Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #100

It's an even hundred.

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.

Photo by Luis Morera on Unsplash

It’s issue 100. That’s the combined number of weeks I’ve been putting out this newsletter, starting with the Revue version and then moving over here to Substack when Twitter turned into whatever adjective for hellscape you want to use now.

Or is it hell-Xscape? Whatever.

So in almost two years not only has the tool changed, my job was eliminated, technology has changed many times over, and the state of social media has changed pretty dramatically. I barely spend much time on networks I used to invest in to help get the word out about new blog posts, and I spend more time just trying to find like-minded people to be entertained by. Thus, I’m more likely to watch TikTok than scroll Twitter. I’m still auto-sharing new posts to Facebook and Twitter, but I already know hardly any of the people who followed the blogs on there see them. (Thus the importance of word-of-mouth sharing of this newsletter!) I find LinkedIn to be a better resource for industry news and things to share here, and I’m spending a little more time on Mastodon, where I don’t have a large audience or follow list by any means, but it still provides me with some decent content.

Any way you look at it social just doesn’t provide me with the same networking and informational resources in the way it used to, so I’m experimenting with new ideas.

This week, those experiments were rewarded with AI Eric Cartman. Perhaps one of the best generative AI pieces I’ve seen so far.

How has your social media use changed in the last two years?

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Careers and the Workplace

Are you making the most of your LinkedIn profile?

TIN #052 - Your LinkedIn Goldmine: Top Tips and Tricks Unveiled! 💼💎

I’m just going to leave this one here for all the “we must go back to the office” folks. - Remote employees work longer and harder, studies show.

This post is about social media as a microcosm of the business landscape today:

Linked - What If the Next Big Social Media App Is ... Nothing?

There's no infinite growth to be had because we are all resource-limited. At some point, everyone who wants to have an Instagram account has an Instagram account and is using it as often as they want to. You can't have huge growth spurts. You can only play around the edges and manipulate users to stay online to grow and that's not a winning strategy. Yet it's what shareholders and venture funds require. They've created a world where growing less than 20% per year might as well be failing. It's sure going to look like failing when you start cutting jobs and doing stock buybacks. Those used to be desperate measures, but now they're just a Tuesday at the office.

The Surprising Secret to Working Better? Working Less. - We weren’t made to try and multi-task or do focused work for hours on end without a break. Trying to do that makes us worse at our jobs.

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Training and Development

Having the ability to tell a story makes for great training. I’ve been telling people for years to find good stories, even if you have to borrow them from other people in your field. - Storytelling And Informal Learning For A Winning L&D Strategy

Coincidentally, I discovered an entire podcast on the topic this week as well. - Storytelling That Sticks

How to become a great workshop facilitator - learning how to be a good trainer is often made up of part public speaking skills and part learning how to facilitate.

The ROI of Training Your Employees

Maybe we should use something different to measure training programs.

The problem with this is that it’s difficult to prove the ROI of an internal program like employee training because other factors — decisions made in other departments, or the economy — have a more direct effect on a company’s success. Also, it often takes time for training to pay off, so it’s hard to point to a direct increase in the bottom line that correlates to training.

Do you even know how to learn, bro? - Why 'Learning to Learn' Is the Skill Every Leader Should Possess

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Mental Health in the Workplace

This survey doesn’t say anything good about our modern workplaces - Work is harming young people’s mental health

Well-being at Work Is More than Just Not Being Depressed

All of these things are interwoven. The people who work for you are human, that’s how we are. We aren’t just a worker for eight hours and then everything else for the rest of our time. We are human 24×7 and our wellbeing affects us in the workplace. The workplace also impacts our well-being.

I Started Healing When I Convinced Myself I was Safe Now, What About People Who Aren't Safe?

Casey calls out those of us who would say "love is love" and support our LGBTQ friends and family members without standing up and doing what we can to actually make this world safer for them. I'll go one further. If we want to call ourselves mental health advocates and advocates for trauma survivors we need to do what we can to push for a world that is safe for everyone. We can't heal when we don't feel safe, and for too many people in this world, they have no reason to feel safe.

We need to advocate for a world that is safe for them too.

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Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech

Unraveling the Powerhouse: How Large Language Models Work in eDiscovery Predictive Coding - all this AI hype might at least give us something useful for eDiscovery.

Speaking of something useful for the legal folks in the audience - The Essentials of Information Governance for Law Firms - Part 2

Five Great Reads on Cyber, Data, and Legal Discovery for July 2023

Cl0p Increasing Extortion Pressure

Almost two months after the initial MOVEit breach, Cl0p is now leaking private data and threatening to release more on the regular (also known as “Clear”) web.

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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.