TWH#S4: What I Read This Week
The Sunday Edition #4
Welcome to another TWH Sunday Edition. 🤝
Lately, I’ve been going deeper into the future of work rabbit hole by going backwards in time to understand how we got here. A couple of this week’s come from that exploration.
I’d love to hear from you: what phenomenal reads have you come across lately? Let me know in the comments.👇
Kick back and enjoy these 5 good reads. ☕️
And if you like what you see, please consider hitting the ❤️ button and sharing it.
(Total reading time: 53 min)
✍️ Human Scale
(Michael Honey @ Offscreen Magazine • 3 min read)
How many times has “that won’t scale” been leveled as criticism? The assumption, at least in the tech world, is that if it doesn’t scale it’s not good enough. It’s interesting to observe what incentivizes the mindset that it must scale. And it’s also interesting to realize that the best things in life actually don’t scale—nor should they. This beautifully written piece is a poignant reminder that perhaps the scale that truly matters is human scale. All other scaling has a cost that, in the long run, we’re probably not willing to pay.
✍️ Tomorrow’s Technology, Yesterday’s Insights
(Jonas Söderström • 4 min read)
COVID and its economic legacy really shook things up. The current downturn is inflicting a lot of pain on a lot of people. As a “long-term optimist”, I believe it will ultimately help us raise our consciousness, to be much less accepting of the status quo, and to look in alternative places for answers that have been there all along. This short article does a phenomenal job of showing how the tech industry’s persistent ignorance of society and history makes it use the same hammer every time—technology itself—and how silly that can get.
✍️ How Slavery Inspired Modern Business Management
(Caitlin C. Rosenthal • 10 min read)
I do not pick articles based on how clickbait-y the title is, and this one is no exception. What fascinated me was learning more about the historical vestiges of the terrible institution of slavery in the way business management works to this day. The point is less about making a direct association or ascribing intent than it is about creating more clarity about the origins of the ways we (still) work in 2023. Because, as I usually like to point out, change can only come after awareness.
✍️ How To Use Simple Experiments To Improve How You Organise And Work
(Tom Nixon • 6 min read)
Sense, explore, experiment. Simple does it. The more I learn about leading and organizing in complexity, the more I fall in love with simple nudges and small shifts. In my experience, a big part of the reason why organizational change is so hard is that it’s sold as permanent, uprooting what is keeping the status quo in place, with all the comotion that entails. This nice article by Tom Nixon provides a solid framework for running simple experiments effectively, in ways that bring people along for the learning.
✍️ Personal Best
(Atul Gawande • 30 min read)
This is a longer-than-usual read, but I found surgeon and author Atul Gawande’s writing particularly evocative. And, of course, as a coach myself I couldn’t help but appreciate his perspective. Gawande speaks from experience in being coached even as the top expert that he is. Why? Because it’s about being better. Something that few of us (if any) can do on our own. Why? Because it’s terribly hard for us to see ourselves. Hence, the coach.
I’d also recommend his TED talk about the topic, in case you’re strapped for time.
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That’s it for this week’s Sunday Edition. Thanks for reading The Weekly Hagakure! And if you liked this, please consider hitting the ❤️ button and sharing the post.
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