Now that we officially have a vaccine, focus has understandably shifted to how exactly it will be distributed, and by when. We are almost certainly headed back to some version of normal by the back half of 2021.
Which begs the question: what will that new version of normal look like?
Read MoreLoved this outline of an anti-racist business strategy. Bottom line: it’s not enough to think your company isn’t racist; we have to build actively anti-racist businesses.
Related: The data we use to build our tech platforms encodes systematic racism.
Thinking of telling that little white lie? Dishonesty is a slippery slope, according to science.
Was I happy when I heard that the FTC and more than 40 states were accusing Facebook of anti-competitive behavior and demanding they spin off Instagram and WhatsApp? Happy is an understatement. I was ecstatic.
Digging into the details, this seems like an important first step, but a difficult one. Anti-competitive behavior is hard to prove—especially when those acquisitions were approved less than a decade ago—though in this case it’s pretty well known how Facebook has had a chilling effect on the social media industry with its buy, copy, or kill approach.
The problem is in the framing: thinking of Facebook as a social media company.
Read MoreHow hard is it to turn a culture around? Harder than you think.
We like to think of organizations in terms of rational outputs: finance, marketing, manufacturing. But each work stream is made up of individuals responding to internal cultural influences. Each component of an organization is working toward an end, and sometimes changing that end mid-stream is like trying to get a river to run a different direction.
Read MoreI was struck over the weekend by this excellent recap of Joe Biden’s digital strategy, which talked about how his team focused on being “authentically Joe” in all corners of the internet, and—maybe most importantly—ignored the Twitter echo chamber:
Read More“The whole Biden campaign ethos was ‘Twitter isn’t real life,’” Mr. Flaherty said. “There are risks of running a campaign that is too hyper-aware of your own ideological corner.”
Happy Labor Day weekend! Speaking of labor, here are a few worthwhile reads about how work is changing:
Seven leadership styles for building organizational resilience ... and one to avoid
New challenges to the concept of working time in the digital reality
The COVID-19 crisis is a chance to do capitalism differently
In a near universal remote work environment, a lot depends on workers being self-starters, managing their own time, and communicating well about their work loads. The biggest hindrance to remote work is collaboration difficulty, so we have to make up the difference with some intentionality.
Some of these skills will be easier than others for certain employees, but all of them are trainable. And over time, they become habits that create a healthy remote work environment.
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