My Now
Why Upheaval Is Okay, Even If I'd Rather Have Some Stability Right About Now
It’s been a long ride since the 90s. Watching social media trends, fads, and spasms. In the beginning I had blogs on typepad (still do, if you can read it ourfounder.typepad.com), and so many other platforms. Through all the platforms, there’s one thing I’ve always tried to be: Me.
So I’m sitting here, visiting my mother in Omaha. Nice day. On the back patio. Dealing with the current upheaval of moving myself and Tonianne and Modus to Substack. And it feels familiar and painful and fine and annoying… just like moving to Twitter and Plurk and Facebook and Facebook Business and LinkedIn and Wordpress and Squarespace and…so many tools, so many blogs, so many conversations.
Add to that going through Lean and XP and Scrum and Agile and so many frameworks and there has always been transition. All the time. Any time.
And here we go, into Substack. Into TikTok. Into other ways of talking, conversing, and building.
And that’s okay.
It’s Not Dead, Jim
So many things right now are on the idea-morgue that LinkedIn has become. This is dead. That is dead. Dead is dead. My dead is deader than your dead.
Everyone is scared. Everyone is looking for the next salvation. Everyone is looking for the next hero, just for one day.
But this is why we are here on Substack, it is why this new conversation is valid.
No idea is ever dead. We just stop them from growing. And sometimes we need to prune the tree, to cut the overgrowth, to curate in order for them to grow again.
It’s About the People and Our Humanity
For us, Humane Work isn’t a framework. It’s about people figuring out what they need to do and then making sure that happens. That means they need to communicate well. They need to plan. They need to align. And they need to understand that we don’t do any of these things naturally.
We have to pay attention. We have to care.
The people replacing other people with AI…they do not have to care. They exist. That market shift is here. We can bemoan their lack of humanity, or we can build the other side of the equation.
We can build The Humane Economy.
Think locavore mixed with compassion. Think micro-companies working in a networked way, providing big-scale opportunities without the toxicity and bloat. Think the innovation economy of the early 2000s with the instant market access of now, with people you actually like to work with.
Think work not stressing you out.
People are always an investment and investments take work. Crops need tending. Portfolios require maintenance. A future without direction is a misdirected outcome.
So that’s why this blog is here. It’s why we’re on Substack. It’s why Tonianne and Jim.
Things are temporal. Agile doesn’t live forever, but the ideas behind it do. Same for Kanban or roller skates or David Bowie.
Words matter. Communication is all we live for. And no one goes to work to do a bad job. We can continue to create high performing teams, sustainable companies, and expression. They will look different. That’s not a bad thing. People scaring you because AI is going to lay you all off are just itching to scare you into a pay cut.
Screw…that.
Google, Apple, Microsoft all started in garages or basements. Starbucks was in a leaky space in Pioneer Square in Seattle.
You. Don’t. Need. Them.
We can build the new world. We can make a better world. But we can’t wish for it. We have to do the work.
Thank you for being here to do the real work with us.
I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever