Because too many companies misinterpreted the great resignation.

Too many of us assumed that we could win the “war”(🤢) on talent by offering more money or better perks.

💡 More money and better perks do not address the problem with the work itself, and the design of the workplace. And they do not address what people want from the modern workplace: a purpose, to belong, to be heard, to add value, and to make an impact.

📼 Let’s rewind and remember the first shutdown in March of 2020:

• Each day, the news gave us darker updates - new death counts, new symptoms, and new hygiene practices. Meanwhile, the majority of people were sitting at home with time to think:

  • The early career professional asked themselves “Why am I doing this? How does this help the world?”

  • The professional a few years away from retirement thought “Why am I waiting to retire? Life is so short.”

  • And many of our service workers thought “I’m not getting paid enough money to risk my life.”

As the world re-opened, all of these people from different places in their careers, different locations, and industries, decided “No, I don’t want what you’re offering.”

💵 We Default to What We Know

And companies and HR departments, faced with the need to hire people quickly did what they assumed would work - more money and better perks. And that isn’t a bad tactic when you are understaffed by 50%. When companies face historic staffing shortages they need to get creative, pay more, and throw everything including the kitchen sink to attract new hires.

But once people are in the door, your workplace is still your workplace, the work is still the work it was before and that jerk in operations is still going to berate your marketing team for not moving quick enough.

So it's not surprising to read that “40% of recent job switchers are again looking for a new position.” Many feel they signed up under false advertising, that companies sugar-coated the realities of their workplace and now there is some remorse on both sides.

🤝 Action: How Do We Retain Our People?

The short answer is to build workplaces that engage people in meaningful work. But how?

• Build a purpose-driven organization (paywall)

• Our world has evolved, has your workplace? Does your workplace support the life people are living today? In my experience, too many people are working in companies that enforce policies designed decades ago.

• Be the change. There are thriving teams at every company and it's usually because they have a great team leader AND great teammates.

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What I’m Listening/Reading/Watching This Week:

🎧  Second Life: Robin Arzon: VP and Head Instructor at Peloton. Yes, I’m basic, I love my Peloton and Robin is one of my favorite instructors. Outside of Peloton, her life story is fascinating and inspiring, I encourage you to check out this podcast to hear more about her background.

📰  “Incorrect Ideas About ‘Why We Work’ Warp Our Organizations...And Our Views of Human Nature.” This week’s newsletter is inspired by the article I linked to at the beginning and this interview with Barry Schwartz a professor of work (his job is my job in my alternate timeline).

📺 I am still reeling and speculating on the season one finale of Severance to the point where someone told me I need to move on...

“So you create a workplace where people show up only if they’re getting paid, and then you claim, “You see, I told you, the only reason people work is to get paid.” - Barry Schwartz

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Does any of this sound familiar?

• Doing work your team should be doing because it would take too long to teach

• Delegating work only to be frustrated that the work looks nothing like what you expected

• Building processes *around* people

• Putting up with an ongoing issue because you don’t have the time to confront the real issue

If this sounds familiar, congratulations! You are a human, in a leadership position, that’s stumbled as the best leaders in the world have stumbled. You made the mistake of thinking that being a good leader means you and your team must be perfect, to the point where you will do the work because YOU are the only person who can do it the “right way.”

I eventually worked my way through my perfectionist issues with the help of good mentors and friends but a book I read recently, Greg McKeown’s, Effortless would have also been very helpful.

This book would not have solved all of my problems but it would have forced me to reflect on my role. To ask myself: “How am I making this difficult? How can I make it easier?”

👫Making It Easier for Your Teams

I did not realize that my perfectionism was making it hard for my team on every level: I made it more difficult for my teams to learn, they did not always have the context they needed and processes were unnecessarily complex, which bogged down everyone’s day.

I learned over time and through observation that the best leaders remove obstacles, they make it easier to get the work done.

As leaders, in modern organizations where everyone thrives, we must confront the tough issues:

• Fixing the root of the problem, which is often more time and resource-intensive but is better and more efficient in the long term

• Taking the time to provide adequate context and transparency

• Saying and living our values (personal or work values)

🎬 Action - Compounding Results

So, how can we make work life easier for our teams? How do we remove the obstacles? I believe the solution is to help our teams figure out effortless work. (Note: Many of these suggestions are from the book Effortless, I’ve adapted the advice for my audience and I encourage you to check out the source material)

🛑 Stop and reflect on these questions:

What if this could be easy? What would that look like? How am I making this harder than it needs to be?*

If you don’t think you have time for that, you’re probably experiencing cognitive overload. Take the time to stop and think. If you are constantly overwhelmed, you can’t help your team (put your oxygen mask on first!).

