Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #158
Welcome to 2025
It was nice to take a few weeks off from publishing the newsletter. I returned to this space feeling refreshed and challenged to experiment and work to create a community around sharing more thought-provoking ideas and information.
Part of those thoughts has, naturally, been on social media, given everything we’ve seen in the news recently. The TikTok ban has one fundamental lesson for all of us: When we don’t own the platform, circumstances can cause it to disappear suddenly. Meta’s recent decision to not fake check and allow blatant hate speech, following X/Twitter's demise down the right-wing cesspool of “free speech for me, but not for thee” decisions on allowed speech, has also taught us that lesson as well.
We aren’t the customers of those networks. Advertisers might even be the customers any longer, either. We may have moved on to the customers being billionaires and the people supporting them.
The easy thing to do is shut down our accounts and find somewhere else. I’ve thought long and hard about doing that, but I haven’t. It's not because I support anything with X and Meta; I don’t. However, I can still post thought-provoking ideas on the platform with little effort.
So, part of me thinks, “Why not?”
Why not keep sharing there, but do nothing else to interact, because frankly, those networks have become harmful to my mental health.
Maybe. Maybe not. It’s still a thought in progress. In the meantime, I explore BlueSky and Mastodon and am always here in the newsletter and on my website. Because I know where my website is going. There’s no billionaire involved.
How about you?
Welcome to this week’s collection of thought-provoking things. For each issue, 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.
But before we turn the page entirely to 2024. I wanted to share a little gift with you from my photography blog:
Every January first, I go through the hundreds of photos I shared on Flickr and select my favorites. If you haven’t visited my photo blog, this is a good place to start.
Careers and the Workplace
There's Only One Way to Prove Them Wrong - Beat Them
We know these strategies create a better workplace, so I see a simple mandate as business owners: Ignore the pressure to scale back DEI efforts and remote working opportunities. Embrace both, hire the best talent in the labor market, and create dynamic, engaged teams.
Target your competitors who are pushing everyone back to the office and eliminating diversity efforts, and kick their ass in the marketplace. It's what a free market expects of you.
On a similar note: Linked - Companies issuing RTO mandates “lose their best talent”
If you don't have a solid business reason for your policy, the rest of us will question your ability to make any decisions about the company going forward. Employees who have other options will take them when they don't trust leadership.
Linked - The growing CEO pay gap is killing workplace culture
Workers aren't ignorant about what their companies do and how their work contributes to the company; they don't care. Nor should they. Not when the company's profits can reach astronomical new highs and workers are lucky to get a raise that matches the cost of living increase for that year. Not when we can work our asses off to be successful remotely and continue to make the company all that profit only to be told that we have to come back to the office every day at our own expense. Not when 10% of them got laid off to ensure that the shareholders and CEO's got theirs.
The simple answer is no - Does more hours = higher productivity?
I don’t know that I agree with many reasons for optimism, but I will never let it be said. I don’t look at other opinions - Five Reasons To Be Optimistic About Work in 2025.
Artificial Intelligence
Are we surprised by any of these things?
OpenAI failed to deliver the opt-out tool it promised by 2025
OpenAI says it needs 'more capital than we’d imagined' as it lays out for-profit plan
Microsoft Recall records logins, passwords, and credit card data
Let’s not forget about how much power AI requires - AI Needs So Much Power, It’s Making Yours Worse
Linked - AI data readiness: C-suite fantasy, big IT problem
Too many organizations have punted when deciding what data to keep versus delete and haven't made the hard decisions about implementing data security internally. Now, they want to use AI, but the AI is accessing all that outdated data and exposing the places where security wasn't correctly implemented. So, it becomes an IT problem to fix.
Hmm, is AI going to be the final push? - Report from Thomson Reuters and Georgetown Law Says 2024 Was the Beginning of the End for the Traditional Law Firm Business Model.
Speaking of AI in legal, check this out - Leery Lawyer’s Guide to AI
And this - AI, Gen AI, And Agent AI: What Do They Mean For The Future Of Legal Work?
Training and Development
There are opportunities in the training arena to accelerate quickly as AI gives us better access to instant information. There are also risks, but is this true? - Humans Are About to Learn Like Never Before
On the other hand:
That's why I don't think AI can be the sole source of learning. It can be a tool for unearthing the proper information, but if all you do is ask the AI for a solution, you're not engaging in deep learning and developing a deep understanding of the work. That, I believe, is why AI is not fit for purpose at that level of education.
This may be a handy resource - Your Checklist for Creating Exceptional Employee Training Experiences.
Mental Health in the Workplace
It makes me sad that in 2025, this is still a silent struggle for so many - The Silent Struggle: Addressing Mental Health in the Workplace.
Employers pay attention to this - Financial stress causes highest mental health decline in workers since 2020, report says.
This is also a mental health issue - How to deal with Zoom calls in 2025: in smaller groups with static backgrounds.
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
Never Assume Searches Are Accurate Without Verifying
Technology, especially M365 technology, changes all the time. It's vast and complicated, and things get broken when new versions are rolled out. When dealing with eDiscovery, security, privacy, etc., we have to stay on top of those changes to understand new features and ensure the old ones still work the same way.
Don't assume the old ones will always work the same way. I can tell you from this and plenty of other experiences they often don't. Assuming that they still work the same because they look the same is a good way to have the technology bite you in the ass. Collecting 45 times more data than was necessary in a real-world scenario would have been embarrassing and costly. A quick sampling would have saved me.
We might all be so busy and overwhelmed that we can’t make good decisions - The Psychology of Phishing: Why Smart People Fall for Scams.
Why does misinformation get spread so quickly online? - Misinformation thrives on outrage, study finds.
While discussing misinformation - 10 Questions for Fact-Checking Social Media and the News.
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.