Find the through-line or make one

Don't ship the org chart.

The workplace fight worth having

Policy can be a tool for that care when it's built thoughtfully, and when it evolves with the needs of your people.

What to do with a gift you can't return

That sad, not particularly thoughtful gift with your name on it? That's how many people experience performance review season.

I'll call you from the car

The important decisions you'll make as a boss — or a human — need to be made in the midst of very loud and poorly-timed chaos.

What to do with the muchness

Either, we're running as fast as we can toward clear targets. Or we're running as fast as we can without clear targets.

Day-to-day management in a polycrisis

Yours can be a team where people's humanity has space to coexist with, and even outrank, their productivity. It's worth building that. We're all going to need it.

What to do when everyone's eyebrows are glowing

You can't outsource interpersonal connection to the interns, and your team can't outsource it to you.

Sorry I'm getting kicked out of this room

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.

Thanks but no thanks

Sometimes humans really do need a reality check, that's fair. But if you're going to reality check someone, we suggest starting with the manager in the mirror.

Is anyone ever ready for leadership?

One of the best, most leveraged, most impactful things you can do as a leader is to grow new, excellent leaders.

The future of work is in pieces

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.

Hot goal summer

The opportunity in July (or whenever your mid-year review period lands) is to go back to the whole point of the exercise.

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right

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?

The sign of a good compromise

The past few years we've swung wildly between utopian and dystopian visions.

You can't stand under my umbrella

Staring down a difficult reality and finding your way to acceptance is hard enough. But having a manager conceal that reality from you makes acceptance impossible.

We don't know what we don't know

Lowering your shields enough to get to real questions is the hard part. But once you have those in hand, there are still a few other mistakes to avoid.

My milkshake brings all the orgs to the yard

Someone else's goals might be eloquently written, but that doesn't mean they matter to you. Someone else's values statement might seem so clear-eyed and attractive, but that doesn't make it yours.

When meetings are outlawed, only outlaws will hold meetings

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.

You need more of it than you think

When your brain learns that there are blocks of time when it can reliably expand and take on bigger things, it's astonishing what happens.

Year of the pulse

When you look back at the last month, or the last year, what patterns do you see? What are those habits, and are they serving you, as you are now?

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