Next, focus on how you can produce compounding results. Compounding results are actions you can take that continue to produce over time. An example: you can complete the client presentation for your team but if you take 2-3 hours to teach them *how to* prepare the client presentation, that pays off twofold: the team can now prepare client presentations which frees up your time and they will likely take your teachings, improve upon them and produce even better results at the next client meeting.

What else? How about taking the time to “strike at the root” of the problem instead of clipping the branches? Think of an ongoing, frustrating problem, that both you and your team deal with on a regular basis. What is the real root of the problem? How could you resolve that problem? How much time would you free up if you did?

🌴Strike at the Root!!!

👩🏽‍🏫 Education

This week I’m enhancing my knowledge of DEI by starting a course from the University of South Florida on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I’m very excited to start this course because it is my first formal education on DEI. Like many of you, I’ve read a lot of articles and participated in training but, for me, there is nothing like a college-type course that I can really sink my teeth into!

And in the entertainment space, I’m watching Severance on Apple TV. I guarantee after watching 3-4 episodes of this show, you will think about our collective corporate rituals in a very different way.

“What is a problem that irritates me repeatedly? What is the total cost of managing that over several years? What is the next step I can take immediately, in a few minutes, to move toward solving it?” - Greg McKeown, Effortless

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No. Not really. But when I say “freedom at work,” I’m sure there is some healthy apprehension. After all, everything about how most organizations “raise” leaders is heavily based on command and control leadership models. They’re called “managers” for a reason - it’s really a synonym for control.

Unfortunately for the command and control leadership style, giving people autonomy and freedom is an important component to increase employee engagement and build a better workplace.

🆓 So, What does freedom at work look like?

I’m still in the process of working through this, but here’s a start:

1. Acknowledge Power Structures - The power imbalance at most companies plays a big part in some of our thorniest workplace issues - equity and inclusion, bullying, etc. This imbalance is at the heart of why so many companies resist giving employees more autonomy or freedom.

2. The Freedom To Be - One of the many reasons that people hate the office is the focus on appearance and politics. People need to be themselves at work, and companies, leaders, and peers need to support that. We will never change the workplace if we perpetuate the same antiquated notions of “work self” and “home self.”

3. Tools - In every leadership position I’ve held, within the first week, a direct report has asked me for a basic tool my predecessor wouldn’t give them. Sometimes it’s system access or a printer or training. The common factor was that by providing the tool, the manager was giving up some power, access, or knowledge. People need the right tools to do their work effectively and efficiently - facilitate that!

🎬 Working Together in Action

Leaders:

• 🧰 See number three above. Give your people the tools they need to do their work. When the decision is out of your hands, go to bat for your people and get them what they need.

Individual Contributors:

• 🧰 See number three above. Don’t be the reason someone can’t get their job done in a timely or efficient manner. Facilitate getting the tools, access, or other resources to people who need them.

• 🗣Set the Example - Bring your whole self to work. Start the employee resource group you don’t see or share more of who you are outside of work, be what you want to see at work.

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💰👀 What I’m Reading This Week - Even Bankers Are Searching for More Meaning

Prospective employees are thinking more deeply about their careers, knowing they’re going to be putting in long hours, he said. They’re wondering, “How can I make that as meaningful as possible and feel good about it?”

Wall Street Opens Its Wallet to Keep Talent. It’s Not Always Enough.

The eye-watering salaries and bonuses mentioned in this article made me want to get a finance degree...and bankers are driven by common themes we’re seeing across industries:

• The ability to work remote

• Getting away from bureaucracy

• Looking for work that is meaningful

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Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. - Albert Einstein

P.S. Full Credit For My First Line Goes to the Original Ghostbusters Movie:

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It’s not that COVID destroyed the world of work, but it did spark a thought in people’s heads - “Can this be better?” 

It’s a question I ask myself constantly: How can we work better together? 

How can we reduce or eliminate the things that make traditional work environments so terrible? 

Is the answer to remove as much of human bias as possible?  

Or is it to double down on the traditional in-person or hybrid work environment? 

I don’t think anyone has the answers to those questions, and when we do have the “answers,” I think it will vary significantly by industry, job, and company. 

I plan to explore this each week as I…you guessed it…reboot this newsletter.  

I hope you stick around as I try to work through what “working together” looks like in person, virtually, and in the metaverse.  

