What’s the opposite of mercenary?
December 11, 2024
There is no narrative arc more dystopian than insecure people with power and limited accountability.
World's Best Newsletter Archive
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.
Was the Future of Work a ZIRP?
May 15, 2024
You can feel lucky to have a job and still want your work to have reasonable hours, pay equity, and the flexibility to deal with family matters on a Wednesday afternoon.
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?
My milkshake brings all the orgs to the yard
January 25, 2023
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.
What to do when you’re all out of puffins
October 19, 2022
The bullshit is supposed to be in service of something. Ideally, say, work that you’re proud of, whose impact matters to you, and which allows you to live a life you enjoy.
The little con and the big con
August 24, 2022
Quiet Quitting is what happens when you figure out that you are the mark. And the game is rigged. And you don’t want to play anymore.
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?
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.
We didn’t build *that* Better boss
December 15, 2021
People send us the links in part because, haha, you build better bosses. Here’s the literal CEO of Better and seems like he could have used some management training. Hardy har har. But some of them also want to know, “Is this normal?” And if so, how often does this happen? And why?
The cost of doing business
November 17, 2021
Every organization has costs, but there’s a lot of power in how they’re labelled. The labels people use bake in assumptions about whether those costs are internal or external. They tell you who we think should pay those costs.
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