The enshittification of work
April 2, 2025
The froth has subsided. And in its wake, organizations have found some truly short-sighted approaches to labour.
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Where are the people-pleasers?
March 19, 2025
The biggest issue for people-pleasing leaders isn’t that they need to be tougher. Or scream more. Or play a different boss on TV.
Nice, nice, very nice
October 16, 2024
The longer you’re in a culture of niceness and side-channels and things left unsaid, the more you have to wonder about the conversations happening out of earshot.
What did they say when you told them?
August 7, 2024
You’re just reminding them that it’s a fair expectation that they would try to resolve it directly.
Sorry I’m getting kicked out of this room
September 20, 2023
If we want to understand the nagging sense, the underlying frustration, the thing that’s screaming in blinky red lights. We’re gonna have to say it out loud.
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?
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 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.
Have you noticed everyone’s on their worst behaviour?
July 28, 2021
People who are frustrated. Sharp. Daring someone to call them on it and spoiling for a fight. If you’re managing a group of people, you see it in slack messages. The passive aggressive ones. But also the aggressive aggressive ones.
Fire me if you have to
April 21, 2021
When people write the bumper stickers about management versus leadership, this is what they mean. The willingness to make the hard call, to do the unpopular thing, not from a place of taking big swings.
Companies don’t make decisions, people do
October 7, 2020
So on the one hand, you have employees agitating for a more complete view of how their employers’ activities impact the world. And on the other you have CEOs hoping that no one will notice those impacts.
Small business, big stakes
February 26, 2020
If the icebergs organize we’re all in trouble
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