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🎬 Weekly Action 

Quick hits on how each of us, regardless of our role, can start working better together:

🦸🏻‍♀️ Leaders: 

There is nothing better than the feeling of accomplishment after a long day.  How can you facilitate that feeling on your team? One of the easiest ways is to remove the barriers to high-impact work. many things get in the way of high-impact work - email  & Slack pings, phone calls, and useless meetings, to name a few. 

You can’t solve all of those in one sitting, but you can start with one. How about useless meetings?  Some questions to consider:

• Do you have team meetings in addition to project meetings? Do you need to? 

• Do you have meetings to provide status updates? 

• Do your meetings have agendas? 

Freeing up even an hour a week is the time your team can re-dedicate to high-impact work. 

🗣 Individual Contributors: 

Assume the best. No one gets up in the morning deciding to make your day terrible. Instead of assuming that your co-worker in accounting is trying to ruin your life by asking questions, assume that she’s trying to deliver accurate financial results and needs your help. 

🎧 What I’m Listening To, Reading, Watching This Week 

The United States has 5% of the global population but 25% of the world’s incarcerated population. The majority of those incarcerated leave prison and struggle to find a job. Looking for a potential labor pool that has a high retention rate? Look at the formerly incarcerated.

Check out this podcast “When They Become Us” for more information.   

When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response. 

- Indra Nooyi 

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In one of my first HR leadership roles, I met with a division head and his team. We were discussing ongoing issues with a department that stemmed from the supervisor. As we discussed the issues, the division head became increasingly impatient with a perceived lack of progress.

One of his direct reports, Bob, argued back, and an in-meeting blowup ensued. Voices were raised, irrational ultimatums issued, and the meeting ended with frustration, anger, and hurt feelings.

After the meeting, I spoke with both Bob and the division leader. Both were frustrated and felt the other had overstepped professional boundaries in the meeting, and I agreed. I advised the division leader to acknowledge the situation immediately with his direct reports to minimize the damage. From my perspective, I could easily see how the dynamic on the team had changed, and the team dynamic was damaged.

Bob apologized in his next private meeting with his division leader. He was expecting an apology as well, only to be disappointed when his division leader glossed over the matter with a comment along the lines of "passion is important in business - no one needs to apologize for a good knockdown, drag-out fight."

Bob, of course, saw the situation differently; he felt he'd been humiliated in front of his peers and felt much of the criticism was unreasonable.

🚶🏻‍♀️Everyone Moves At Their Own Pace

As an early career HR pro, this was an eye-opening experience. I saw upfront how that type of experience could shift the team dynamic. After that day, Bob and his peers were wary around their division leader, knowing that he could go from bro to vicious bobcat in a few seconds.

And Bob never forgot how he apologized but couldn't get the same from his leader. Their relationship was different after that.

When you mess up (and you will), even if you apologize - it may be too late. You may hurt someone to the point where it takes time, energy, and effort to repair that relationship, and that will upset you because you DID THE RIGHT THING and apologized, and want to move on. Keep in mind: everyone moves on at their own pace.

🤝Working Together on the Hard Stuff

As we talk about building better, more human workplaces, together. We have to reset the expectations at work. And that includes apologies. We are all human, we all make mistakes, and it’s time we realized that an apology doesn't make us weak. It doesn't take away from our competence or capability to admit when we've made a mistake.

An apology bonds us to each other and our teams in the mutual understanding that we are all human and fallible.

If this is anathema to your guiding principles or your survival instincts - I understand. Many of us don't even know what a real apology is because we've never seen it.

Here are some helpful tips I've learned over the years:

• Be sincere and specific- what are you apologizing for? How did it make the other person feel? Ex: "I'm sorry I said that to you. It was hurtful and belittling."

• Don't justify your actions. Don't do this: "I'm sorry you feel that way; I was just drained and hadn't had my morning cup of coffee."

• Action- What are you going to do in the future? Ex: "I'm sorry I said that to you. It was hurtful and belittling. I'm working on developing more patience, so this doesn't happen again."

A sincere apology is the right thing to do, and it’s a relief to work through that awkwardness. If done right, it opens up a dialogue with the other person that builds your relationship. The best teams don't avoid conflict - they work through it -awkwardly at times, but growth is never comfortable.

I don’t drink wine during the day. Not even a little. Otherwise, the rest of the day is an apology.” - Angie Dickinson

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After some thought, I came back to continue this project because I realized the only way to improve anything is to work together. The concept of working together can be as simple as reaching out to a co-worker or building a company-wide innovation plan.

If we can figure out how to build better organizations that support people today, we’re improving life for ourselves, our co-workers, and our local communities on the smallest scale.

