Worthwhile Content: November
Some worthwhile reads, watches, and listens from the last month
World of Work:
This past month, I wrote about coaches peddling all sorts of junky science, responded to a reader deciding whether to give a colleague honest feedback, and offered six simple tips to make remote meetings better.
Some other worthwhile content I digested in November includes:
This piece urges HR to rethink its role — from cheerleading constant change to protecting the team’s capacity to handle it. That means demanding pauses and integration time so people can actually adapt instead of just reacting. Without those breaks, even well-intended change starts doing damage. Of course, HR needs an authoritative seat at the table for this to happen.
I liked this LinkedIn post from Navarun Bhattacharya where he argues that L&D’s obsession with ROI is outdated because learning doesn’t follow straight lines—it happens in complex systems full of timing, culture, and context. Trying to measure impact with old-school metrics gives numbers devoid of real understanding. Instead of chasing attribution, he offers, L&D should look for patterns that show how people are actually adapting.
Bloomberg looks at the rise of men’s employee groups—not “boys clubs,” but places for honest conversations about stress, identity, health, and isolation. Even in male-led workplaces, many men lack support networks, and these groups are helping with mental health, fatherhood, and medical challenges. They’re already linked to healthier employees and even lives saved. I’m a big fan of men’s groups as a necessary antidote to the manosphere noise (shoutout to my local Thursday night dad crew!).
This analysis on job satisfaction from Dr. Tim Ballard and colleagues found that improving the experience for unhappy employees delivers outsized returns, but pushing already-happy folks to “very happy” has a much smaller impact. The end result: the most turnover-related cost savings are achieved with a primary focus on mitigating deep dissatisfaction.
In a major case of the latest installment of the cobbler’s children having holes in their shoes, a bombshell report from Business Insider just landed about workplace practices at SHRM. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is considered one of the premier HR advisory organizations in the world and it shocked many to note just how ugly things seem under the hood. Yet… I saw some remarks online from industry insiders that have been saying this about SHRM for some time. I spoke to friends who are/were SHRM employees and I’ve been told that everything in the report is true, and more.
The Guardian reveals how Northwestern Mutual recruits undergraduates with promises of “financial advisor” careers, then pushes them to do nothing but aggressively sell pricey whole life insurance to friends and family. The result is a business model that leans on confusion and loopholes around fiduciary duty. I suspect there’s a fascinating case study in here on what I’d call revenue capture, wherein organizations initially tolerate certain practices that show early financial promise only to become beholden to them even as they compromise the brand or company culture. Note: revenue capture is not a real concept (well, it is a concept, just not how I just made it up), but it should be.
I love this effort to put together a single, research-backed framework to capture the real work of Organizational Development (OD). It includes three primary domains with a total of nine categories and 27 competency clusters.
LinkedIn is full of polished success stories and curated “authenticity,” but almost no one admits their job is messy, frustrating, or imperfect. Paul Taylor argues that this gap between reality and performance makes the platform feel fake and makes workplaces worse, because we can’t solve problems we refuse to name. I sincerely hope that you find my thoughts here and on LinkedIn to be truly authentic and real (it helps that I love my job).
AI & Work
McKinsey created an “Ask McKinsey” AI feature that offers McKinsey insights to your questions. This is a smart move for them. Not only does it position them as AI-assisted authority, but it gives them insight into what people are searching for.
A report with an astonishing figure caught my eye: each week, employees spend 10 hours in meetings vs. 15 hours on prep and follow-up, and most aren’t using the AI tools that could shrink that gap. I’m not convinced spending more time preparing for and following-up on meetings is a bad thing, so long as that time is used for ideation and execution rather than logistics. Turning on features like auto-agendas and meeting summaries could save three hours a week per person.
“A recent poll of 500 global CEOs found that 94% believe AI could offer better counsel than at least one of their board members.” Woah! Based on this, researchers at Wharton and INSEAD ran an experiment comparing human and AI boards: the setting was highly artificial, but the AI boards significantly outperformed humans.
In this experiment, workers used AI less when their work was seen by HR. Companies with low employee trust are going to struggle with AI-adoption.
Kuddos to JPMorgan for formally enabling employees to use AI to write annual reviews. You know… the thing that every manager is secretly doing anyway.
Speaking of using AI to help write feedback, Dr. Neil Morelli provides solid and thorough feedback prompt in his free newsletter.
This academic study finds that once LLMs entered the picture, employers stopped valuing tailored job applications, making it harder to separate strong candidates from weak ones. Their model suggests the market has actually become less meritocratic overall, with high-ability workers hired 19% less and low-ability workers hired 14% more. This makes me extremely curious about outcomes: Are the organizations getting worse results from this hiring shift? Because if not, it just means high-skilled workers who wrote great applications were just overvalued. h/t to Andrew M for the share to LinkedIn.
General Interest
I’ve never heard of the concept of aphantasia (or hyperphantastia)! This fascinating New Yorker piece looks at what happens when your “mind’s eye” is either totally blank or turned up to 11. People with aphantasia often remember their lives as facts without feelings, while hyperphantasics can be flooded with intense, sometimes intrusive images. It’s a reminder that so much of our inner lives are different despite seeming universal. we don’t all experience memory and imagination the same way.
My own newsletter earlier this month mentioned this article in The Cut on a particularly harmful retreat where Internal Family Systems treatment does quite a bit of damage, but it’s worth reading the piece own its own.
A guy in Wisconsin tried to fake his own death by kayaking accident and run to Europe. That’s hard to do, which is why he got caught.
Back in 1999, Paulina Borsook warned that Silicon Valley’s “techno-libertarian” attitude would eventually spill into the rest of society. Everyone ignored her—until now. With the industry’s moral drift on full display, her book Cyberselfish is having a big (and a bit bittersweet) comeback.
This could be one of the weirdest stories I’ve read all year: A story about students using real knives in a production of Julius Ceasar and one getting stabbed during a show. The oddest part was his nonchalance! He essentially says “yeah, I got stabbed, but finished the scene. I almost died but the show must go on. Then I married the school administrator who asked me if I planned to sue the school.” Bizarre.
I really enjoyed the 4-part series on Libertarianism from the Increments podcast. Brought me back to freshman year philosophy class in a great way! It’s a terrific primer on the core concepts, successes, and challenges of the construct and the hosts (liberals) + guest (conservative) have a really exemplary dynamic of honestly dissecting a topic with empathy and humor. It’s critical rationalism at it’s finest. Here’s a link to part one of four.
Musings
I am bringing back KSwiss. I’m convinced KSwiss can be as prominent in the workplace as ONs are today. If anyone knows anyone at KSwiss and wants to get me an influencer deal, let me know.
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