happen. Is to think ahead.
When meetings are outlawed, only outlaws will hold meetings
January 11, 2023
While collaboration, alignment, decision making, and unit cohesion can all happen outside of meetings, well-run meetings are a very useful and effective place to accomplish those things.
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.
The donuts aren’t working
April 6, 2022
We’re hearing from the bosses and people and culture teams asked to implement the Bums-in-Seats directive. Even when they, themselves, are skeptical.
Elijah you need to unmute
March 24, 2021
Fully remote, fully in person, or a mix of the two. This is the question that will dominate the rest of this year and into the next. The extremes are the easiest to navigate.
262,800 minutes
September 9, 2020
What’s the opposite of social distance? It’s not social closeness. It’s social spontaneity. Those serendipitous moments of inspiration and collaboration. Those happen most when humans are in close proximity to other humans.
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