That kind of change is deeply personal and impactful.

If you want to be part of the solution, part of a community figuring out how we can all work better together, this is the newsletter for you.

I hope you join me and invite your friends to explore, collaborate and build community.

In the future, this newsletter will be bi-weekly and feature topics related to what I think we need to build better organizations: leadership, freedom, and humanity. Check out my first newsletter for more information on that.

📧Freedom From Email

This weekend I vowed to take a break from work. I'm almost at the end of an HR system conversion, and my brain is rapidly approaching maximum capacity. I needed a weekend disconnect badly!

Instead of working or stressing about work, I spent the weekend bagging up leaves...in February. Having moved here from Ohio, where I would be shoveling snow in February, I'll take the early autumn weather any day, but still, it felt weird to be using the leaf blower in late February.

I found myself just as busy as I am on weekends where I work but with a lower stress level. It’s not that I didn't think about work; after all, I did find time to read about workforce planning (yes, I am an organization and people nerd). I think the difference is that I was actually thinking without the clutter of pings, emails, text messages, and phone calls.

Right now, email seems to be the worst. It’s all too easy to fall into the thinking that an empty inbox equals productivity and a job well done- which is complete crap. Answering emails does not help us do the deep, impactful work that matters. Instead, in my case, at least, it just adds to the stress level because it will never be done.

My instincts were confirmed when I read the article "Email is Making Us Miserable" by Cal Newport this week. If you aren't already familiar with Newport's work, you should start with this article where he succinctly lays out why email is so bad for us:

It creates, for example, a tortuous cycle that increases the amount of work on our plate while simultaneously thwarting, through constant distraction, our ability to accomplish it effectively. - Cal Newport

0️⃣Fighting Inbox Zero

That quote makes a lot of sense to me because I unwittingly end up in that torturous cycle. I get to inbox zero, celebrate, and then watch with mounting horror as the responses to my emails pile back up in my inbox.

Giving our co-workers and teams the freedom to step away from email is important if we want real, impactful work to be done. The freedom to step away from email means that we don't expect responses within 15 minutes or late at night or on the weekends. It means we actually know what an "emergency" is.

So how to do it?

In Cal's article, he suggests several methods to combat these issues, including office hours and using project management software to track individual status, which, hopefully, reduces the number of pings and email follow-ups.

I love those suggestions, but they take time....what do you think we can do today or tomorrow to cut back on the email monster?

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What I'm Listening To, Reading, and Watching This Week

🎧If you're curious about how companies like Amazon work, listen to this podcast from a16z, Amazon Narratives: Memos, Working Backwards from Release, and More:

📺Schitt's Creek. Need I say more?

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That can sound pretty lofty in the middle of a pandemic when you’re just trying to get your job done and keep your toddler from starting a fire. Some advice below on how to apply our values (leadership, freedom, and humanity) at work and on Thanksgiving day.

Have a beautiful Thanksgiving! Stay safe!

🦃Leadership

Demonstrate the behaviors you want to see. Like me, if you are fed up with the constant bickering and polarization in our society, figure out how you can stop or reduce those behaviors in your area. Step up as a leader and work to build connections with the opposing team.

You may discover that YOUR team is the problem. Or you might find out there is a reason for the roadblock.

Applying this lesson at Thanksgiving: Leadership at Thanksgiving means cooking turkey legs because that's really the only part of the turkey that anyone wants to eat.

Freedom

So much of leadership is stepping up and speaking out when no one else wants to. With the holidays approaching, in the middle of a pandemic, give your team the gift of space. Space to figure out if they want to visit family and take time off. Space to work from home or come into the office. Space to breathe because, let’s be honest, not much gets done the week of Thanksgiving.

Applying this lesson at Thanksgiving: Freedom also means keeping your mouth shut when someone describes their love of canned cranberries instead of fresh.

🧘🏻‍♀️🚬🛍Humanity

We are all working through a lot of stress and anxiety outside of work. Stop for a second and think about the impact of an organization full of people dealing with a hundred year pandemic on top of the normal work stuff. What does that make you realize about your team? About yourself?

Applying this lesson at Thanksgiving: Don’t judge. Don’t judge. Don’t judge.

📚📰📺What I'm Reading/Watching/Listening To This Week

The Halfway Point - Based on vaccine estimates we are likely halfway through the pandemic. With an unprecedented amount of free time and the knowledge that a vaccine is ready, what do you want to do? Learn? Read? Bake? Write?

Man Refuses to Leave Job He Hates - Florida Man puzzles psychologists once again.

