DesuckifyWork®

How you feel about human nature tells you everything you need to know about leadership. If you think human nature has stayed constant over the years, you’ll find great value in the words of Socrates, Confucius, Jesus, Shakespeare and Sarah Breedlove (the first self-made black woman millionaire in the US). If you think human nature has evolved over time, you’ll see little point in the wisdom of the...

Should we get rid of HR? That’s the bold suggestion put forth by Jamie Gutfreund , this week’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast. Why get rid of it? Because it’s become a fear-based function that stifles creativity, prevents honest conversations and enforces a “referee” culture that treats team members like children vs. adults who are capable of sorting through hard stuff on their own. What woul...

Here’s what you’re admitting when you don’t develop your talent. 🐱 You’re admitting you don’t expect people to hang around very long. 🐱 You’re admitting you’re willing to let people just figure crap out on the job no matter how long it takes or how many mistakes get made. 🐱 You’re admitting that there’s nothing special about the work you do—any schmo off the street can jump in and deliver on da...

Imagine if we were more civil at work. Not more polite. Politeness is BS. Civil. From the Latin, Civitas. Meaning citizen. A well-functioning member of society. Societies work when we have hard conversations. When we bring a shared respect for our common humanity. When we’re willing to offend. And be offended. This is not where we are right now. As a society or at work. We avoid the hard conversat...

Radical Moderation. Sounds like an oxymoron. But it’s actually a way we can save our world and our workplaces from whatever the hell it is we’re all going through right now. We’re in a low trust, high volatility time. And it affects everything. From the most horrific news headlines to the way we relate to the person in the desk across from us. Our armor is up. Which isn’t exactly conducive to conv...

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a terrible boss. Nice, I see lots of hands. Great. Now raise your hand if you’ve ever been a terrible boss. If your hand isn’t still up, you’re lying to yourself. The moment we start leading others, we start finding ways to be bad at it. Not because we suck. Because we’re human. And this is how we learn. F*ck around a find out, right? Mita Mallick would like all...

Is therapy culture destroying us? Pushing us to analyze every moment as a potential trauma. Turning minor slights into rage and sadness. Making us feel good about feeling bad all the time. Fred Luskin has a different idea. Forgiveness. He’s been studying it for over 30 years and the biggest takeaway? We can deal with 99% of the crap that comes our way. Feel the feeling, sure. Do some self soothing...

The best work I’ve ever done started with laughter. Laughing at the boss’s indecisiveness. Laughing at our friend whooping our butts at Koosh basketball and walking away with a wad of ones that would make a stripper blush. Laughing at the dog farting in our office. Laughter is like creatine for your productivity muscles. I once laughed so hard I threw my back out and went on a months-long script w...

If you want your people to work harder, try helping them feel more welcome. You know, the exact opposite of how most companies feel when you step through the doors. So many offices are sterile, inhuman habitats, designed to crush souls while cranking up productivity. But here’s the rub: crushed souls won’t stay productive for very long. You can squeeze so much blood from a stone until that stone i...

“My work should speak for itself.” Yeah, sorry, it doesn’t. Even Jesus had a PR guy. Four of them, actually (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). So what makes you think you’re so special? None of us are. Which means all of us have to put the work in to make ourselves visible. Good thing Sue Barber already did a bunch of the work for us. Her book, The Visibility Factor , outlines the stuff we can do to...

You can’t fix collaboration issues with software. Some tools actually make things worse, stressing the nervous system and putting us in a perpetual state of fight of flight. Others are so damn confusing we pretend they don’t exist until Stu from HR sends us a stern reminder email. Someone should tell Stu (and the rest of us) to step away from Outlook and have some actual conversations with people....

Hiring sucks. It sucks for the company. It sucks for the candidates. It sucks for ai notetakers who are forced to generate useful bullet points from the inane interviews that take place in almost every corner of corporate America. “Sally and Jethro discussed the importance of the company’s Third-Thursday pizza parties and agreed that pineapple is actually an acceptable topping.” Who you bring into...

Remember when advertising was fun? It wasn’t that long ago, really. You’d spend your days goofing off, grinding on the work and playfully exploring new possibilities for your clients. It was pretty damn cool. What happened? 🐱 Creativity and fun have been squeezed out by business pressures and risk-aversion 🐱 Collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas between departments has decreased 🐱 Speed...

