Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #192
An unplanned theme - leading humans
As I was putting together this newsletter last night, I saw an emerging theme, which doesn’t always happen when I’m gathering all of the blog posts and other interesting things I’ve discovered over the last two weeks.
That theme was about our teams at work, and what they need as human beings
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.
You’ll see links about uncertainty, stress, feeling underappreciated, and the difficulty of the job market right now.
The takeaway, for me as a leader, is that the people on our teams and in our lives outside of work are dealing with a lot right now. Things are not good for many people.
We can’t fix everything for everyone ourselves. As a manager, I can only control so much, but I can control what’s in front of me. I can provide clarity, certainty, and appreciation for my team. I can listen and be a reliable source of support and friendship for people in and out of the workplace. I can network with and on behalf of good people who are in the job market, etc.
It won’t fix everything, but sometimes just knowing that you’re not in this struggle alone makes all the difference. It also seems to be increasingly rare for people to feel like they’re not alone in it.
Seems like the least we can do is recognize the humanity in each other and act accordingly.
Careers and the Workplace
Create Certainty Where You Can
Like it or not, your team is dealing with a ridiculous amount of uncertainty in and out of the office. Most of it is beyond our control. When we have the opportunity to create less of it, we should do so. We have the opportunity to make a difference for our team, as human beings, just by communicating and setting clear expectations. Why wouldn't we?
Worth Reading - Good Leaders Presume Team Members Feel Undervalued and Underappreciated
It's a difficult thing, in the busy work world we all live in, to make sure your people are looked after and appreciated. It's very easy to take them for granted because you trust them to do their work. I'm not saying you should micromanage them, but showing an interest in them and their work would help them feel like part of the team. Letting other things get in the way creates an issue. One that may lead your best performers to leave for a place where they feel more appreciated.
Facts - How Networking Can Unlock Job Opportunities (especially when your Job Search feels stuck)
Artificial Intelligence
Could we enter an era in which AI writes so much of what we read and what people say that we all start to sound exactly the same?
I think we are all starting to realize this - The current AI pricing was always going to go away.
Also, this - Token Costs and the Future of Law Firm AI Spend
There’s a lot to be said for being human in the age of AI Slop - Choosing to Stay Human
Training and Development
In Change Management, do you Skip the Unlearning Phase?
Change is hard. It is also never-ending. Things change. The new technology provides new opportunities. Leaders should take responsibility for explaining that to their people and highlighting the opportunities that change can provide. Show them how it will benefit the business.
Then send them to training ready to learn.
Mental Health in the Workplace
It’s all overwhelming - Employee mental health is suffering from rapid AI transformation
Burnout Looks Different Across the Org Chart. Watch for These Signs. - Burnout is not the same for everyone.
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 workers for eight hours and then everything else for the rest of our time. We are human 24/7, and our well-being affects us at work. The workplace also impacts our well-being.
Starting conversations with people at the office, in the coffee shop, at lunch - The mental health benefit of striking up conversations with strangers
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
Worth Reading - RIM Is Moving Upstream
Instead of starting your work in a blank Word document or spreadsheet, start in Copilot chat, then move it to a Copilot page, which is a Loop file. From there, you drop part of the page, a component, into chat for live collaboration with your team, or you work together in the Loop app, with Copilot assisting again and drop the new draft into an email, linked to the web version for easier editing by the entire team, until finally, at the very end of this process, you create a PDF of the final product, and add it to your “records” location.
Thus, only the final version ever gets stored as a record. All the prior versions are gone. Work that is still in progress is not a record, but accessible to AI tools. This is the conundrum for RIM.
This is a very real risk - Shadow AI Continues to Expose Company IP
Worth Reading - Copilot Health: Now in Preview
When I saw the headline, I immediately thought about how Business Copilot uses a number of Compliance rules that would make that data available to employers. Employers should not be trusted with that. So, good for Microsoft for remembering that before they pushed out this new agent.
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.