Thoughts & Excerpts

Let’s be honest: the traditional performance review had it coming. It was bureaucratic, backward-looking, and often more about ratings than real development. So companies scrapped it. But in the rush to be more human, the mission was missed. In many organizations today, they’ve traded rigid structure for comforting vagueness. Managers are encouraged to “check in”, but the hard conversations? They’re often sidestepped. Underperformance lingers, high performers get overburdened, and real growth conversations don’t actually happen.

Organizations today are operating in a state of persistent instability. Supply chains shift overnight, political environments rattle confidence, and economic signals change by the quarter. The old model of “manage change, then return to normal” has collapsed. There is no return. There is only continuous adaptation. In this new environment, resilience is no longer a personal trait—it’s a team capability. And the leaders who will succeed are not those who wait for clarity but those who can lead through ambiguity, keep teams focused in flux, and build structures that flex without breaking. Teams that manage ambiguity well execute faster, retain top talent longer, and stay focused when competitors are distracted.

Executives advance by proving their ability to drive execution in their teams—jumping in to put out fires, overseeing operational decisions, and ensuring results get delivered. But as they rise, the very skills that propelled their careers can become constraints.  The shift to enterprise leadership is not about doing more managing—it’s about designing organizations that can operate effectively and scale without their direct involvement.

HR and OD leaders have been evolving into key players at the executive table for years. However, like all business functions, HR experiences pendulum swings in focus, shifting between prioritizing culture-building and driving business impact. Today, with organizations facing rapid market shifts, economic pressures, and increasing demands for efficiency, the business-focused side of HR leadership is more critical than ever.

In today’s high-pressure business landscape, leaders pride themselves on decisive action and agility. But too often, well-intentioned leaders inadvertently create disruption for their teams—not through poor intent, but through delayed communication and decision-making.

This post explores the key strategies and skills for successful collaboration in a distributed work environment. This includes establishing a sense of ownership, honing your influencing skills, building authentic relationships, and resolving conflicts. Tune into our LinkedIn Live for a discussion on Shaping Collaboration in a Remote Workforce, hosted by Barbara Matthews Chief People Officer at Remote and Meredith Haberfeld (she/her) Founder & CEO of ThinkHuman to learn more and join the conversation. 

Reflections on lessons we learned this past year and actions we are taking to be better leaders in a time when the landscape of where and how we work has changed and when how we act and react in the face of social injustices is rightfully scrutinized.

How companies can support and celebrate the LGBTQA+ community beyond PRIDE month.

A core question is: how do we embed conceptual values and behavior in a culture? One answer: rituals.

If you’re like most leaders, you grapple with how to inspire your people to make lasting change. Harvard Professor Robert Kegan’s research has revealed is that when thinking about real, transformational change, we are often looking at the wrong challenge.

The accelerating pace of change means that no longer are there any experts; to be at the cutting edge necessitates that everything you are doing is new. As organizational leaders, we are all tasked with operating in this new frontier: to be successful, you have to be willing to dive, roll up your sleeves and experiment.

Thinx is providing a beautiful case study for what can happen in an organization when your brand does not match the internal culture. Leaders, take note.

Leaders across the globe feel that the unprecedented busyness of modern-day leadership makes them more reactive and less proactive. There is a solution to this hardwired, reactionary leadership approach...

A myriad of scandals in the past few weeks has propelled Uber and its company culture into the spotlight. Many are asking how this company culture developed. Let's just say that it's no coincidence that Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick's leadership is also under scrutiny.

ThinkHuman Founder Meredith Haberfeld will be speaking at SXSW on using culture to have “Remote” Work. Come join the party in Austin in March.

"What are your top five priorities for the week?" "What are the top three objectives and key results you're using to measure how you're doing for the quarter?"

HR Happy says we should do what pleases people, High Performance Happy says I will fight for every inch. Think of an olympic athlete jumping into the pool for those 4:30 am laps.

No one gave me a recipe for how to create company culture. I have been lucky to piece together the wisdom of many who have gone before me. I save the accumulated genius of what I have learned from them, in distilled form, for the end.

No one engages with something that they are simply told or lectured. People engage when they are actually asked to voice an opinion and be part of a conversation.

This month, Google launched re:Work, a platform for the open sharing of ideas around culture and people-management.

Cultures are built on stories and heroes. We use them to orient ourselves. The stories we build — and our heroes and rituals — reflect the soul of an organization.

Argue forcefully against your most dearly held hypotheses. Only then will you know if they stand up to scrutiny.

Once you identify a superstar, do everything to make sure they continue to work in your company.

The natural tendency of all companies as they grow is to create more rules and procedures. RESIST IT AT ALL COSTS!