🐱 Hollywood has created nearly 500,000 movies. 🐱 It has developed over 10,000 TV shows. 🐱 It has entertained literally billions of people over the years. 🐱 And generated at least $5 trillion in revenue since its inception. And it did all of this using a remote and hybrid workforce. Even before we had machines on every desk and in every pocket, folks were dreaming, writing and strategizing wher...

What role does faith play at work? If you’d asked me 15 years ago I’d probably have scolded you for even asking such a crazy question. Keep your faith out of my peanut butter, dammit. Now? I’m not so sure. Mai Moore is certain that keeping faith out of the workplace is keeping the suck firmly in place. Mai is the founder of two social impact companies and previously spent 20 years in the tech spac...

What’s a person worth? If we based the answer on our own self assessments, not much. And then we bring that “not much” feeling everywhere we go, including work. Where we’re expected to influence people, lead people inspire people. And we wonder why we struggle. “Not much” has a scent. So strong it can actually travel through Zoom screens.. It’s also contagious. Infecting everyone who gets a whiff...

If you’re waiting for someone to come and save you from a sucky work life, it may be a while. This is the cold, hard and much needed truth from Elizabeth Lotardo , today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® Podcast. Elizabeth is the author of " Leading Yourself: Find More Joy, Meaning, and Opportunities in the Job You Already Have (Despite Imperfect Bosses, Weird Economies, Lethargic Coworkers, Annoying...

If you’re an introvert, you’re going to love Rhonda George-Denniston . You’ll also love her if you’re an extrovert, because she’s awesome. But man, she really sees introverts in a way that the world needs. Rhonda is the Chief Learning & Development Officer at TBWA\Worldwide . She also founded Curiosity Connections , an “un-networking” space that brings people together in a way where everyone feels...

She wrote about leadership and sales. But it’s really a book about living. Jeanne Sparrow , this week’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast is the author of “ Fearless Authenticity: Lead Better, Sell More and Speak Sensationally. ” She is a delightful human, a masterful storyteller and has (inadvertently?) mapped out the path to a more joyful life. The key? 🐱 Knowing yourself deeply and connectin...

If you’ve ever been to the theater, you’ve witnessed a masterclass in communication. Each character demonstrating their ability to get what they need (or not) from each other. Creating harmony or sparking conflict. Influencing, irritating, arousing, amusing. All done for the benefit of us, the audience. Complete strangers making us care about the outcome of a make believe situation we knew nothing...

I worked 26 years at ad agencies and never knew there was a thing called Learning & Development (L&D). Like an actual team dedicated to the growth of the people who work there. Huh. It had been my understanding that learning was a thing that happened by having your work pissed on repeatedly, forcing you to come back with so many new ideas that one might actually squeak through unscathed and you’d...

Ad agencies are good at 3 things: 👏 Building brands👏 Driving sales👏 Making employees so miserable they would prefer to be literally anywhere else, almost as soon as they are hired. (Hence the industry-wide 33% turnover rate) The James Agency in Scottsdale is quite good at the first two. But has failed miserably at the third. Many of their folks have stuck around for over ten years. The CCO has...

Quick, are you a meerkat? A chimp? A snow leopard? A wolf? No, I’m not high. I’m talking about the 4 belonging personas developed by Dan J. Berger , today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast. This may be the most important work anyone is doing right now. We are in the midst of a belonging crisis, fueled by social media, egged on by COVID and reinforced by our own lack of clarity on how to make t...

From overseas battlegrounds to overseeing booze regulations to fighting human trafficking and cleaning up county government, Bentley Nettles has been a busy man. Oh, and he wrote a book , because of course he did. The book captures a leadership philosophy honed over the course of his impressive career. As a Brigadier General (JAG) in the Army, Executive Director of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Com...

Work sucks? Maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s the model you’re working in. Carlos Musquez came to this realization after 30+ years in the ad business. And he’d love it if you didn’t have to wait so long. He invites you to ask a very simple question. When was the last time you were really proud of your work? And if the answer is, “it’s been a minute,” ask yourself why? It might be time for something n...