April 2025 - when Teams truly connect, Patience as a strategic edge, the trap of Over-Efficiency, Humor in workplace absurdity
this is Issue #74
Welcome to this month's digest of ideas shaping our understanding of work, leadership, and economic sustainability. In today's rapidly evolving landscape, the tension between technological advancement and human elements in the workplace has never been more pronounced. This issue explores different perspectives on what makes both individuals and organizations thrive in the long term.
In case you missed any of this month's weekly essays, here they are for your reference:
We Do This to Ourselves - Examining how democratic erosion begins—in politics, at work, and in ourselves.
The Manager's README - How radical honesty serves as currency in effective management relationships.
"I've Done My Research." No, You Haven't. You Just Googled It. - A short rant, or a plea, or both about the difference between real research and surface-level information gathering.
Let’s get started.
Human Potential & Development
Roger Federer on the kind of talent you can practice
Yes, talent matters. I’m not going to stand here and tell you it doesn’t.
But talent has a broad definition.
Most of the time, it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit. In tennis, like in life, discipline is also a talent. And so is patience.
Trusting yourself is a talent. Embracing the process—loving the process—is a talent. Managing your life, managing yourself.
These can be talents, too. Some people are born with them. Everybody has to work at them.
Debate Training Promotes Leadership Emergence by Increasing Assertiveness
MIT Associate Professor Jackson Lu and colleagues Michelle X. Zhao, Hui Liao, and Lu Doris Zhang examine how debate training impacts leadership advancement in U.S. organizations. Their research shows that individuals who receive debate training are significantly more likely to advance to leadership positions—by approximately 12 percentage points in a Fortune 100 company—primarily due to increased assertiveness, which remains a highly valued leadership characteristic in American corporate culture.
From the article:
Assertiveness is conceptually different from aggressiveness. To speak up in meetings or classrooms, people don't need to be aggressive jerks. You can ask questions politely, yet still effectively express opinions. Of course, that's different from not saying anything at all.
This finding offers a more practical alternative to the usual leadership development recommendation of training in public speaking.
Workplace Relationships & Culture
A Conversation on Personal Knowledge and Human Connection at Work
In this scholar-to-scholar conversation, Liza Y. Barnes interviews Ashley Hardin about her research on how personal knowledge sharing impacts workplace relationships. Hardin's work attempts to demonstrate how everyday glimpses into colleagues' lives can transform professional interactions by promoting humanization and responsiveness, with particular relevance to hybrid and remote work environments where traditional relationship-building opportunities are limited.
From the article
I was surprised by the positive, persistent effect of personal knowledge. I thought this effect may be dependent on features of that knowledge – does your colleague have the same values, does your colleague's life consistently interfere with work. However, learning more about a colleague, regardless of these features, humanizes that colleague. We focus more on the fact that this is a unique person with their own set of needs, and we become more motivated to attend to those needs, supporting them in reaching their goals.
Recognizing that a positive employee experience helps enable business strategy
Jen Tippin, group chief operating officer at NatWest Group, discusses the bank's innovative approach to transforming their human resources model. In this corporate case study, Tippin explains how NatWest adapted a customer experience framework to address employee needs as experiences rather than siloed HR functions—a shift that has already freed up more than 350,000 hours for employees while improving recruitment, onboarding, and performance management processes.
From the article:
Unlike traditional HR models that separate functions like hiring, talent, training, and performance management into isolated functions, the goals-and-journeys approach brings HR personnel together to focus on what matters most to employees.
A “goal” represents an experience end to end, such as joining or moving around NatWest, and works to improve it. Each goal includes “journeys” that represent how employees and prospective employees experience the moments that matter, such as being interested in a job at NatWest or their first day at work.
The Ford Executive Who Kept Score of Colleagues' Verbal Flubs
In this lighthearted workplace profile, Wall Street Journal reporter Mike Colias documents the decade-long linguistic scorecard kept by retiring Ford executive Mike O'Brien, who meticulously recorded over 2,200 mixed metaphors and malaprops uttered by colleagues in meetings.
The article illustrates how this unusual practice evolved from a simple whiteboard notation into a company-wide phenomenon that simultaneously created moments of levity and anxiety in Ford's high-pressure corporate environment.
From the article:
The spreadsheet is the more-detailed repository of the data (not “suppository” of the data, a particularly unfortunate case of word-misuse that made the board. Twice). It breaks out the examples into categories that include:
Sports/Exercise-related: “We’re really low on money right now…we’re dancing on thin ice,” and, “We need to keep running in our swim lanes.” Also, this mixed metaphor: “I know these are swing-for-the-moon opportunities, but I think we should pursue them.”
