Organisations can benefit from volunteerism in the workplace by harnessing their people's spare capacity. But how do you get it right? Allow me to explain. | Continue reading
If you’re calling your culture a “secret sauce”, or your “x-factor”, you’re doing little to clarify it. To demonstrate care for culture, means that we must define it clearly, at the level of behaviours. We must move beyond platitudes and poetic expressions. | Continue reading
If you want to grow as a professional or a leader, you must stop doing some work, to take up new work. In this post I explain the concept of “metawork”, why it should be explicit and how it can help you scale yourself. | Continue reading
It’s tempting to extract the last bit of productivity from our work schedules. However, busyness isn’t the same thing as productiivity. Let me explain why cutting yourself some slack, is a better idea. | Continue reading
With their return-to-office (RTO) strategies, I see many IT firms take a passive-aggressive stance with their people. This, I fear, can be disruptive, in an industry where people matter most. | Continue reading
Wait, what? Write in slides? Well, yes. And I’m sure you’ve seen this yourself. Heck, I’ve done it myself as well. Guilty as charged! If you’ve normalised this approach to writing and sharing information, then I’m here to tell you that you should write differently. That’s what th … | Continue reading
Unpredictable days are shapeless days. This is the classic maker-manager paradox. Makers need contiguous blocks of time to achieve meaningful outcomes. We can’t be proud of this way of working. A calendar driven schedule is amongst the worst blows to a maker’s productivity. | Continue reading
I recently spent a couple of days in an office. That experience made me reflect a bit more about the tensions between remote work and the role of the office. In this short post, I share some thoughts about the purpose and a potential future for the office. | Continue reading
If decisions are the fuel for high-performing teams, a permissions culture is its kryptonite. In this post I discuss three areas you must focus on, so your team can maintain a high decision velocity. | Continue reading
I notice that some teams, organisations and products are attempting to recreate an office in the cloud. This is a counterproductive trend. In this post I explain why being async-first is a better idea. | Continue reading
Constant urgency is the enemy of deep work and an async-first culture. Often this means getting on meetings, and being ok with days full of IM interruptions. With enough of these “urgent” tasks, even the most motivated teams can slip back into their old, synchronous ways of worki … | Continue reading
In large organisations, it’s tough for a small team to cling to its own subculture for too long. It’s not impossible to have an ‘async island of excellence’! It’s just hard. I want to use this post to reflect on the challenges your async-first team could face. In the process, I w … | Continue reading
The agile manifesto claims that the best way of communicating in a team, is face-to-face. Does that claim hold up to scrutiny? 21 years after the manifesto came to life, have technology, the nature of our projects and our ways of organising and working taught us something differe … | Continue reading
Communication is a big part of an exec’s role. In fact, many people would argue that if an exec isn’t communicating, what are they doing? In today’s post I want to demystify asynchronous company communication for the executive. If you’re leading a department, or your own company, … | Continue reading
If you learned to be a manager in an office-centric setup, async-first remote work may seem like an opaque way to lead your people. How do you manage without walking around and listening? In this post, I’ll unpack the risks of leading unhappy, disengaged or struggling team member … | Continue reading
Senior leaders are often victims to blind spots and corporate superstition. And just like in real life, superstition hurts at work as well. So, let’s examine some common superstitions we all face at work, with a critical lens. By the end of this post, we’ll know which of them hol … | Continue reading
The future is uncertain. So, it helps to keep an adaptive mindset so we can respond to this uncertainty. I believe there are five key trends that are shaping the future of work, and, in this post, I want to share my thoughts about them. | Continue reading
Every work model has its pitfalls. It’s not as if a remote workplace can’t go south. In today’s post I want to explore some anti-patterns I’ve seen in remote-first and “hybrid” organisations that can make your workplace toxic. When you know of these possibilities ahead of time, y … | Continue reading
To move away from the office mindset, then we’ll need to unlearn a few unhealthy habits we’ve picked up over the years. In this post, I want to share four of these habits. Benign as they may seem, they are pernicious obstacles in your path to being an async-first team or organisa … | Continue reading
You don’t want work to feel mechanical and for people to feel like robots. The team should be able to balance efficiency at work with their sense of being human. In this post I want to show you how being intentional about synchronous communication can help you build a tightly kni … | Continue reading
There are different approaches to estimation and planning depending on the outcomes you’re looking for and the context you’re operating in. Making synchronous workshops efficient is part of this. Many activities can be asynchronous as well. You also need to consider if estimates … | Continue reading
Onboarding is one of the first areas where you’ll see payoff for the effort you spend in writing things up. In this post, let’s explore a few mindset shifts and a few tips and tricks you can use to bring people aboard your team. As you read on, you’ll notice how your handbook and … | Continue reading
In an async-first culture, the role of a manager is crucial. If the company is the mother-ship, the manager’s the employee’s bridge to it. They should be the individuals that know the most about their people, their skills, abilities and strengths, their personalities and their as … | Continue reading
Depending on the level you operate at as a leader, you probably have some discretionary budgets available to you. When you spend that money, your company wants you to get the most bang for their buck. In this post, I want to explore four areas of expenditure that’ll make a big im … | Continue reading
In today’s post, I want to address four sets of factors that’ll affect your team’s productivity and happiness. As a leader, you’ll to address these factors using your judgement, experience and vision. Your choices will influence your new async agile team’s behaviour. | Continue reading
One sign of a healthy culture is that people feel motivated by the work they do. Yes, there’ll be good days and bad, but on the whole you want your people to enjoy the work they do. In today’s post, I want to examine autonomy, mastery and purpose as factors that help you create a … | Continue reading
As a leader, you’re responsible for much more than the mechanics of work. Depending on the size of your company you’re a custodian of culture, or the one who defines it, or someone in between. In today’s post, I want to share with you how you can foster a culture that supports as … | Continue reading
With the right systems and the right people in community management and curation roles, you can brew the perfect storm of “organised serendipity”. I daresay, that this can often work better than the proverbial water cooler meeting. In this post, we’ll discuss how you can enhance … | Continue reading
The approach of creating stocks of well structured, organisational knowledge has its limitations. In this post, I argue that you should invest in solutions that create flows and streams of knowledge while stocks move to a supporting act. | Continue reading