What Does “Bring Your Whole Self to Work” Really Mean?

Many of us are limited by our work personas and wish we could be more authentic with our colleagues. Increasingly, we hear people advocate for bringing “our whole self” to work, but what are the limits of that advice and when is authenticity actually damaging to a team?

Explainers

The Definitive Guide to Agile Retrospectives and Post-Mortem Meetings

Can your culture compete?

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Quick Studies

How an Extreme Offsite Led to eBay’s Turnaround

When corporate bureaucracy slows innovation, it takes unorthodox measures to break through. A secret offsite gave eBay’s team the focus they needed to develop a new solution.

Explainers

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Psychological Safety (and Felt Safe Enough to Ask)

The most important factor in any high-performing team is psychological safety: that is, the feeling that it’s safe to take risks in front of the group. But how do you foster it?

Explainers

The Only Thing More Important Than Product/Market Fit

Product/market fit was a term coined by Marc Andreesen and defined as, “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” Culture/market fit is similar, yet even more foundational. Find yourself a healthy market, yes. Then develop a culture that can deliver product/market fit.

Quick Studies

How IBM’s Performance Management Pivoted to Match Its Business Strategy

When IBM started focusing more on innovation and speed, their CHRO had to re-evaluate how employee performance was measured.

Tools

How to Make EPICS Decisions

Uncertainty, politics, timing, resources—making the right call is rarely easy. And when we talk about decision making, we often ignore critical aspects of the decision making process in favor of speed or own biases.

Explainers

What to Do When Teammates Don’t Share the Same Motivation

Individuals don’t have to share the same motivation to achieve a shared outcome, but they do need to trust that others are looking out for their interests.

Quick Studies

How NASA’s Pirate Paradigm Challenged The Status Quo

When an organization enters a hibernation period where innovation slows and bureaucracy mounts, renegades can shake everyone out of complacency. Renegades, like NASA’S Pirates, can work outside of the organization’s norms to spot emerging problems and invent radically new responses.

Quick Studies

Patagonia’s Twist on the Exit Interview

When an employee announces their decision to leave the company, it’s imperative you learn from their experiences, both good and bad. An exit interview is often the last chance you’ll have to do so. But both parties need to be focused on learning, growing, and knowledge-sharing.

Explainers

How to Make Risk Feel Less Risky—And Why It’s Essential for Success

We’re gonna go out on a limb here and say that you didn’t get to where you are without taking a risk. Maybe it was moving to a new city in pursuit of a job opportunity. Maybe it was volunteering to lead a project that had never been tried before. Or maybe it was saying “no” to a lucrative offer because it compromised your long-term goals.

Explainers

When Followers Don’t Follow

Even the most progressive leaders will find themselves on particularly hard days asking themselves, “Why doesn’t my team do what I need them to do?”