The Crown - After a bumpy third season, my favorite royal/drama/soap comes roaring back this year to tell the tragic story of Diana, against the backdrop of Margaret Thatcher’s years as PM. As this review details, episode 2, the Balmoral Test sets up a fantastic season 4.

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”

– Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

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🙋🏻‍♀️Perhaps one of the saddest things about the last ten years of our political cycle is that politics has invaded everything. If you got into a screaming fight about politics with someone you otherwise love this year, raise your hand because I have, and I’m ashamed that it got that far.

The good news is that we don’t have to live like this. We really don’t. We can stay informed without participating in the circus we’re going to see tonight and in the coming days.

Watching the news is bad for you. With the onset of the 24-hour news cycle, TV news networks have to fill the time somehow,. They do that by sensationalizing everything in the relentless pursuit of eyeballs for their advertisers.

I plan to stay as far away as I can from a TV tonight.

❌I am begging you to do the same. Stop letting this toxic political cycle dictate your time. Step away from the TV and social media tonight. Likely, we won't know who won tonight, and even if it’s a landslide, no one will concede the election tonight.

🍺🍷Instead, make some dinner, have a glass of wine, and binge watch some great TV (here are some great suggestions). Or read a SHORT book (suggestions), spend time with your kids, exercise, or sleep.

🌎 The news of the world will be waiting for us on Wednesday morning; in the meantime - breathe.

What I’m Listening To & Reading This Week

🎧 Remember how I just said a few minutes ago that you don’t need the news? The latest episode of one of my favorite podcasts tackles the peril and promise of social media, discusses how to find good sources of news, and offers great tips on how to mitigate its worst excesses. How To Use Social Media Without Losing Your Mind

I’m also listening to the “You’re Wrong About” podcast series on Princess Diana. No, it’s not the most intellectually stimulating listen, but the hosts’ modern take on this “fairy tale” are insightful and poignant.

👩🏻‍💻 Do you ever wonder where your time goes? The irony is that we have more leisure than any generation before us. In the article Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure, Ashley Whillans explores where our lost leisure time went and how to reclaim it.

Top Reasons Your Company Wants You Fired You Aren’t Aware Of - there are so many gems in this article. This is probably one of my favorites:

Lack of respect

Leaders are hired to move the company towards a common goal. Crapping on your various departments will discourage and divide the company. We have a unit in our company that is our front line of defense called the Virtual Enterprise Technology Services, or V.E.T.S.  This group has a thankless job that the rest of the company can take for granted and takes a special group of men and women. Corporate Values 101 says, “don’t shit on the folks who are taking on the thankless jobs.

📖 In the book department, I’m still on a World War Two kick. This week I finished “The Bohemians: The Lovers Who Led Germany’s Resistance Against the Nazis.” I enjoyed reading about this disparate group of people who came together informally to resist the Nazi machine. Before the Nazi’s came to power, they were bohemians: artists, writers, painters and musicians who, over time, woke up to the evil of the Nazi regime. Like many other resistance plots, the ending is not a happy one for these resistance fighters but the beauty and honor of their efforts is well worth spending a few hours of your time on.

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

- Mark Twain

At times it feels like we have no power over these huge issues affecting our country, but of course, we do. Some of us are door-knocking and writing letters. Others are speaking loudly through protest, and others are bravely working the front lines of our pandemic.

I believe we always have power. The key is how we choose to use that power.

Last week's letter about dignity and compassion is an outcome of my endless exhaustion with the news cycle and our American brand of crazy. It sounds hopelessly naive, but I can't help but wonder how our world would be different if we treated all people with dignity and compassion?

In a world where we can feel so powerless, we must choose to have an impact where we can- where we work and live.

<stepping off the soapbox now>

Here's what I'm reading this week, which, no surprise, ties in nicely to my earlier thoughts:

"I was raised to believe that the news is good for your development. That as an engaged citizen it's your duty to read the paper and watch the evening news. That the more we follow the news, the better informed we are and the healthier our democracy. This is still the story many parents tell their kids, but scientists are reaching very different conclusions. The news, according to dozens of studies, is a mental health hazard."

Humankind: A Hopeful History - Rutger Bregman

"The double-edged sword of giving everyone a microphone means that we’ve amplified the voices of dissent at the same time we’ve given people a chance to speak up about their desires. This means that mass culture is far more divisive than it ever was before, and it also means that bubbles of interest are more likely to be served."

