Culture vs strategy; Metaverse; Digital detoxes
💡Think
During a career development session this week, I found myself explaining that I'm struggling to "create space" for the growth that I need/is expected.
My coach then paused and asked me to write that down. The reality of working at rocket speed all the time is that you fail to spot opportunities for slowing down and creating the space you need to:
1) Breathe (important!)
2) Improving efficiency
3) Learn new things
Without this, it's easy for us to stagnate and likely hit a wall of burnout pretty quick, because the fuel won't last forever.
So this week, try and spot one opportunity for pause and protect it.
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ Culture eats strategy
This is a curious piece, in that it proposes an idea that culture is more (!?) important to the success of your business than any theory or model could produce. They introduce the concept of "culture market fit", which if anything sounds pretty cool.
❷ Facebook pivoted to the Metaverse a year ago
Did you know that Facebook (sorry, Meta) has invested $10bn into VR/AR this year alone? That's not a typo, just an alarmingly high amount of money, that could probably solve a lot of real-world problems. So a year ago they made this pivot into the virtual world and let me ask you...are you any more inclined to buy one of those headsets? I'm certainly not looking forward to a world of wearing one and being in a virtual meeting room all day.
❸ Pleasure, pains and politics of digital detoxes
I'm meeting more and more people who are either deleting social apps from their phones, or deleting their accounts entirely. People are tired of chasing likes and gratification, and I get it. This article presents 3 main reasons for that – being present, productivity, and privacy. I hadn't considered privacy really, but then remembered that I uninstalled Facebook a few weeks ago. It also presents the idea of a "checking cycle", which is that 5/10 mins you dedicate to scrolling through and catching up. Isn't that just...hilariously accurate?
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Bonus round
Figma's layered lessons. This is the best piece I've read about the Adobe acquisition from a throw every business lesson you learned out the window perspective
🎧 Listen
The 4 day workweek
I'm a broken record on this subject, but thankfully someone else (the publication Quartz) has pulled together an impartial podcast about it. They discuss the experiments being run around the world – from the UK to Japan – and what the pros/cons have been so far. What's quite surprising about this is that across the world, a lot of governments are driving this initiative, rather than private companies!
Listen to this podcast (26 minutes)