This Isn't Working...
Let's talk about how we can make the world of leadership, management, and work work better.
The world of work is a bit of a mess.
The way we work simply doesn't seem to, well... work. Not for front-line workers, the people who lead them, or for the people being served through that work.
People are working longer hours, yet getting less done. People are working harder, yielding God-like technology, yet can scarecely do more than chip away at their email inboxes. We're always on, but never on top; always moving, but never getting anywhere.
My hope is that, through sharing ideas, starting conversations, and challenging assumptions about how we work and how we lead, I can help change how work works for the better.
Topics I'll cover
My goal is to offer new ideas and new ways of thinking about how work works, how to lead well, and how to stay sane in this new world of work.
To that end, the focus of my writing will be on leaderhip (both good and bad), management, and modern knowledge work. I'll also cover mental health and wellbeing, which is a core area of my research, and, unsuprisingly, plays a major role in how leaders lead and how people show up at work.
Who this is for
I'm writing This Isn't Working for leaders and managers involved in knowledge work. For those not familiar with the term, knowledge work is the “economic activity in which knowledge is transformed into an artifact with market value through the application of cognitive effort”[1]. Knowledge workers, then, are people who “think for a living”[2].
There's no difinitive list of all knowledge workers, but if you're an engineer, computer scientist, lawyer, architect, financial analyst, researcher, HR professional, editor, or anyone who could do 80% of your job or more with a laptop and a phone, you're probably a knowledge worker. Another good test is if you find Office Space hilarious or thought Dilbert was a documentary.
What to expect
I'll be making an effort to do things a bit differently from the norm in current media. Media today is dominated by short-form content designed to grab your attention, get a reaction out of you, and keep you scrolling (e.g.short form videos, social media posts, and misleading/ outrageous news headlines). The business model for these outlets is predicated on getting your attention and selling that attention to advertisers. In other words, their goal is not to inform or educate - it's to hold on to your attention, whatever it takes.
Instead, my work will, generally, be long-form. Most content here will be evergreen. While there will certainly be moments where it feels right to write about current events, for the most part, I want this to be a resource you can keep coming back to over the course of your career and find value in it.
Another goal is to bring evidence from the scientific literature into what I write. Of course, I'll draw from my own experience as a leader, but all too often management and leadership writers stop there. There's a wealth of scientific knowledge out there - much of it freely available - that never sees the light of day because researchers don't write with practitioners in mind (it's not their fault - they're paid to write for other academics). My hope is to be able to bring what I learn through my own research to you in ways that are practical and actionable, but grounded in what we know from good research.
So, what this means is that you're not going to find "5 Weird Hacks"-style articles here. I'm going to treat you like you're smart, that you appreciate the world is a complex and nuanced place, and that there is no silver bullet that will solve all organizational woes.
What's next
If this is your first time here, I'd love for you to read my post about me. While, yes, I am fantastic, thank you very much, celebrating my excellence isn't the point. I believe it's important to know about the writer so in order to understand their writing. Writers, like most other humans, have histories, biases, worldviews and quirks that they bring to their work. I want you to understand mine so that you can more deeply interpret what I'm saying for yourself.