Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #193
Back from a long holiday weekend, and my own vacation
This newsletter is usually created and emailed via Substack every other Friday, so you may be surprised to see me on Monday morning. Friday was a holiday for me, Juneteenth, and it came at the end of a 10-day vacation where we road-tripped around New Mexico, so I wasn’t about getting the newsletter out last week.
Instead, you’re getting it on Monday as part of my “catch up with all the work and online-related things I disconnected from for the past ten days.”
Welcome to this week’s collection of thought-provoking things. For each issue, I will share information on careers and workplace culture, workplace mental health, talent development, and key insights into privacy, security, and legal technology.
You can learn more about me here: Mike McBride Online.
Don’t worry, though, this won’t be a typical piece of LinkedIn drivel where I talk about how appreciative I am of my team or the organization I work for, to allow me to take PTO, because that’s a bunch of crap.
Instead, let’s just say this:
Take your PTO. You earned it; you don’t need an excuse to be out or to kill yourself working to make up for being away from work. You need time away from work; it’s the one thing that puts the whole thing in the proper perspective. And that perspective should be that most of us don’t do anything so important that we ruin the rest of our lives over it.
And if you get the opportunity to see part of your country you haven't visited before, spend some time learning about the place's history. A visit to a museum can show you so much you don't know about how history repeats itself.
Careers and the Workplace
Worth Reading - The trap of being promoted from within
When you get the title, people will bring you things and hand off responsibility to things that you didn't know existed. Even though you were sitting right there, in the team that you now lead, you don't know how many things the previous person in that chair never bothered to tell you about, or the relationships across other teams that made their life easier that you need to build. Many of those things didn't just happen; effort went into knowing what to do and who to talk to.
I've talked many times about the importance of training new managers, and how most organizations don't do it well enough, if at all. There should probably also be a module in that training for "What you think you know but don't."
This relationship might be the biggest indicator of whether your best people stay, yet you give the person in charge of it almost no training on how to manage it effectively.
Related:
I don’t know that everything is free, but there’s a lot of free stuff out there for those of you in job-searching mode:
Artificial Intelligence
Legal AI Has A Growing Token Price Problem - This is going to only get worse for many firms.
This is also only potentially going to get much worse. - AI-Enhanced Misappropriation: When Departing Employees Leave with More Than Just Client Lists
I agree - CEOs Who Think AI Replaces Their Employees Are Just Bad CEOs
Training and Development
Finding experts who are actual experts in using AI can be difficult - How To Build Real AI Fluency In Your Organisation: 13 Lessons From L&D Leaders
Mental Health in the Workplace
This is also a skill managers would do well to acquire - How managers can start mental health conversations.
As it turns out, while there are a number of well-known podcasts telling me to man up and quit complaining about mental health, there might also be a number helping:
Despite a toxic reputation, our research shows podcasts can help men’s mental health
I haven’t been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. Not necessarily because of the reputational hit they’ve taken from all the “dude with a podcast” bros, but because my life has been busy and I haven’t set aside much time for it.
Do you listen to any podcasts that have been helpful for your mental health?
Please share your recommendations
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
This should not shock anyone - Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People
A PR Hoax Created the Year’s Hottest Rock Band. Imagine What It Can Do in Politics
Maybe the best advice is at the end of the article - assume you are being manipulated.
That’s all, folks. If you found something interesting in this week’s newsletter, please share it with your friends. It’s the best way to help support the effort I put into sharing this with you each week.