March 2025 - Management, Minimized; Worry as Planning; The Career Matrix; Struggle's Sweet Spot
Issue 73
Every workplace drama, every career dilemma, every "should I stay or should I go" moment has something in common: they rarely come with obvious answers. This month, I've gathered insights that cut through the noise and challenge the way we work, lead, and grow.
We'll start with the daily tensions you face every day—from the brewing return-to-office drama to the struggle of keeping star performers who don't want management roles. Then we'll explore counterintuitive mindset shifts that might surprise you (would you believe actively seeking rejection could accelerate your success?). Finally, we'll examine radical organizational experiments that are upending traditional leadership—including one company that eliminated the CEO position entirely and thrived.
Each piece begins with a question I suspect has crossed your mind recently. The answers might just transform how you approach your next workday.
Let's dive in.
WORKPLACE DYNAMICS & CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Are You Ready for the Return-to-Office Fallout?
That peaceful remote work bubble is about to burst, as management expert Matt Casey warns of imminent conflict, arguments, and irrational behavior when employees with atrophied social muscles suddenly return to rigid schedules and forced interactions.
"When we were working remotely, most of us may say we worked until 5 p.m.—but probably not." - Matt Casey, DoThings cofounder
My take: This isn't about location—it's about power. Workers tasted unprecedented autonomy, and management wants it back. That's why hybrid models often become the worst of both worlds: neither the freedom of remote work nor the cohesion of office culture. The solution isn't compromise. It's clarity.
Worth reading: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (for rebuilding healthy workplace routines)
Why Isn't My Relationship With My Boss Working?
According to Sherri Malouf's research, your challenging workplace relationships aren't just about personality conflicts — they follow scientific patterns rooted in how our brains create unconscious shortcuts that classify colleagues as either "us" or "them."
"If my relationship with my boss is crummy, it's going to be hard getting out of bed and going to work. If we have a bad boss, we tend to blame the leader. But relationships exist in the space between people, and each of us is responsible for half."
We unconsciously classify colleagues as "us" or "them," triggering either trust or dismissal. We also hold mental models about how leaders and followers should behave, often eliminating potentially valuable connections when people don't match our expectations.
The key insight? Work relationships aren't just about personality—they're influenced by systems science, social cognition, and brain biology. Organizations would benefit from training both leadership and "followership," focusing on the relationship entity itself rather than just developing better leaders.
My take: We optimize everything at work except what matters most: relationships. We analyze supply chains, scrutinize metrics, and debug code, yet leave our most crucial workplace connections to chance. Just 10% of our professional development focused on relationship dynamics could eliminate half our workplace stress overnight.
Further reading: The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See by Max Bazerman
How Do You Keep Top Performers Who Don't Want to Manage?
Lydie Fox of Apps Associates argues that our obsession with management as the only path for advancement is forcing top performers into roles they neither want nor excel at, resulting in frustrated employees and unnecessary turnover.
"Being great at what one does is not a guarantee they are also great at making others better—which is a key ingredient to the makings of a good manager."
Fox suggests companies create alternative growth tracks by examining business needs, clearly defining non-management career paths, and implementing mentorship programs that aren't tied to seniority. The key is recognizing that employees should choose management rather than having it thrust upon them as the only way up.
My take: Why do we only measure success in steps up? Careers are landscapes, not ladders. We don't always need higher titles; sometimes we need deeper roots. The most valuable person in your company might not be climbing toward management but expanding outward, mastering their craft in ways no org chart can capture.
But work isn't just about external challenges—it's about how we think, decide, and react. The next section explores mental frameworks that might change the way you approach success itself.
MINDSET SHIFTS FOR SUCCESS
Is Your Worry Actually Productive?
New scientific research confirms what many have long suspected — chronic worrying is actually your brain's planning mechanism gone awry, initiating planning at unhelpful times and struggling to reach a "good enough" threshold to stop.
"Although it's clear we have some access to actions we evaluate during planning, the richer process of simulating possible action sequences, and deciding between them, seems to hide in the subconscious."
These planning biases operate largely outside our conscious awareness, which explains why traditional therapies sometimes fall short. Researchers are now using computational analysis and neural decoding to reveal these hidden planning processes, potentially leading to more targeted anxiety treatments.
My take: Anxiety isn't a bug—it's a feature… in overdrive. Our planning machinery evolved for predators and famines, not deadlines and performance reviews. The problem isn't the system but its calibration. What if instead of trying to eliminate worry, we learned to redirect its power?
