What work traditions need to go away?
One theme of my book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com & The Future of Work, is questioning aging work practices. Particularly ones followed our of tradition without evidence they contribute to...
View ArticleHow to Get Better Feedback
Stacey Hanke asked on twitter: Why is it that when I ask for feedback, it’s never constructive. It’s always vague “good job, nice work.” What does it take to get thorough feedback? Feedback feels like...
View ArticleThe Idiot Ratio
Every organization has a ratio of idiots to non-idiots. This is the idiot ratio. This is a harsh, shallow, unfair way of looking at people, but everyone, no matter how offended they are by the premise,...
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When In Doubt, Make a List
The most helpful action when feeling overwhelmed is to make a list. Lists do many good things for our psychology, memory and camaraderie if working with others. Any kind of list will do, but writing...
View ArticleWhen to quit working for a bully?
From Monday’s question pile an anonymous reader asked: After five years of consulting I accepted a full time job with a startup. My hiring manager is someone with whom I’ve worked as a consultant: I...
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How Do You Build a Culture of Healthy Debate?
From Monday’s pile of questions reader Ev Larsen asked: Assumptions have an unnerving way of becoming facts and received wisdom over time. How do you build some functional assumption-checking into a...
View ArticleHow To Work With Stupid People
I wrote the popular essay How To Manage Smart People years ago, and often heard the feedback: “advice on smart people is easy. Tell us how to work with stupid people.” I hoped to get to it eventually,...
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How to make smart project decisions: the checklist
Yesterday I was working on a complex project and found myself stuck. I was out of time and had to make a tough decision. I’d been thinking it over and over in my mind for days but was still unsure....
View ArticleHow to survive and thrive with multiple stakeholders
Each week I take the top voted question from readers and answer it (submit yours here). With 40 votes, this week’s winner was “How a manager can facilitate communication between technical and...
View ArticleWhy Consultants Should Get “Real” Jobs (HBR)
My latest post for Harvard Business is about why consultants should return to traditional full-time work now and then: I challenge all consultants to spend some time — at least a year — back in a...
View ArticleMy letter to the Next Microsoft CEO (BusinessWeek)
BusinessWeek asked me to use my experience at WordPress.com to offer advice to the future CEO of Microsoft: Recently, I spoke with 300 smart and passionate Microsoft (MSFT) employees. Are you as open...
View ArticleHow to transition a team to remote work
Vivek Haldar wrote this thoughtful review of The Year Without Pants. His primary critique is there wasn’t enough focus on tactics and methods. In his review he asked a few good questions which I’m...
View ArticleWhat If Managers Didn’t Get Paid More?
One of the many surprises from The Year Without Pants is that Automattic, makers of WordPress.com, doesn’t pay employees more when them become a team leader. They consider being a leader a role, not a...
View ArticleHow To Convince Your Boss To Try New Things
People in power often become conservative. It’s easy, once in charge, to believe there’s little left to learn and that the beliefs that got you into power are all that’s needed to continue to succeed....
View ArticleA Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture”
I enjoyed Brian Chesky’s recent post Don’t Fuck Up The Culture, where he proclaims to the employees of Airbnb the importance of culture in everything they do. I like Airbnb and it’s nice to see a...
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Why Culture Always Wins (An Excerpt from The Year Without Pants)
[This is an excerpt from The Year Without Pants, An Amazon.com best book of the year] Chapter 4: Why Culture Always Wins A great fallacy born from the failure to study culture is the assumption that...
View ArticleThe Simple Plan for People Who Want To Solve Big Problems
[This is an excerpt from chapter 12, of the bestseller, The Myths of Innovation] The Simple Plan If you want to make progress happen, or be someone who brings good ideas into the world, this is for...
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Why The Right Change Often Feels Wrong
On Tuesdays I write about the top voted question on Ask Berkun (see the lovely archive). This week’s question came from J.R. [via email]: What is a favorite theory that you wish more people understood?...
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Has Your Boss Set You Up To Succeed or Fail?
On Tuesdays I write about the top voted question on Ask Berkun (see the lovely archive). Yes I know it’s Thursday, but better late than never. Here’s this week’s question: I have a new boss who I don’t...
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Are engineers more creative than designers?
On Tuesdays, I write about the top voted question on Ask Berkun (see the lovely archive). This week’s question came via email from Pavel Pavia [43 votes]: Are engineers more creative than designers?...
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