It takes a special discipline to push back against novelty and embrace routine, boring solutions. That discipline, however, can lead to surprising efficiency.

It’s OK to say “No” to incoming work if you deliver high-quality outputs, communicate proactively, and meet your deadlines. The bargain is as simple as that.

Too often, we say an instinctive “Yes” to every new idea and every new request for our time. To be productive, I argue that our default response must instead be a strategic “No”.

Do you dislike using project management tools? Give me a chance to address your objections.

Knowledge workers are often mistrusting of processes for the corporate red-tape they create. But effective processes have their benefits.

If you set them up right, internal open-source projects can help your company gain extra development capacity and a sense of community. In this post, I discuss four key practices that help you run a successful, internal open-source project.

If you’re a rookie project manager, maintaining a calm and productive team environment should be one of your primary goals. I recommend three important practices that’ll help you in that quest.

Super managers, i.e. managers of managers must monitor if their direct reports demonstrate care for their team members. In this post, I discuss three techniques for super managers to hear directly from their direct reports' direct reports.

When leading a diverse team, you can’t manage everyone the same way. Depending on their skills, experience and work styles, some people may need more managerial care for them to thrive at their jobs.

Volunteerism at work can do more harm than good. I believe that employees should steer clear of it, when possible.

One-on-one meetings are a great way for managers to connect and manage their remote team members. Here’s a guide to run these meetings effectively.

All’s not well in remote work paradise. For many employees a remote work arrangement is a Faustian bargain. They have to endure the dark side of remote work.

Middle-level and people managers play a crucial role in companies, but they also model many corporate dysfunctions. It’s time for people managers to get back in service of the people they lead.

Many decisions execs take for their employees, ignore externalised costs. Mike Hopkins of Amazon claims their RTO policy has “no data” to back it. Lyft CEO, David Risher can only advocate for snacks in the office, while batting for RTO. Meanwhile, employees and other stakeholders pay for such decisions through costs to their health, productivity and happiness.

Poorly formed teams are woefully ineffective, but I see it so often that I’d be remiss not to state the problem. In this article, I’ll call out two common problems I see leaders repeat when forming new teams. I’ll also describe a few simple ways to avoid these problems.

A common argument against remote work is that coaching and mentoring are harder when you’re all remote. But I believe that if companies are intentional about building modern coaching and mentoring skills, they’ll do much better being remote-first.

Organisations can benefit from volunteerism in the workplace by harnessing their people's spare capacity. But how do you get it right? Allow me to explain.

Constant urgency is the enemy of deep work and an async-first culture. Often this means getting on meetings, and being ok with days full of IM interruptions. With enough of these “urgent” tasks, even the most motivated teams can slip back into their old, synchronous ways of working. In this post, I explain techniques to deal with urgency.

If you learned to be a manager in an office-centric setup, async-first remote work may seem like an opaque way to lead your people. How do you manage without walking around and listening? In this post, I’ll unpack the risks of leading unhappy, disengaged or struggling team members in remote teams and what you as a manager can do to pre-empt these problems.

Every work model has its pitfalls. It’s not as if a remote workplace can’t go south. In today’s post I want to explore some anti-patterns I’ve seen in remote-first and “hybrid” organisations that can make your workplace toxic. When you know of these possibilities ahead of time, you’ll be able to pre-empt them and put the right guardrails in place for your team.