This is fun research but did they have to use “reach out” in this quote.
According to a new study, using too much jargon in the workplace can hurt employees’ ability to process messages, leading them to experience negative feelings and making them feel less confident. In turn, they’re less likely to reach out and ask for or share information with their colleagues.
Source: Workplace jargon hurts employee morale, collaboration, study finds →
I almost skipped this Michael Lopp piece, but I’m glad I didn’t. It’s one of his best in a long time, especially if you’re a manager. Reframing the act of working with AI as “making the robots dance” is so good. But there’s more to it than that. Just read it, ok?
Robots don’t lie. Lying requires intent to deceive, and when a robot provides you with plausible-sounding, but incorrect statements, it’s either following its programming or making an error. Or both. Humans lie. They boast, they are tragically optimistic, they exaggerate, they forget, I could go on for a long, long while. It’s a list of foibles that make them familiar… that makes them human. What do I do as a leader to work with these troublesome humans? Well, here’s a short, essential list:
- I speak clearly and specifically, so my intent is clear.
- I frame conversations with context so everyone understands my ideas.
- I understand errors are part of the process and work to build tools to prevent them.
- I debate and plan big ideas before I begin.
Source: Every Single Human. Like. Always. →
In South Africa we call this game (where the goal is to keep the rally going as long as possible) “Beach Ball” so I immediately got it. And despite my aversion to “Here’s what X taught me about B2B Sales” posts this one actually got to me. Because Gabrielle is right. The communication goal—especially in big corporations—is not to win, it’s to keep talking until you have a better way forward:
In tennis, you win by hitting shots your opponent can’t return. In Frescobol, you win by setting up your partner to succeed. One earns you points. The other builds momentum. When you default to tennis, every hard conversation becomes a match to win. You come in armed with tactics—rebuttals, logic, bulletproof clarity. But the more you prepare to win, the more you risk breaking the rhythm that makes change possible. Frescobol invites a different question: “What would I say differently if my goal were to extend the rally, not win the point?”
Source: The game you’ve never heard of that taught me a better way to build alignment →
I think we’ve all seen the internal Shopify memo on requiring teams to use AI. This is a great article on what happened next. I especially love the internal tools Shopify built to make adoption easier:
Employees can use the LLM proxy to build the workflows they need. They can select from different models, which are updated with the latest versions as soon as they’re released. There’s a collection of MCPs, and all it takes is asking the proxy (or another tool like Cursor) to access them. There’s even a stable of agents already created by other people for anyone to use. It’s a one-stop shop for everything someone needs to use AI.
Source: From Memo to Movement: Shopify’s Cultural Adoption of AI →
This is a great Xennial list. And I am glad I’m not the only one who thinks R.E.M.’s Monster is actually pretty good.
Monster is commonly regarded as the most “used CD” CD of all time. Which I think is somewhat unfair and due in large part to how conspicuous the blaze orange packaging is. I would bet that Come Away With Me or Eric Clapton’s Unplugged or my beloved New Miserable Experience are just as common. They just blend in with the pack better. Though I don’t think being the most “used CD” CD is a bad thing, if it’s true. So long as it’s not used as shorthand for lack of quality. I love Monster, I love used CDs, and I will strenuously defend both against all haters.
Source: The Most ‘CD Album’ Albums Ever, Ranked →
This tracks. It’s definitely my most-used emoji.
Whether you’re overwhelmed, overextended, or simply over trying to keep it together, the 🫠 Melting Face is the perfect pictographic companion for the full spectrum of emotional discomfort—from awkwardness to shame to existential dread. […]
Because, in the words of Erik Carter, the graphic designer involved in proposing the emoji: “Sometimes it does feel as though the best we can do is smile as we melt away.”
Source: Lifetime Achievement Award: The 🫠 Melting Face Emoji →
Some real talk here about the nature of work, and what’s important:
Good work should do at least one of these things: fund the life you actually want to live, align with values you can defend at dinner parties, surround you with people who challenge you to grow, or teach you skills that compound like interest over decades. Great work does several of these at once. But work doesn’t have to feel like play, and you sure as hell don’t have to love every minute of it.
Some of the charts here are a little hard to parse, but this is pretty incredible.
In the top panel, you can see that in the 1960s, only around 14% of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia survived at least five years. Despite initially improving upon treatment, most relapsed and died soon after. By the 2010s, the chances of survival had increased dramatically: 94% of children survived at least five years.
Source: Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable →
Yes, amen to this.
As a manager, be honest to your executives and your reports. Given enough people in your team, there is no tactical decision that will make your engineers work faster. Your only real option is to admit early that your deadline is untenable, and replan by reducing features, or extending deadlines. Whipping your engineers to work harder has never worked, and will ruin their trust in you forever.
Source: You cannot survive poor management ↗
Ok I love this story.
I’ve been reading a lot of Robin Wall Kimmerer lately. She tells a story in The Serviceberry that’s become a sort of guiding star for me, about the experience of a linguist who was studying a hunter-gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest.
“He observes that a hunter had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family. The researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known; storing was possible. The hunter was puzzled by the question […]‘Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,’ replied the hunter.”
And yes to this:
I’ve been thinking so much about what it would mean for me to “store my meat in the belly of my brother”—to give to my loved ones and communities and trust that my generosity will circle back to me when I need it. I know it’s how I want to live. It’s how I want us all to be able to live.