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Don’t confuse accountability with scaring someone

Managers and Accountability

Common problem at work: a unit has goals. The unit doesn’t hit those goals. The manager of that unit is stressed, and probably on the hook to a higher manager (who’s also pissed about those goals not being met), and… Continue Reading

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What if Big Data actually makes decision-making slower?

Big Data and Decision Making

Here’s what we seem to know about the idea of “Big Data” at this point: More or less, it might be “the future.” Despite it being the “future,” we don’t seem to be teaching it enough yet for the next… Continue Reading

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More productive e-mailing: Move it from “push” to “pull”

More Productive E-Mailing

Think differently about how — and how quickly — you access email. Continue Reading

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The future of work: Is your manager orthopraxic or orthodox?

Work and Orthodoxy vs. Orthopraxicy

For a while, I was thinking that the essence of “future of work” discussions was this whole maximizer vs. satisficer issue. That means you can either have a hard-driving, professionalism-demanding, results-oriented boss who wants perfection (a maximizer) or someone who is… Continue Reading

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Increase productivity, contentment: Seek the ‘Four-Way Win’

Personal Productivity Four-Way Win

I almost titled this “Increase productivity, happiness…” but then I remembered happiness is bullshit and one should chase contentment, so I re-titled it. There are six million and five approaches to being more productive and more happy — entire sections… Continue Reading

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No CMO + listen better = $1 billion company in 2 years. Believe in this.

Lessons of Slack as a company

I wrote about Slack maybe a year ago; at the time, it was essentially a total throw-away post. I had seen something on a business website and decided, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” Broadly, these work applications really interest me —… Continue Reading

Student loans will mentally devastate you

Student Loan Debt

I just paid Installment No. 1 of my graduate school student loans two days ago. I hit “Submit” on that online form, basically muttered to myself “Here we go…,” realized it was probably another 30 years until I’d be totally… Continue Reading

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Stephen J. Dubner pushes back on Big Data

Stephen J. Dubner and Big Data

Big Data is one of the more interesting intersection points in recent human history (sorry to oversell that, which I admittedly probably did). Here’s what we know: C-Suite executives value the idea as a concept, but don’t really know exactly… Continue Reading