Venting Isn’t Harmless: How to Redirect It Before It Damages Your Culture
In an earlier post, I talked about why venting isn’t just blowing off steam. It is a behavior that drains accountability, fuels drama, and slowly but surely eats away at your organizational culture. But knowing venting is a problem isn’t enough. The real question is: what do you do in the moment when it shows…
Best Practices Are Overrated
The longer I work in technology and leadership, the more suspicious I become of the phrase “best practices.” Don’t get me wrong. Standards are necessary. My suspicion comes from how the term has evolved. “Best practice” has become one of the most overused phrases in professional life. It sounds incredibly smart while doing very little…
7 GPTs to help higher ed make better content decisions
If you work on a higher ed website, you’ve likely tried using AI to speed up content creation. You paste in a prompt. The AI generates a page in seconds. It sounds polished, even impressive at first glance. But then you read it more closely, and something doesn’t quite work. It’s not that the writing…
When Empathy Becomes Enabling
Empathy is widely regarded as one of the most critical leadership traits of our time. And, undoubtedly, that is fundamentally a good thing. We have moved away from the stoic, unfeeling management styles of the past toward a model that values the human being behind the employee ID. We want leaders who understand stress, who…
The Future of Higher Ed Websites: Harder Choices, Fewer Pages, Better Outcomes
For the last two decades, the solution to every digital problem in higher education seemed to be “more.” More pages to satisfy a department chair, more navigation items to ensure everyone feels included, more microsites for every new initiative, and more “just in case” content, archived deep within the subdirectories of a Content Management System…
When Collaboration Becomes Poor Decision-Making
We all want to work in a collaborative culture. The idea itself sounds unquestionably good, doesn’t it? We picture teams where everyone feels heard. We imagine a seamless flow of ideas from diverse perspectives. We want alignment, buy-in, and the comforting glory of shared purpose. In theory, collaboration is the secret sauce that transforms a…
When “Culture Fit” is used as a convenient excuse, it’s bad for your team and your business
“Culture fit.” It’s a consideration in the hiring (and sometimes firing) process. It sounds thoughtful, smart, responsible, as it conjures images of a harmonious workplace where everyone gets along, values align perfectly, and friction is non-existent. In reality, “culture fit” is often a dangerous shortcut. It is a nebulous term that allows organizations to avoid…
Why “How Was Your Weekend?” Undermines Your Authority (And What to Say Instead)
It is 9:02 AM on a Monday. You are waiting for the rest of the participants to join the Zoom call. The silence is growing heavy, so you reach for the most reliable tool in your conversational first aid kit: “So, how was your weekend?” A chorus of “good,” “fine,” and “too short” follows. You…
What Company Culture Is, And What It Isn’t
Walk into almost any modern office, or take a quick scroll through a company’s “Life at…” LinkedIn page, and you will probably see a very specific aesthetic. You will see team outings with smiling faces. You might see expensive catered lunches, the treadmill, casual dress codes, and perhaps a keg of cold brew or kombucha…
The Message Your Decision Sends
Leadership decisions are rarely just about the decision itself. They are about the message that decision sends. Consider a few common scenarios. An employee asks to upgrade an already generous snack bar. Another suggests increasing the catered lunch budget. A group proposes expanding an already generous vacation policy. Individually, none of these requests are catastrophic.…
How to use personalization to engage local communities and businesses on your higher ed website
I’ve been thinking about higher ed a lot (even more than usual) these days, as it’s facing some challenging times, so I’ll be posting a bit more higher-ed focused content on here. When we think of higher education websites, personalization is often tailored towards prospective students. But we have to remember that not every visitor…
When Helping Becomes Expensive
Most teams champion helpfulness. We encourage people to ask questions, foster collaboration, and make sure no one struggles in silence. These values are essential for a healthy work environment. But a subtle yet important reality often goes unexamined: helping has a cost.And when we ignore that cost, we can unintentionally create the very inefficiencies we’re…
Small Talk Isn’t Small. It’s a Skill We’re Getting Wrong
As an introvert, small talk does not come easily to me. For years, I viewed it as a necessary evil, a barrier I had to hurdle before getting to the “real” conversation. But over time, I’ve realized that the problem isn’t that I’m bad at small talk. The problem is that most of what we…
Why Customer Feedback Shouldn’t Drive Your Roadmap Alone
“Listen to your customers” is some of the most repeated advice in product management, and for good reason. Customer feedback is a vital compass, helping you understand what’s working, what’s not, and where there may be new opportunities to add value. But like any powerful tool, feedback needs thoughtful handling. Building your product roadmap by…
Scale Is a Distraction When You Don’t Have Customers
“Is this scalable?” It’s one of the most common and misunderstood questions in modern business. I hear it freuently from founders, executives, and product leaders who are nowhere near the kind of growth that makes scalability a real constraint. Yet, entire strategies are shaped around this single question. Conversations that should be about customer needs…
Handling Complaints Without Fueling Drama
I’m sure you’ve been there. An employee shows up at your door, or, perhaps more likely, in your Slack message, with a familiar story. They start venting about another person or department, a surefire way to make things worse for everyone, especially for the person complaining. Maybe it’s a frustrated team member complaining that “Laurie…
The energy audit: what to stop, start, and continue
Leadership isn’t just about the decisions you make or the vision you set. It’s also about how you manage your most finite resource: your energy. On any given day, my energy can easily scatter across 30+ Slack threads, an inbox that restocks itself hourly, a to-do list in my notes, and open mental tabs. In…
Losing well: How honest reflection turns defeat into a growth
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – attributed to Thomas Edison Let’s be honest: Failure stings and stinks. No matter your role, you’ve probably felt the gut punch of watching a project misfire, losing out on a key client, or realizing efforts missed the mark. When things go sideways,…
Why leaders waste time (and how AI might be able to fix that)
Leaders rarely waste time because they are disorganized or unmotivated. They waste time because they operate on outdated assumptions. They find themselves managing drama, re-explaining expectations, reacting to unclear priorities, and drowning in meetings that exist solely to compensate for broken processes. This is a reality-based approach to modern leadership. As author Cy Wakeman says,…
Not all feedback is created equal
A lot of companies pride themselves in soliciting a continuous stream of feedback from team members. We’ve all seen post after post about the importance of employee engagement surveys. But let’s be honest: not all feedback is created equal, and not all feedback is helpful. That might sound controversial, but it’s something I’ve come to…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
lead up 