The Middles

To give a recommendation for a potential hire, which is essentially backing someone with your words, is a big deal. It’s me saying, “I promise that giving you this name means that I believe this person fits this role and will succeed at it.” Too often, when we recommend someone it’s because “I like this…

I was going to write this week about the precarious situation of recommendations, but then my brain got on a different tangent. You see, last week I had one of those weeks where I direly missed writing stories and working on things that moved much, much faster than culture change or new strategy building. This…

Before I started this newsletter, I was desperately trying to find a book to help me be better at work, as a young, creative female leader. I am a book nerd, which means I turn to the written word to escape, live better and work better. Here’s what I’ve read so far, and a tweet-length…

We learn better when we write things down. That is what the studies say when I started this job, I said I would finally spend the time to do a better job organizing my day. I make my own planner pages because I have always had weird jobs where GTD or other to-do systems didn’t work.…

We learn better when we write things down. That is what the studies say when I started this job, I said I would finally spend the time to do a better job organizing my day. I make my own planner pages because I have always had weird jobs where GTD or other to-do systems didn’t work.…

The art of listening well. Erich Fromm is one of those philosophers/psychologists who write for humans. When I cam across this, I recalled being told it’s OK to tell a direct report “not right now.” You can say  “I want to listen to your worries carefully, so please come back in 20 minutes os I…

Do it. Make me uncomfortable. The other day, my partner told me his new boss gave him the following thoughts about his new job: “I want you to make me uncomfortable. I want you to take me out of my comfort zone.” This comes a few days after my yoga teacher put me in that…

What can we do now? I was at Bindercon this past weekend and heard over and over again that we, creative-type smart people, do not know what to do now. We are experiencing a “group depression,” as it was termed in one session. We are spending a lot of time being exasperated at some person,…

I know, it’s been a few weeks, but life sort of got in the way. We’ll just move onward…. What did I say again? Here’s the #1, biggest, most important thing I’ve learned about myself in the past year: I don’t communicate the way I think I do. I talk pretty fast, apparently. Think fast,…

New things happened to me this week, which were a long time in coming. But this newsletter isn’t about me, so…. Tips for finding your path When I launched this thing, I talked about how awkward I often feel because my career moves are seen as very intentional, when I often feel like I fell into…