One of the common reasons for people to disengage at work is not feeling appreciated. People phrase this problem in various ways: not feeling seen, not feeling valued, not feeling rewarded. These subtle differences in phrasing can lead to jumping to different types of solutions. Language is a magical thing.
Let me try to set this up with a few headlines from the last year or so: * Buckle Up for Another Facebook Election [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/technology/facebook-election.html] * Twitter’s Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump [https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension] * Facebook
No More
I don’t consider myself a risk-taker. Far from it. The entire last chapter was about figuring out ways to reduce our risk by no longer having to take big bets. Now — just to mess with your mind — let me try to push you in exact opposite direction. I’m
No More
> “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal When I first moved into a management position, I struggled. I felt everybody was bringing their problems to me now, and I had to solve them. I was
No More
Where does our obsession with feedback come from? “Please give me feedback!” “Here’s a feedback form, please fill it in!” “The first 10 feedback submissions get a sticker!” And as we wait for feedback to trickle in, we read books on receiving books well, such as “Thanks for the
No More
“I think what you’re attempting to do here is really great...” “But…?” “Right… but I think it’s not going to work.” This is one of those classic aha moments when people first learn about it during some communication training: if there’s a “but” in your communication, people
Writing about the detrimental effects of rewards in No More Rewards [https://zef.plus/no-more-rewards/], one thing kept nagging at me. A few weeks earlier we had held a virtual conference for our company and community called MatterCon [https://handbook.mattermost.com/contributors/mattercon]. One of the highlights for me
No More
In 2008 the world went through a severe financial crisis. A large part of our economy collapsed, in large part because financial institutions had created a pretty unsustainable system of mortgage-backed securities. It was pretty bad. Fingers were pointed; new rules put in place; people yelled at. “Oh them financial
No More
> “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” ― Steve Jobs Any book that covers management at some point has to mention Frederick Taylor’s Scientific management [https://en.
No More
Think of the three people in your organization that you consider your top performers. The three people that if they’d tell you they’d quit, they would leave a significant hole in your organization. Got them in mind? Alright, now pick one of them, and compare them to their
No More
There are all sorts of reasons for managers to dread performance reviews. For one, it’s a lot of work. In preparation you need to request people to send peer feedback, write peer feedback for others, and write your own self reflection. Then comes the real fun part: the judgment,
Feedback
One of the key ideas of Nonviolent Communication [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication] is to remove judgment from our language when we want to communicate constructively. I gave an example of this in Judgment is a Silent Killer [https://zef.me/musing/judgment-is-a-silent-killer/]: > I shared feedback with