How the Economics of Friendship Shape Work and Life
Friendship is a fundamental and universal human need. This form of social connection cultivates mutual affection, trust, interdependence, and joy. According to one of modern social science’s longest ongoing studies, the social connections of friendship enrich and even extend our…
Three Ways to Rebalance Power in Meetings
Meetings are a necessary evil in most workplaces. Even though meetings are supposed to enable information sharing, facilitate decision making, and foster meaningful connections, we probably feel the soul-destroying experience of poorly managed meetings at least once a week. According…
Five Professional Lessons from Captain America: Civil War
Last Friday night Kurt and I saw Captain America: Civil War. The summer’s hottest movie taught us a lot about international diplomacy, teamwork, spandex, friendship, and ourselves, too. Here are five professional lessons from Captain America: Civil War that you can…
Four Lessons in Interdependency from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
In their excellent book, Laziness Does Not Exist, Dr. Devon Price argues that the myth of the heroes journey highlights how individualistic problem-solving and world/galaxy-saving is wrongly elevated in pop culture. While I take issue with some of Price’s examples (the…
Five Ways to Cultivate Dissent on Your Team
Creating a culture of dissent on your team will enhance performance and effectiveness.
Five Ways to Connect Your Workplace
The purpose of so many organizational teams, like innovation labs, and startup ecosystems, like Silicon Valley, is to disrupt the status quo. I’ve written about why we need to disrupt our workplaces and how to do it. The thing is…
Five Community Building Lessons from Trees
There are a lot of community building lessons from trees that we can (and should) apply to our worklife. Here is an example of how trees take care of each other: It’s been said that the measure of a community…
Three Ways that Circles Empower and Connect Communities
Elevating inclusion, belonging, and democracy in peoples’ worklife requires a delicate balance of autonomy and connection. Sociocracy is a type of organizational collaboration that cultivates psychological safety and inclusive decision making with the intention of unlocking human potential – in…
Sociocracy
Sociocracy is a system of governance and constant decision making that unlocks the potential of highly democratic, often member-led communities. It seeks to create psychologically safe environments and organizations through human-centric approaches and radical transparency. People feel included in decision-making…
How to Establish Team Norms for Hybrid Work
The Great Resignation, which is also The Great Retention, is challenging outdated models of work. The global pandemic has revealed that full-time, office-based, commute-dependent labour is not necessary for knowledge workers. In fact, organizations that are resisting the transition to…