I Hate This Restaurant - Seth Godin

"We need to be aware of what mental processes we leave on the “default factory-setting.” I suspect that one of the keys to self-awareness and of managing filter bubbles is the self-recognition of exactly what you are defaulting to — what your assumptions are, how you get information, where you do not engage in a specific process to reach a conclusion, but rather, simply rely on the sea of noise we find ourselves in."

Understanding The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories - Barry Ritholz, The Big Picture

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Where You Can Find Me:

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One of this community's pillars is the belief that we can make modern organizations through leadership, freedom, and humanity. We see a lot of leadership worship (Bezos, Zuckerberg in the beginning, Jack Welch back in the day, etc.) and we see a lot of, I would argue misguided, freedom worship around tech company’s (nap pods! ping-pong tables!) but we don’t see a lot of the same adoration, outside of HR circles, of humanity in the workplace.

So, what does humanity at work look like on a daily basis?

Work is a cumulative experience. If people are treated poorly the majority of the time their overall experience of your organization will be negative, despite that one time the CEO bought everyone lunch.

It’s not enough to give people nap pods or meditation rooms (but those are fantastic, and I would never turn them down), but what’s the experience like working for your company? Is it cold and inhumane? Or is it warm and welcoming?

Your First & Last Day

There is a lot of attention around attracting, hiring, and onboarding employees, for the right reason. A first day without a workspace, computer, or even a plan can leave a lasting impression.

I would also argue that the end is just as important as the beginning. How do our organizations treat departing employees?

I read an article recently that highlighted various HR practitioners giving their advice about how to terminate an employee with dignity and compassion. It’s easy to envision dignity and compassion for someone whose position has been eliminated. But what about the poor performer? What about the person who likely stole from the company but you can’t quite prove it? Do they deserve dignity and compassion as well?

Is there a way to separate/terminate employment without making it about that individual?

A termination is never about the person. When we can distinguish between the employee as a person and the reason for the termination (the act), then we can keep the dignity of the person intact. When the employee feels good about who they are they can better accept the reason for the termination, learn from their mistake, and move forward. Communicate that we want to correct the act and not the person.

Sonja Talley, Principal HR Consultant

What do you think?

Maybe our world of work, our world in general, would be much better off if we aspired to separate the person from the action. Is that possible?

What if we lived in a world where, even in the worst situations, the person sitting across from us had the self-knowledge to understand it was their actions that led to separation from employment and not themselves as a person?

How would our organizations be different?

How would leadership be different?

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A surefire way to stir conversation appears to be complaining about LinkedIn.

👩🏻‍💻I posted the above a few days ago, and I think its been one of the most liked Tweets I’ve ever posted. I wrote this out in frustration after accepting three LI requests and receiving three automatic messages from people telling me about how their product or service would help me, and could I spare some time to talk.

I get it. Everyone has a job, and sometimes you have to cold call, but the volume and the lack of real attempt to connect is frustrating, to say the least. Thanks to Twitter (another frustrating platform at times), I received some great suggestions on how to combat this:

• Set your profile to private

• Don’t accept any request unless it’s from someone you have actually met (phone or in-person)

• Change the “connect” button to “follow”

• Don’t accept any connection requests without a personalized message

BUT I do want to hear from YOU

If we aren’t connected on LI, send me a request and tell me what you think of this newsletter! I hope to hear from you!

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What I’m Reading, Listening To & Watching

📖 Lately, I’ve found inspiration reading about leaders throughout history, most recently Winston Churchill.

The relatively short book (322 pages), Darkest Hour, chronicles Churchill’s efforts to bring warring factions of the British political system together to fight the Nazis. This was not an easy task as many doubted Churchill was the right leader and questioned if a peace deal with the Nazi’s might be a better option than open war.

The book not only provides a riveting play-by-play of the events leading up to Churchill’s famous “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech but also gives us great insight into his speech writing process.

If you aren’t familiar with the “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech from June 1940:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; We shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. <chills>

🎧 Minda Harts has been fighting to get women of color a seat at the table through her work, speaking, and writing. In this great podcast episode, she discusses how she wants to leave the workplace a better place, her book The Memo and her journey from the corporate world to blogging, social media, and active advocate for women of color.

📺 One of the earliest live events that are seared in my brain is watching the Challenger explosion. As a kid who wanted to be an Astronaut it was shocking to see the shuttle explode. Netflix recently released a four-episode documentary series exploring what led to the Challenger disaster. It is a riveting documentary series that explores the space program culture, NASA leadership, and astronauts.

It’s a sad, beautiful exploration of a tragic historic milestone.

What are you reading, listening to, or watching this week?

