When screens mediate our work relationships, we must consciously show empathy towards our coworkers. I describe opportunities for digital empathy in this article. | Continue reading
All’s not well in remote work paradise. For many employees a remote work arrangement is a Faustian bargain. They have to endure the dark side of remote work. | Continue reading
Sabbatical policies can benefit both employers and employees. But these extended leave arrangements need careful design and inspection. | Continue reading
Tech proliferates into our lives with the promise of improving communication and giving us access to information. But it’s also left us more disconnected and busier than ever. In this post, I reflect on my years growing up and whether a subtractive approach to using tech, may lea … | Continue reading
Forcing functions are constraints that nudge people towards desirable behaviours. In this article, I discuss five forcing functions to promote effective meetings. | Continue reading
It’s the holiday season of 2023, so I want to share a few goodies with you. | Continue reading
Middle-level and people managers play a crucial role in companies, but they also model many corporate dysfunctions. It’s time for people managers to get back in service of the people they lead. | Continue reading
The agile movement was about freeing developers from the baggage of Dilbertesque corporations. But in the 2020s, “doing agile” often comes at the cost of agility. Teams and companies sacrifice common-sense at the altar of a hustle culture, that looks agile, but is far from the sp … | Continue reading
Our time is a zero-sum game. We don’t want shallow work commitments to steal our deep work time. Shallow work is unavoidable, but we can control it. In this article I explain four ways to do so. | Continue reading
We wrongly apologise for switching off from work or work related communication, when we have enough reason to do so. Such apologies undermine our professional contracts and set us back in our attempts to achieve work-life balance. | Continue reading
When we leave cultural characteristics open to interpretation, we run the risk of creating toxic cultures. The loudest voices usually undermine diversity. It makes more sense for distributed organisations to do the boring work of defining culture. It isn’t as sexy as a secret sau … | Continue reading
Copy-pasting office-centric practices rarely works for remote and distributed teams. Three such practices suck, when you attempt them remotely. | Continue reading
In the corporate world we often reach for training as silver bullet solution to performance problems. But building and practicing new skills is hard and if we don’t recognise the real-world difficulties people face, it’s likely that many skill-building initiatives will fail. | Continue reading
You won’t hear from me for the next few weeks, because I’ll be out practicing my hobby; i.e. photography. I believe everyone needs a hobby that they practice for its intrinsic value. | Continue reading
Cal Newport’s “slow productivity” philosophy advocates for multi-scale planning at the quarterly, weekly and daily levels. While Cal recommends his excellent time-block planner, I’ve found my humble calendar to be an effective tool for this way of working. | Continue reading
It’s easy to look at headlines and imagine that all tech workers are headed back to the office. While some part of this assumption may be true, the narrative deserves more nuance. | Continue reading
The “whiteboard effect” refers to a deep work phenomenon that occurs when two or more people problem solve together in spells of intense focus. The presence of this effect doesn’t mean, however, that we must always be in whiteboard mode. | Continue reading
We must soon retire the word “hybrid”. It does less to clarify work patterns and more to confuse people. | Continue reading
When people can identify themselves in all their interactions with each other, it reflects a high psychological safety. But just like a failing test can be invaluable in coding, you need the test of “anonymous contributions allowed” to test if your psychological safety is indeed … | Continue reading
For remote workers the boundaries between work and life can often feel blurred. In this article I discuss seven strategies to achieve work life balance. | Continue reading
Audio and video can add a new dimension to asynchronous communication. In this article I explain how we can be effective at communicating with audio and video. | Continue reading
The sooner a new team can norm, the sooner it delivers value to its stakeholders. This article provides a recipe for leaders of distributed teams to accelerate team norming. | Continue reading
The agile manifesto is an excellent document that marks a generational shift from rigid development practices, to more lightweight, maker-centric principles. The idea was to restore balance balance and be less Dilbertesque. But the 2020s bring their own baggage that impedes knowl … | Continue reading
Writing the book about “async-first” collaboration doesn’t mean that I’m immune to the status quo. I screwed up on my own rules recently, by taking a “sync-first” approach instead. And boy, did that hurt! | Continue reading
