Humane Work Podcast

Individuals work in teams to create value. Individuals communicate in teams to create value. Individuals interact in teams to create value. Slice up the collaboration equation however you want…it always reduces to the same thing. We get together. We work together. We get things done. And what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, is transforming information into product. You have a plan. That’s inform...

Go to Titanauts.com to see more about the book and help launch the mission. I have spent a lifetime in rooms with people who are changing. Not in any dramatic, cinematic way. Like aliens busting out of their chests, but changing like people actually change . People change slowly, awkwardly, and usually at the worst possible time. You know, like why change is inconvenient and people say they don’t...

I didn’t decide to write this novel. It decided to be written. That’s not a cute thing to say. That’s what happened. I was attempting to sell my house. Running a company in a business-hostile environment. Writing a book on toxic waste. Onboarding new clients. Supporting existing ones. Working with students at Modus Institute. Tonianne was stressed. I was stressed. My wife was stress. My mom is str...

This post launches a series. Each Way of Not Working gets three companion pieces — a practitioner how-to on the Personal Kanban blog , a team application at Modus Institute , and a leadership essay at Modus Cooperandi . The first set is live now. (For workshops and to see us in person see our calendar of events ). The Nature of Your Overload Told Through Lack of Overload My dad was a developer in...

Modus calendar | Modus Institute | Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life After about twenty years of working with individuals, teams, and organizations of every shape and size it is clear that people are not lazy, selfish, or broken . We want to do good work. We want to be there for our colleagues, their families, their communities. We want to improve things. I know we’ve been taught to...

The joke might be Okay, so, five productivity frameworks walk into a kanban board …They don’t agree on much, but their arguments might be more useful than their advice. People are even more messed up than when we started the Personal Kanban movement 17 years ago. The need has not abated. People are overloaded, stressed, and looking for a way out. They keep finding models and falling in and out of...

Modus Institute | Personal Kanban | Upcoming Events In an information landscape, there is helpful and toxic information. We don’t get to just ignore our landscape, though. In our Humane Work Subscribers Lean Coffee today, where we talk about how we get our work done, one of the tickets was about how to use LinkedIn. There is a very predictable devolution of social media sites. Twitter went down fi...

For a few years, we’ve had the toxic waste class at Modus Institute . It’s been an amazing experience, every month we have a call where people from around the world talk about the way work is impacting them and their teams and we, together, work on ways to remove those bottlenecks. We’ve created a lot of models of different types of toxicity, but one that always surprises us is Self-Isolationism....

Today Tonianne asked me to write case studies for some of our larger clients…Turner Construction, the World Bank, The Library Corporation. Big names. Big projects. Impressive scope. And while I was writing about these massive engagements, I was thinking … This isn’t where we started. And it’s not actually where most of our work happens. The truth is, over a hundred of our clients have been small,...

“Be a jerk, go to work,” ~ Frank Zappa At work we have things to do. Tasks, deadlines, things to focus on. Then things go wrong and then we are blamed for things or we blame other people for things. Lots of … things. In the Collaboration Equation , I say that individuals work in teams to create value. People have taken that to heart, but value ends up being the focus. People get so focused on the...

I’m always hunting for tools that actually work. Tools that don’t force me into someone else’s idea of how I should work. Tools that respect the reality of my day. For years, I’ve been looking for the right Pomodoro app. And by right I mean one that actually did something other than give you a timer. I found ones that were close —close enough to make me think, “ Maybe this one... ” So I reached ou...

Speed Creates Chaos It’s 2010. Carbon credit programs are exploding globally, but no one has figured out how to distribute money equitably. The stakes are enormous. They needed a system that could channel hundreds of millions toward the right individual landowners. A poorly built system could perpetuate inequality at a massive scale. So someone decides: let’s build it in one week . And not with a...

Modus Institute | Our Upcoming Calendar Your Backlog Is Not A Museum For Your Good Intentions Your brain lies to you. It tells you that every idea you have is a precious diamond that must be acted upon immediately. But they aren’t diamonds. Most of your ideas are just shiny rocks. And if you put every shiny rock on your desk (i.e., your Kanban board), pretty soon you can’t find your computer. When...

“Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch. It’s a high-speed collaboration resembling, at its best, ballet or modern dance.”~ Anthony Bourdain We love the word “Flow.” It sounds magical . It sounds like a river. It sounds like a state of pure bliss where you are a productivity god and work is effortless. Flow isn’t magic; it’s just what happens when the friction disappears . It’s that...

You have a list, a to-do list. Not a maybe-do list. Not a if-I-feel-like-it list. Not even a does-this-make-sense-anymore list . Your to-do list is long. It’s staring at you like a judgmental cat that hasn’t been fed in three hours. Meow…meow…meow… You think that list is a contract. You think that because you wrote “Clean the Garage” on a sticky note, you are legally obligated to clean the garage...

Spend time with Jim & Toni at modusinstitute.com | or coming to one of our events . We often confuse delegation with abdication . Be a leader, not an absentee landlord. Too many leaders treat delegation as a way to empty their inbox: a request comes in, they don’t want to do it, so they quickly pass it to someone else with vague instructions . When the team inevitably fails, the leader blames them...

Come visit us at Modus Institute or see our Calendar of Events . This is a plea for the holidays if anything. A conversation is a connection. I am a person, writing to you with intent. You are a person receiving my intent. That is a relationship. The more thought, the more respect. A task, on the other hand, is a burden . When you do a task, your goal is to finish the task and move on with your li...

This story is beautifully told in the Personal Kanban book . You can also come to our webinar or our workshop in December) The thumbnail up there has a pic of me, my brother, my dad, and our dog Cookie. Likely taken in 1977. Cookie was an expert food catcher and could catch nearly anything short of a whole turkey if you tossed it to her. She was extremely productive, effective, and efficient. But...

Spend some time with us: Free Webinar | Or Attend the Deep Dive See Your Work-shop The Conversation That Never Happens It’s Monday morning. Your colleague seems off. Quieter than usual. Not their normal engaged self. But you don’t ask. They don’t tell. Three months later, they’re gone. Stress leave or resignation. And everyone’s shocked. “They seemed fine,” people say. They weren’t fine. But the w...

Spend some time with us: Free Webinar | Deep Dive See Your Work-shop Most leaders, most people, believe that transparency creates accountability. The truth is the other way around, hiding work creates the need for accountability. When you can’t see your work, your brain stops processing it. Your team stops self-organizing. Your leaders stop leading. When this happens, everyone starts interrogating...

What Do You Need? The image above is better explained in the video, it’s long so very hard to read here. But, I always want these videos to come with a letter. A write up. The flow chart shows a breakdown in relationships due to normal reactions to cranky behavior. We have three actors, Red, Green, Blue. Three people who work together and, because they do, need to pay attention to each other even...

Check out our calendar of events , classes at Modus Institute , or call just us . Leadership books love to talk about people being our greatest asset. We all do. Unfortunately, workplace stress costs nearly a trillion dollars a year in the US. $917 billion annually . Toxicity costs money. Not a wellness issue. A strategic failure. Right now, rather than dealing with the issue, we are laying people...

Stop assigning people “jobs” and start recognizing patterns. Here’s how teams really work together. Nobody shows up to work and says, “I’m a Scrum Master” or “I’m a Product Owner.” with anything other than fear and imposter syndrome. Strict roles just aren’t how work actually works. They are a convenient fiction. False certainty. Self-defeating. Sure, you can give people those titles. You can writ...

Personal Kanban Class | PK Book | Modus Institute | Our Calendar Why Stress Exists—And What It’s Telling You Stress is a signal. It’s your brain telling you that how you are working is broken . When you don’t know what to do next, when work arrives undefined, when people aren’t available, when tasks are un-completable, when you’re forced to do work that obviously doesn’t need doing, when you are i...

Modus Institute | Our Calendar of Events | Our Kanban Class Why We Treat Ourselves Like Nobodies We manage work like it’s just generic toil. Work becomes anti-human, a pile of tasks handed down by nobody and received as nobody. No context. No ownership. Just something to do. No wonder people don’t identify with their work, don’t want to engage in continuous improvement, and don’t feel motivated to...