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I think about leadership in two ways: direct and indirect. A direct leader is someone with a title or a position that immediately conveys authority. An indirect leader is someone who leads primarily through influence.

For example, a VP of Sales is an executive leader with power and influence that derives (at least initially) from their title. On the same sales team, you can have several individual contributors who can be just as influential - they are indirect leaders. These individual contributors have influence and authority from several sources - tenure, personality, connections, etc.

We can be strong, direct leaders with all the right moves but if we neglect to recognize indirect leaders or account for their influence, our efforts will fail. Strong leaders lead by building relationships and influence.

The cumulative effect of direct and indirect leadership can lead an organization to sustained growth, or it can lead to decline.

What Do We Need From Direct Leaders?

Thanks to a growing body of research, we know that excellent leaders engage in these behaviors: 

Accountability

Direct leaders have an enormous responsibility; every minute of interaction with their team is an opportunity to be a force for positive or create a toxic environment. Strong leaders hold themselves and their teams accountable. They are inclusive and humble; they articulate and share their vision and strive to be consistently authentic, optimistic, and high-energy. 

Communication & Transparency

How we communicate and what we communicate has a significant impact on our teams.

Our co-workers and teammates are adults, and its time, we start communicating with them like adults (we need to start treating them like adults as well but more on that in a later essay). That means being as transparent and open as we can be. It means providing context because the more people know, the better the results.

We see the opposite of this when organizations make significant changes that impact hundreds of people and give little to no context to the people affected. The resulting gossip is an unnecessary distraction, and the lack of context means people are operating in a vacuum. 

Support

The best leaders help their people by removing obstacles and supporting their growth and development. Supporting a team takes many forms:

• Getting the tools and equipment, they need to get their job done– sometimes, that’s as easy as approval, and other times, we need to push back on the bureaucracy.

•  Lift up your team— no organization is perfect, and you will always have bad days. A good leader provides perspective and recognizes the team’s hard work.

•  Get out of their way — If you feel like you’re micro-managing, you either have the wrong people or the wrong mindset. Remove the obstacles, and let your team go!

The above is just the beginning of my exploration of leadership and its importance in building modern organizations. In next week's post, I'll dive into indirect leadership. In the meantime: 

What do you think? Did I miss any essential qualities of leadership? What would you add? Remove? 

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"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."- Ruth Bader Ginsberg 👩🏻‍⚖️

Hey! Thanks for sticking around for week three of the Working Together newsletter.

Last week I outlined the purpose of Working Together - to build modern, flexible organizations on the foundation of leadership, freedom, and humanity. Going forward, I’ll be exploring what that looks like in real life, in real organizations. In between, I’ll also share some relevant content that I’m consuming.

✋🏻How Can I Help?

There is a lot of crap going on right now in our country, our world, and our workplaces. It can be overwhelming, and at times I’ve felt like the best option was to huddle in my house and never leave again.

I’m not the only one who feels this way because this topic came up in a meditation podcast I was listening to recently, and the teacher made a simple suggestion- find people in your immediate space and help them.

In that spirit, I want to offer my help to you - are you stuck on a workplace problem? Curious about mindfulness meditation? Looking for an opinion on your indoor plant setup? I’m here to help; please reach out!

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📄What I’m Reading This Week

Leadership

4 Leadership Tips to Help Employee Deal with Reality - The Economist - Practical tips on helping our employees work within the realities of the modern workplace. “If only's” rob us of energy and, if unchecked, can lead to excuses, interpersonal drama, and lack of productivity.”

Freedom

Buffer is a company doing some exciting things in the People space. They are big into decentralizing decision making back to the teams instead of a traditional top-down approach. In 3 Ways We’re Experimenting with With More Freedom, Buffer talk s through the benefits and drawbacks to that approach.

🙌🏻Humanity

I love this talk from Simon Sinek! We need more humanity in our organizations, and Simon Sinek walks us through how best practices from the ’80s and ’90s are only hurting our organizations, not helping.

On a final note, I want to acknowledge the grim milestone we hit as I sat and wrote this letter to you: 200,000 deaths from coronavirus.

Curae leves loquuntur ingentes stupent - Seneca

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🌴I waved goodbye to Normal in December.

For me, Normal sailed away this past December when I decided to move 1,000 miles (ca. 1,609 km) to Florida to start a new job in a new industry. I made that decision when it looked like 2020 would bring nothing but exciting events: warm weather, new job, new house, new places to visit and travel.

And 2020 did bring some of those exciting events, but it also brought sadness. The sadness of moving away I expected, but seeing the devastating effects of this pandemic is gut-wrenching. 

