Posts tagged leading through uncertainty
Was the Future of Work a ZIRP?

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.

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Find the through-line or make one

"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?"

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Behind the scenes at the magic kingdom

We don't need it to be all doom and gloom. But what does it mean when there's no longer space to talk about what's working and what isn't?

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Who gets Humperdinck?

For many bosses, it's clear that the more you look and talk and vibe like Elon, the more permission you'll get to be capricious and abusive and cynical.

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What to do when you're all out of puffins

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.

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Doing all the work

Accountability is a big, heavy word. It manages to be about management, and feedback, and operational excellence, and culture all at once.

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Let us feed you

Delegation fails at work when the hand-off is incomplete, and also when the hand-off is too complete. And once you know that, you can get better at this fast.

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You've changed

The solution is to acknowledge and process the change. To integrate it and come back to something newly coherent. And the way you do that is reflection.

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The little con and the big con

This Quiet Quitting thing may be the topic du jour, but it's not universal. There are people out there doing engaged, enthusiastic work. There are organizations shining bright and without burning out. If you're sweating it, worried that it's happening with your team, here's our advice.

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You don't want to drink that

Threats. Dismissiveness. Burnout. Micromanagement. Yelling. Every bad boss behaviour is going to come out of the woodwork in the next few months.

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Hello from the basement

One of us has COVID and so far, thanks in large part to the basement (and boosters! and masking! and updated rapid test procedures!), no one else in the house does.

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But how do I know they're working?

There’s a lot of bosses trying to figure this one out right now. Their people aren’t where they can see them. So they ask the very silly, surface level, unexamined, first-time-working-with-remote-folks question. How do I know they’re working?

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