Many decisions execs take for their employees, ignore externalised costs. Mike Hopkins of Amazon claims their RTO policy has “no data” to back it. Lyft CEO, David Risher can only advocate for snacks in the office, while batting for RTO. Meanwhile, employees and other stakeholders … | Continue reading
The async-first manifesto is a work-in-progress. This post explains the five values of the first draft. This should help everyone who wishes to help shape the draft, understand the initial thought process. | Continue reading
We pay too much attention to the idea of skill and talent. Often, time on task, trumps talent. Could this be the secret to doing excellent work, having a resilient career and building excellent teams? We explore that question in this article. | Continue reading
Teams needn’t be groups of BFFs. Trust and cohesion are far more important attributes. You don’t build trust and cohesion by accident though. Leaders must employ attentive design and intentional actions. | Continue reading
Workplace friendships have value for businesses, and arguably for employees as well. But it’s should also be perfectly OK, if employees wish to keep work and friendships separate. | Continue reading
Most tech companies want to run well-leveraged teams; i.e a few senior people and a bunch of junior people. But many of us lack the process discipline to do this well. How do you design a team environment that’s inclusive of junior people? That’s the million dollar question I add … | Continue reading
The “CEO test” is when you ask yourself “Would I do that to my CEO?”. That can often help you spot behavioural anti-patterns you must correct, when interacting with your coworkers. | Continue reading
If you adopt asynchronous work, everyone should be able to work on a schedule that’s convenient to them. But that may not be the case from day one. You must first build your deep-work muscles. | Continue reading
Group chat can be both a helpful tool and a distraction in the workplace. While suitable for quick exchanges and simple information sharing, it falls short for more important discussions and tasks. | Continue reading
Advocates of in-person work often say they need to get their teams together for brainstorming sessions. This is a waste of time. The effectiveness of brainstorming is a corporate myth. | Continue reading
Want to be a better async worker? Check out this guide on how to read effectively and provide feedback. It's shorter than the writing guide, but just as helpful! | Continue reading
Can random acts of unsolicited kindness bring us together at work? Let’s find out in this post. | Continue reading
If writing is the number one remote working superpower, then we must all get better at it. Here’s how to level up your writing game. | Continue reading
Well intentioned, busy people want to be collaborative. But they often end up as bottlenecks. I argue that busy people must change their model of collaboration. | Continue reading
We often reach for training as a solution for behaviour change or skill development. But most training programs don’t achieve their objectives. How do you facilitate learning then? | Continue reading
We continue exploring the seven deadly sins of knowledge management in this week’s post. I explained three of them to you last week. Here are four more. | Continue reading
In a massively distributed world of work, effective knowledge management is a superpower for your people. On this site, we’re already discussed many things you must do, to foster knowledge sharing. This post is the first, in a two part series about things you shouldn’t do. | Continue reading
I recently went out for a mid-week retreat with colleagues on my new team and as a fortuitous coincidence, I was one of the event hosts. The experience brought back into view a few of my principles and practices when organising such an event. In today’s post, I want to share thes … | Continue reading
The recent slew of layoffs should give us all pause for thought. How should we view our relationship with employment? I’d like to share my perspective. | Continue reading
Poorly formed teams are woefully ineffective, but I see it so often that I’d be remiss not to state the problem. In this article, I’ll call out two common problems I see leaders repeat when forming new teams. I’ll also describe a few simple ways to avoid these problems. | Continue reading
The remote-work divide between employers and employees feels more stark each passing week. Lest it descend into an adversarial relationship, I believe we must view this exchange as a two-way street. | Continue reading
A common argument against remote work is that coaching and mentoring are harder when you’re all remote. But I believe that if companies are intentional about building modern coaching and mentoring skills, they’ll do much better being remote-first. | Continue reading
The world of work has a toxic masculinity bias. In this post I share some thoughts about such biases. | Continue reading
To invite diverse views in an open discussion, psychological safety is essential. In this article I want to tell you how anonymity can help create that safety. | Continue reading