In addition to the pandemic, nightly, we continue to see demonstrations against police brutality and inequality. Many of these scenes are disturbing, but there are also signs of hope and solidarity. I hope and pray that we look back on 2020 as the year that saw the start of the dismantling of systemic racism.

What does any of this have to do with Human Resources?

🙋🏻‍♀️Should I just shut up and HR?

Nope. It’s not enough to act as if the external world ends when people walk through our company doors. How many of us continue to see, address, or hear about people dealing with these issues at our workplaces?

• Sexual Harassment

• Bias

• Racism

• Sexism

• Bullying

And we continue to see so many of the same HR problems we’ve seen for decades:

• Disengagement

• Retention

• Poor performance management processes

• Lack of communication

✅Too often, the solution to these problems is a check-the-box exercise.

DEI is one of the more egregious examples of this. Many organizations profess to want a diverse workforce but lament the “lack of candidates.” All while continuing to use traditional recruiting practices and promotional guidelines that reinforce biased selection and performance evaluation.

And too often, workplace policies punish people who do not fit into the 8-5 mold:

• Focusing on time in the office instead of work product

• Rewarding “team players”

• Blindly applying policies and rules without any thought to the context or the situation

🌍As our world has evolved, the traditional world of work with its traditional expectations persists in many organizations.

Demographically, the United States looks and will continue to look less and less white, so why do we still lack executive leadership that is reflective of our population?

All data is from the U.S Census via Wikipedia.

And how about lifestyle changes?

Today, 26% of children live in a single-parent home (22% in 2000 and just 9% in 1961). 70% of moms with children under the age of 18 are in the workforce, and 64% of moms with preschool-aged children work. Three-quarters of employed moms work full-time.

Many of the standard practices we find in our organizations today originate from a world that looked very different from the world we live in today;

🧗🏻How can we position ourselves, our teams, and our organizations for the future?

Leadership, Freedom, and Humanity

I believe, in the core of my being, that we can build better organizations. Modern, flexible organizations where people are treated like people and have the freedom to create, innovate, and come to work as the people they are.

I believe people and organizations can work together for mutual success. It doesn’t have to be us versus them.

How? I think it starts with three simple pillars:

• Leadership: Without robust and courageous leadership, you can’t change existing systems or build new ones.

• Freedom: Freedom to move away from traditional norms and expectations.

• Humanity: As organizations, as leaders, as co-workers, we need to recognize the humanity in each other.

I want to build a community where we can figure out, together, how to make better organizations. We can only improve our world by listening and working together.

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This week kicks off my new project - Working Together. It’s a newsletter, an inbox essay, and a community.

I’m Ready for Something Different. Are You?

All around us, we see evidence that despite how rapidly our world has changed, the world of work and organizations are not changing at the same rate. Too often, organizations are operating as if its still 1995, and we know that because we’re still trying to fix HR problems from the 1990s: bullying, harassment, disengagement, lack of diversity in our leadership, etc.

<p style="text-align: center;"><em>If you look close enough you can see a dress code policy in there from 1985.</em></p>

What About COVID? Hasn’t That Changed the World of Work? Yes and No.

It depends on your role, your company, and your manager. Many tech company employees are staying home until 2021, but in many other companies, people are forced back to work with minimal safety precautions.

In addition to worker safety, the pandemic disproportionately affects women and minorities, causing many experts to fear that gains in the workforce will reverse.

I Think We Can Change

And that’s what Working Together is about. Building a community of business professionals across all disciplines who want to learn from each other.

Working together is critical to building modern organizations. 

So, What Can You Expect?

Why a newsletter? Why Sub-stack? What’s this Community?

I picked the newsletter format because I wanted to try something different, and I was tired of the hassle of a website. Don’t get me wrong, I love my site, but I’ve come to despise Wordpress’s clunky interface that has made publishing a post anything but simple. Sub-stack provides an accessible format to build a newsletter template and a community. 

What Kind of Community? 

A community for people that realize we need real change in our organizations, people who want to learn how to build modern, inclusive, flexible organizations for our current workforce. 

And the best part? No trolls. 

Essay in your inbox?

Yup. An almost weekly in-depth essay in your inbox tackling any number of topics in the people space - organizational culture, freedom at work, leadership, building people-centered organizations. On the off weeks, you’ll get a collection of carefully curated content that will help you work through making organizations better.

Next Week

I’m writing more in-depth about the problems I see in organizations and what I think it will take to build modern organizations. Modern, flexible organizations where people are treated like people and have the freedom to create, innovate, and come to work as the people they are.

I hope to see you next week!

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