Body parts: “We need to make sure dealers have some skin in the teeth;” and “It’s no skin on our back,” to which O’Brien appended that it sounded like “a horrible medical condition.”
Food-related: “Too many cooks in the soup.” And: “Read between the tea leaves.”
Animals (the largest category, with 80 entries): “I’m not trying to beat a dead horse to death.” Another: “We need to talk about the elephant in the closet,” one person said.
Economics & Business Sustainability
The late pontiff never tired of reminding the world that economics is about people
Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate in economics) and Andrea Roventini, both at Columbia University, reflect on Pope Francis' economic legacy, examining how his firsthand experience with Argentina's volatile economy shaped his moral critique of global financial systems.
Their analysis highlights Francis's final major economic initiative—the Jubilee Commission—which aims to address sovereign debt crises in developing nations and reform international financial institutions that have failed to uphold principles of solidarity and justice.
From the article:
Francis saw an economic system that too often prioritized profit over people, and selfishness over cooperation. He knew that while markets can be a powerful tool, markets unbound by appropriate rules and regulations would produce injustice on a planetary scale, including the gravest injustice of all: the destruction of our environment, which he called “our common home” in his encyclical Laudato Si'.
The economic case for saving human jobs
Faisal Hoque examines the unprecedented challenges of AI automation, arguing that unlike previous technological revolutions, AI threatens to fundamentally disrupt employment patterns at unprecedented speed and scale. The research concludes that businesses must adopt "regenerative leadership" focused on preserving entry-level positions and investing in re-skilling programs, or risk destroying the consumer ecosystem that sustains their own markets.
From the article:
Macroeconomically, excessive automation risks create a dangerous demand deficiency—a situation in which our economy can efficiently produce more goods and services than an ever-shrinking base of employed consumers can afford to purchase. This creates a paradox for businesses rushing to automate: the very efficiency gains they seek might ultimately undermine their markets. Machines don't purchase smartphones, subscribe to streaming services, or buy homes. Humans do.
This perspective echoes Henry Ford's famous decision to pay his workers enough to afford the cars they built.
The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage in 2025
This research article examines a troubling economic milestone in 2025, attempting to document how the federal minimum wage has fallen below the official poverty threshold for the first time in recent history. The analysis demonstrates that a full-time minimum wage worker's annual earnings ($15,080) now falls below the federal poverty line for a single-person household ($15,650), with researchers arguing that even this comparison understates the true economic vulnerability of minimum wage workers.
From the article:
The discrepancy between the federal minimum wage and the real experience of workers throughout the country has led 30 states and Washington, D.C., to increase their minimum wage above the federal level. In the 20 states still using the federal minimum, 11.8 million workers earn less than $17 per hour, more than 1 in 5 workers in those states. Those states are disproportionately located in the South.
The art of outlasting: What we can learn from timeproof Japanese businesses
Eric Markowitz, partner at Nightview Capital, explores Japan's extraordinary concentration of shinise (long-established businesses), using evocative storytelling to examine how companies like 1,400-year-old Kongo Gumi and Hōshi Ryokan have endured through centuries.
The analysis reveals that these companies' remarkable longevity stems from a paradoxical combination of patient, tradition-honoring strategies and "white-knuckled adaptability" when facing existential challenges
From the article:
This resilience feels almost alien in today’s fast-paced business landscape, where hyper-growth and quarterly results reign supreme. Yet, these ancient Japanese enterprises offer a counterintuitive playbook for thriving in the long run — one that modern companies might do well to study. In researching these companies, I’ve discovered a few key ideas:
Know who you are. Kongo Gumi built temples, and that unwavering focus on their core expertise remained intact, even as they diversified.
Adapt without losing your essence. Like water, these companies navigated around obstacles, finding ways to survive while staying true to their fundamental values.
Master the art of patience. Long-term success means resisting the allure of shortcuts and embracing the slow, steady path that truly endures.
The long view. Because some things take time. And some things take more time than others. Any strategy discussion should address the time horizon.
Visual of the Month
A few parting words
As we navigate the interplay between information, authenticity, and institutional trust in today's workplace, these articles offer valuable perspectives on building resilient organizations that balance efficiency with humanity. In my weekly essays this month, I've explored related themes: from the difference between genuine research and surface-level Googling, to the importance of radical honesty in management, to the subtle ways democratic values can erode in our institutions and ourselves.
What strategies are you implementing to foster truth-seeking and authentic connection in your work environment? I'm always interested in hearing your experiences and questions—they often inspire future essays and digests.
Share your thoughts or suggest topics for future essays and digests by replying to this newsletter.
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