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.
Read More
Today, our second book comes out. It's an ender chest. It is a full year of these newsletters, from the first lockdown to the anniversary of those lockdowns. It is a place to put down some of what the past 18 months have felt like.
Read More
There's an adage in business that any decision is better than no decision. Because even if you're wrong, you can always make a different decision further down the road.
Read More
Can we get to a place where we start to reimagine the thing? Whatever the thing is that you miss, you can reinvent it without starting from zero. Pay attention to the ache of the thing that's missing. What was important about it?
Read More
We told leaders to be empathetic. We told them to be understanding. And they are doing that. They are phenomenal about understanding the conditions for underperformance in their teams. But it's not working...
They are patient to a fault.
Read More
Now's a bad time to lean on your employee's sense of loyalty, but a good time to lean on their sense of possibility. New opportunity, high-quality networking, exposure to different ideas. That's what people in a liminal space can actually engage with.
Read More
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.
Read More
Every company is a community that needs rules. And, as bosses, making the rules of engagement clear is our job. That's true whether your company is remote, in-office, or a mix of the two.
Read More
We hear from managers who want strategies for dealing with the burnt out folks on their teams. Doing the equivalent of the trolley problem every time a new project pops up. How do you give someone new work even as they're drowning under the existing work?
Read More
Right now, every company is trying to figure out their return-to-office, fully-remote, or hybrid strategy. And while those approaches have implications for the people working there today, nowhere is the conversation hotter than around what it means for prospective hires.
Read More
Look around. Where are you running an outdated plan? Do the priorities your team has right now make sense, right now? Does the composition of your team still make sense? Does your job description? Does your company?
Read More
After a year of being burnt out, crispy fried, work from home, but mostly living at work, employers are asking if we're ready to come back. Back to commutes and shitty coffee and incompetent management (working on that last one as fast as we can).
Read More
The short answer is no. The Basecamp stuff isn't some evil genius strategy playing out according to plan.
Read More
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.
Read More
There's a grand re-integration coming. As the normalcy of exterior life returns it's gonna let us focus on what a mess we've made of the place, internally.
Read More
Fully remote, fully in person, or a mix of the two. This is the question that will dominate the rest of this year and into the next. The extremes are the easiest to navigate.
Read More
That we're at the one year mark for the first lockdowns and it feels like everyone is quitting, well, we can't say we're surprised. But it's our full time job to pay attention to this stuff. And what we're hearing from a lot of you is: why now?
Read More
At work, lots of folks are finding it hard to track externalities. And even if they can, who has the energy to go chasing them? As though we need any more reminders that other people's poor decisions can adversely impact us? It's no wonder that move inward is showing up at work, too.
Read More
The truth about most calendar-run organizations is that calendars are law. If it's on the calendar, it's real. And if it's empty, it's up for grabs.
Read More
Maybe this is you and maybe it isn't. But if you're leading a team, understand that many of your people are doing this. And if so, here are some things you can do to help.
Read More