Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #105
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Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #105
What About Your Own Values and Goals as a Job-Seeker?
Welcome to this week’s collection of thought-provoking things. I write this weekly newsletter so subscribers can see some of the things I’m writing and sharing without depending on social media algorithms to show them to you. Each week I’ll share information about careers and workplace culture, mental health in the workplace, talent development, and important information about privacy, security, and legal tech.
You can find out all about me here - Mike McBride Online.
In last week’s newsletter, I shared a bit about a company’s EVP in the introduction (Employee Value Proposition), and how that proposition was so much more than just a salary.
As these things often happen, I came across an article looking at this from the opposite position this week:
Use the 'Hierarchy of Needs' to Find Your Perfect Job
Lindsey Ellefson overlays our job criteria with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to help us identify the things we most value in our work and how a job might fit those things for us.
Similarly, I talked last week about not letting our goals be inflexible, and the main focus of our careers and our businesses to the exclusion of goals that better fit a changing world. I was reminded of that by reading this edition of the Best Leadership Newsletter Ever, where we were reminded not to mistake a milestone for the finish line.
Both of these also reminded me of times when I realized something I had set as a goal simply didn’t make sense to me any longer. It was no longer what I wanted for myself. Sometimes that was forced upon me by life, and sometimes it was a result of getting so far down that path and realizing it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.
It happens, circumstances change, and we change. We shouldn’t be afraid to change our work to better fit the new situation.
What goals did you once have that you’ve since moved on from because they didn’t fit?
Careers and the Workplace
The Tech Industry - Which Game Are We Playing?
Simon uses football as an example of a finite game. We have known competitors playing by agreed-upon rules with an agreed-upon ending. Everyone agrees to the rules of the game, and at the end of the allotted time, the team who has scored the most wins, and the game is over. Everyone goes home until the next game starts.
But in other areas of life, that's not at all how the game works. War, business, education, etc. are not finite games. It's not clear who all of the competitors are, the rules change and there's no one "score" that everyone has agreed upon. Maybe most importantly, it doesn't end at the allocated time, it goes on and on with some of the competitors giving up over time and dropping out of the game.
The problem Simon identifies is that when the game is infinite, but you play it as if it were finite, you end up in a quagmire.
Because we all need them on occasion - 100 Funny Work Memes that Will Make You LOL
How Much of Working in Startup Tech is a Scam?
On a recent episode of Work Appropriate, host Anne Helen Petersen had a guest, Ifeoma Ozoma, who had previously worked at Google and Pinterest. She pulled no punches in talking about the industry and answering questions from workers.
First off, let's be honest. The reality of working in tech is no different than other industries. They talk about how being in Big Oil, Big Pharma, or at a place like Goldman's, your life is hell but you knew that going in. In tech, we aren't honest about it. We tell people things are different in tech. We're special. We don't even need HR departments, because we're so special and the work we are doing is so innovative and important.
One of the difficulties with remote teams is that many managers simply don’t know how to keep the team engaged and communicating. Check this out - Five Tips to Build Engagement on Remote Teams
Training and Development
Does your security training include this possibility? - The Next Wave of Scams Will Be Deepfake Video Calls From Your Boss
This is an often overlooked part of training and development covered in the newsletter below. How much organizational knowledge goes with them when people move on outside of your company? Is trying to transfer all of that during that two-week notice even possible? Or, how many times has someone had to be hired back as a consultant after a layoff because no one knows what they know? It’s worth thinking about how you cross-train.
Mental Health in the Workplace
Does your team feel appreciated? - Appreciation is a Critical Factor to building a High Impact Team
It’s back to school time and kids will be interacting online too - How to Talk to Your Kids About Social Media and Mental Health - It's more complicated than politicians would tell you it is. Make sure you're not leaving kids to figure it out on their own.
Replace the idea of eliminating stigma in society with eliminating it in your team - Challenging Stigma: Building an Inclusive and Empathetic Society
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
Obviously, the ILTA annual conference took place last week, so this week we’ve been seeing a few roundups:
Crowdsourced ILTACON 2023 Observations, Part 1: Legal Technology Trends
And, Part 2
Overheard at ILTACON 2023: The Biggest Legal Tech Trends and Challenges on Everyone’s Minds
A Vibrant ILTACON 2023 Reaffirmed Its Place As One of the Leading Legal Tech Conferences
It was also a topic on Legaltech Week:
Speaking of the legal tech and eDiscovery world, this was pretty big news this week - Reveal Acquires Logikcull and IPRO to Create E-Discovery 'Superpower'. I’ve also seen plenty of LinkedIn posts about layoffs at iPro in the immediate aftermath, despite Reveal’s statements about welcoming all of the new teams and then about the layoffs not being widespread. Sadly, misdirection about coming layoffs is just the way we do business these days. The lesson, as always, is don’t ruin your life for a company that would drop you in a second to make the shareholders some extra cash.
Doug Austin has started quite a conversation with this post - Hyperlinked Files as Modern Attachments – The Case Law - You can see some of the conversation on his LinkedIn post. Readers of my M365 newsletter may find much of the conversation familiar. I’ve talked about it many times in reference to M365/Teams data, and it’s not clear where the legal industry is headed on this issue. There is no shortage of opinions out there though. ;-)
Linked - Did Microsoft Just Upend the Enterprise Browser Market?
"The new product — called “Microsoft Edge for Business” — natively separates work and personal browsing into dedicated browser windows with their own favorites, separate caches and storage locations."
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 in each week to share this with you.