Strands of Genius: Demand Less From Work, Is Slack Bad for Business, The Future of Work is a Cargo Cult

Guest curated by Bud Caddell

Apr 08, 2021

:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATOR, BUD CADDELL ::

LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT: NOBL

Hullooo, I'm Bud Caddell, the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of NOBL (pronounced no-bell). I serve people at work in times of change. I used to be an innovation consultant, which means I would show up with a fancy deck full of retreaded ideas and artisanal typefaces and talk to executives like they were small children. That was dumb and I'm glad it's behind me. Now, I show up and ask employees what they've always wanted to try at work and then I help remove institutional barriers to making those experiments possible. It's way less about me and more fun in general.

I met Faris a decade or more ago at a truly divey dive bar in SoHo called Milady's that served a mean plate of incredibly subpar french fries. He worked at Naked. I worked at Undercurrent. Both of us were trying to make sense of the early social web. I am honored to share some links for his and Rosie's newsletter and community.

I picked links around my expertise of work that I hope make you think and debate. I'm intentionally provoking you, if you're curious (and I hope you are).

Editor’s Note (Faris): I did indeed meet Bud an aeon ago in the now sadly closed Milady’s (yes the fries were terrible but their chicken fingers got me through many tough times) but we had met online before that, of course. Bud is a deep thinker and it’s been fascinating and instructive watching him carve his own career path, leveraging deep digital skills into Undercurrent’s approach to consulting and then taking that thinking back into a traditional agency at Deutsch, in a very non-traditional way with his squad of sprinting, prototyping Inventionists. Seeing opportunities before others has always been a strong suit, and he launched Nobl in 2014, to support the organizational change that digital transformation required, and to own his own legacy in the world. Been too long since we hung out, in dive bars or otherwise, and we’re excited to have him lend his mind to Strands.

:: THE LINKS ::

TO AVOID BURNOUT, DEMAND LESS FROM WORK

Study after study shows that Gen Z wants greater purpose at work and for their employers to do more to support their wellbeing (Gallup says that "wellbeing" includes career, social, financial, community and physical). Like Admiral Ackbar, I think that's a trap. This article starts by exploring the veracity of the increasing "burnout epidemic," but it's the latter half that really makes an important point: "Ending burnout will require not only labor organizing and policy changes but also a new vision of how work fits into our lives. Workers ought to demand more from their employers: more money, more security, more time off. But they also need to demand less—less meaning, less fulfillment, less assurance that they are loved—from work itself." (TNR)

IS SLACK BAD FOR BUSINESS?

The late 20th and early 21st centuries' tech playbook is obvious in retrospect: drop the cost of connecting anything to everything to nearly zero, and then avoid thinking about the consequences. With no cost (of any kind) to communication, we are drowning in noise, distraction, and falsehoods. This is true of social media and it's equally true of workplace tech. Emails, Slack messages, and Jira tickets can ricochet back and forth throughout your day, giving you the illusion of productivity while deep work is starved of attention. In this interview with Ezra Klein, Cal Newport argues that the information technology revolution went wrong in the workplace and that we must redesign our workflows for greater focus and thoughtfulness. (New York Times)

THE FUTURE OF WORK IS A CARGO CULT

A few years back, Spotify published their "squad" model for organizing their product teams. People went nuts for it and rushed to copy/paste it in their own firms. It failed. Not just in these other companies, but at Spotify itself. This article details how. This phenomenon has repeated itself a thousand times around the future of work. Way back when Google and Facebook were just beginning to dominate the world (and turning their backs on their lofty purpose statements), everyone thought the key to an innovative culture was a ping-pong table. Leaders should be curious how other companies work, but they also need to understand that 1) what works in one culture might not travel well (hello, OKRs), and that 2) what's visible from the outside rarely tells the full story of how the culture actually works. (Jeremiah Lee)

Looking for more from Bud Caddell? Those enrolled in The School of Stolen Genius will receive a deep dive from him in their inbox shortly! You can access all our expert interviews for SOSG here.

:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::

:: Game :: Red Dead Redemption II

:: City :: Venice, CA

:: Book :: Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel

:: Podcast :: "Working it Out" with Mike Birbiglia

:: Album :: Taj Mahal – Taj Mahal

:: SHARK ::

This is the most apt metaphor for the daily life of a founder that I've ever seen and I refer to it often. Starting a company (whether it's 100 people or just you) is definitely signing up for Shark Tours.

3 links?!?! That's it?!?! Phew, editing myself is no easy feat (that guy is a bloviator). Thanks again to Faris and Rosie for the opportunity.

Come find me:

- my twitter

- my firm

- our free resources

Lastly, our team did a deep dive on how work changed in 2020, do check it out.

Bud Caddell

bud.caddell@nobl.io

twitter | my firm | free resources

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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.

Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.

Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)

Strands of Genius