A tragic waste of hope
The awkward question in the room usually isn't cynicism, it's care. Real hope asks hard questions, and a good retrospective is one of the most optimistic things a team ever does.
Freewheeling
Sometimes there's plenty of motion and no actual movement: the wheels turn but the gears never engage. Momentum and the feeling of momentum are not the same thing, and transformations confuse them constantly.
Unbridled techno-optimism
"This is the worst these tools will ever be," people say about AI. I want to add some realism, because software degrades, data rots, and progress is a choice we keep making rather than a law of physics.
Your risk aversion is riskier
There's no risk-free option, only risks you've decided not to look at. How I size a risk honestly, and why starting small enough to survive being wrong beats trying to avoid it altogether.
The Flinch
An email lands and your body reacts before you've read a word: shoulders up, stomach tight. It's worth paying attention to what that flinch is telling you, what it does to a team over time, and what a leader owes the people who feel it.
5. Putting this into practice
Realistic optimism without action is just a nice attitude. Here's how to turn the yeah-buts into a plan and the small steps into momentum.
4. What you expect of people is what you get
What you expect of your team shapes what they deliver. The Pygmalion effect has been tested hundreds of times and it's never been debunked. So what are your expectations teaching people?
3. What you see (and what you're choosing not to)
Where you put your attention shapes what you believe is possible. Most of us are doomscrolling our own experience without realising it.
2. The cost of your explanatory style
Your explanatory style is the story your brain tells you before you've had time to think. Here's how to catch it — and change it.
1. Radical Optimism Redux
Cynicism might feel intellectually rigorous, but it's never actually helped anyone get anything done. Here's what I think works instead — and the bit I want to argue about.
Feedback: a gift, or a kick in the teeth?
Feedback can be a genuine gift, the thing that helps someone get better. It can also do real damage, even when it's accurate, if hearing it knocks the person's confidence. So it's worth knowing when to give it and when to sit on it.
Permission, forgiveness and workplace adulting
Grace Hopper said it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. Plenty of leaders wish their teams believed her. But there are good reasons people keep asking, and being frustrated at them doesn't shift it.
Recalibrate your approach to strategic risk to achieve your goals
The public sector's instinct is to prevent and eliminate risk wherever it can. That compliance instinct feels responsible, though ironically its often the thing stopping people from getting anything done.
Want to lead? Do less.
A leader told me yesterday she was burning out trying to stay on top of everything. The trouble was the everything: she really was trying to do all of it, which is not the job.
A gardening metaphor
A gardener never starts from nothing. There's soil, climate, shade, pollinators, seeds blown in on the wind. You can plan the garden on paper, and you still have to work with what's already in the ground.
A truly caring workplace watches the waves
After a few years thinking about burnout and workplace trauma, I've decided our usual models of resilience and "how things are going" are wrong. A caring workplace watches the conditions, not just the people.
Yeah but…I don’t really have anything worth sharing
I've heard this from women I've coached, and I've caught myself thinking it too. It wasn't true for them and it isn't true for you: what's obvious to you usually isn't to anyone else.
Yeah but…how can we invest in continuous improvement when there’s no more money?
The opportunity of government service transformation is immense - but how do we fund it when the pot is empty?
Yeah but…this place doesn’t want to work in the open
Some places really are that political, and I get the fear. But "we can't work in the open here" is rarely that cut and dry - so don’t let it stop you seeing just how much you can get away with.
Yeah but…what if I embarrass myself?
My (ex)husband is learning to write prose, badly and bravely. It has me thinking about how we dodge the things we're not yet good at, exactly when doing them in public is how we'd get good.