Somebody has to do it
January 7, 2026
We hear this from individual contributors, and we hear it from team leads and line managers, and we hear it from Directors and VPs, too.
World's Best Newsletter Archive
Don’t let the Doerr hit you on the way out
October 29, 2025
The real test for an org is not whether you ever bet wrong. The question is, when the results start to come in, what do you do now?
The price of admission
October 15, 2025
It’s hard to push decision-making to the edges if we’re not sure how the edges are making decisions.
You’re probably not that hardcore
October 1, 2025
You can drop a lot of frogs in that pot and very few will feel their feet get warm.
I hope they’re paying you enough for this
August 20, 2025
The shift in this model is that we’re no longer talking about a cofounder or a bestie or work spouse.
True power lies elsewhere
November 13, 2024
A lot of stuff lives in the “about work and not about work at the same time” bucket. Turns out that organizing humans around complex tasks is messy.
This is not a democracy
October 30, 2024
There was a hard call to be made. And Jeff made it. That’s not abnormal. Jeff makes a lot of hard calls. He has trained his whole life for just this moment.
Power-posing in the driver’s seat
October 2, 2024
“Don’t worry, we have a slackbot that does weekly micro-learning prompts on how to use the brakes” is a transparently bad idea.
When someone tells you there are only two types of leaders
September 18, 2024
The number one rule of leadership development is that there’s no growth without reflection.
If you’re doing their job, who’s doing your job?
April 17, 2024
The cure for a structurally overwhelmed team is a better structure. It’s clarity about what matters most, and permission to hand off or put down the work that doesn’t.
No, but phrased in the form of a question
March 6, 2024
If we want to be continue to operate in this new context, our work has to change, too.
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.
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