Modern management; Workplace productivity; Embracing constraints
Milk, No Sugar #284
💡Think
It’s really easy for us to complain about things we don’t like at work, and a butt of this discomfort is more often than not our meetings.
The thing about meetings though is that we’re all accountable for its success, not just the organiser. Much like most things, if a meeting isn’t working out it’s on us to stand up and make it.
It’s too easy to sit idly and wish we were somewhere else. In fact, if that’s the case, you probably shouldn’t be there and can kindly excuse yourself.
Think something is getting too much attention that other things deserve time for? Suggest it. The time of a regular session not great for you? Ask for an adjustment.
It’s time to take accountability of our meetings.
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ The brittle state of modern management
Middle managers, avert your eyes, this one is coming for your jugular. It’s a great article about how management is changing, particularly with a mostly remote workforce at the moment. And the scary thing? Management is predicated on ownership of our entire attention, so the thought that we’re at home “wasting time” is enough to drive the controllers nuts.
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❷ On workplace productivity
This article nicely builds on the concept discussed in the previous, and tackles the issues we’re facing at the moment of productivity in the workplace. There’s a great analogy in here about us taking too many photos rather than using data to analyse the ones we already have, but I’ve just butchered it so you’re better off reading the original. They also lay down a framework on how to measure productivity too.
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❸ Embracing (design) constraints
Big fan of this notion. Too often we find ourselves staring into open ended tasks, whether that’s as a designer or not, and end up spinning our wheels forever trying to work out where to start. By introducing guard rails into our work, we know the limits of what’s possible, and what’s even more important is understanding the technological and industry-wide constraints before we dream up our big ideas.
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Bonus round
I speak to a lot of designers who are confused where they sit on the experience chart, so here’s a useful “levelling” document
🎧 Listen
8px radio – Charli Prangley
My new podcast is officially live 🎙️
I’m officially launching it tomorrow, but I’ve got a sneak peak for you lovely Milk, No Sugar folks. The first episode is with Charli: YouTube extraordinaire (200k subscribers) and ConvertKit creative director. I have a feeling you’ll have fun listening.
Listen to this podcast (26 mins)
Anchor – Spotify – YouTube
🙌 Share
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🙏 Thanks
Have a great week,
Luis Ouriach
@disco_lu
Founding member special shoutouts:
Kevin Fernandez (@kvnfz)