Further reading: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
When Should You Trust Data Over Your Gut?
Algorithms consistently outperform human judges in decision-making by avoiding our biases, yet Cass Sunstein's research reveals we hold machines to impossibly higher standards than we do our fellow humans.
"People are less forgiving of algorithms than they are of human beings... Is that rational? If people want to make the correct decision, it is not."
While algorithms beat 90% of human judges in bail decisions, the top 10% of judges still outperform the machines. And though algorithms may be marginally more accurate (73% vs 68% in clinical settings), we hold their mistakes to higher standards than human errors.
Perhaps most sobering is the Fragile Families Challenge, where 160 research teams using sophisticated algorithms all failed to accurately predict children's outcomes over time. Despite mountains of data, the future remains stubbornly unpredictable in complex human domains.
My take: We don't reject algorithms because they fail. We reject them because they strip us of our favorite illusion: control. We forgive human error because we see ourselves in it; a grace we refuse to extend to machines. The uncomfortable truth? We'd rather be wrong ourselves than surrender to something right that we can't understand.
Further reading: Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
Why Do Some Challenges Energize While Others Drain Us?
Marathon runners push themselves to the brink of collapse with smiles on their faces, and we value the IKEA furniture we painstakingly assembled more than identical pre-built pieces. Welcome to what psychologists call the "Effort Paradox."
"Without the possibility of failing, success is stripped of its meaning and sweetness."
This isn't just about masochistic endurance athletes. Studies reveal that children at play naturally seek harder challenges to maximize fun, and adults who find meaning in effort report greater life satisfaction and career success. As Hutchinson notes, exerting effort "seems to be the key route, maybe the only route, by which you can fulfill certain needs, like the needs for competence and mastery."
My take: We've optimized for ease. Maybe too much. What if struggle isn't the obstacle, but the point? In our rush for efficiency, we forget that difficulty itself gives life depth. The right challenges don't break us—they complete us.
Further reading: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
What If Rejection Is Actually Your Path to Success?
One writer flipped conventional wisdom by creating "November of NO": a month-long challenge where participants actively pursued rejection in their professional lives and discovered that making rejection the goal rather than something to avoid led to dramatically more opportunities.
"When I shifted my attention to rejection rather than success, it felt so much easier to do the work — my perfectionism-forward world was topsy-turvy, and getting a no was suddenly worth celebrating."
The surprising outcome? By making rejection the goal rather than something to avoid, participants found themselves landing more opportunities while building resilience. Psychologists confirm this counterintuitive approach: deliberately seeking situations where you might fail ultimately builds confidence that you'll succeed.
My take: We drain ourselves avoiding rejection while opportunities pile up on the other side of 'no.' In a world where failure is invisible, we mistake rejection for defeat instead of direction. Each 'no' isn't a judgment—it's a signpost narrowing the path to your perfect 'yes.'
With these mindset shifts as foundation, let's explore how organizations themselves might transform when we question our most basic assumptions about leadership and structure.
RETHINKING LEADERSHIP & ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
When Should You Stop Gathering Data and Just Decide?
In today's rapidly changing environment, Deloitte's research reveals that "wait-and-see" leaders are being left behind, while those who balance decisive action with human needs are 1.8 times more likely to report superior financial results.
"What happens when the world is moving and changing so fast that the decision to not make a decision actually puts us at a disadvantage? When outdated thinking and indecision turn into missed opportunities and lost momentum?"
Leaders today face fundamental tensions between short-term business demands and long-term human needs. The key insight? This isn't an either/or proposition. Success lies in finding the right balance across multiple dimensions, from providing worker stability while creating organizational agility to unlocking worker capacity amid AI transformation.
My take: We still treat business and human outcomes as opposing forces when they're actually the same engine. It's about competitive advantage. The most effective organizations don't sacrifice stability; they harness it. Paralysis is not prudence. Often it's surrender by another name.
Worth exploring further: Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends. The sections “Balancing tensions in the work” and “Balancing tensions in organization and culture” are well worth a read, and probably deserve an entry of their own.
Why Do Perfect Plans Still Fail?
Swedish EV battery manufacturer Northvolt had everything a venture could dream of — $15 billion in funding, Tesla-pedigree founders, and a $50 billion order book — yet spectacularly collapsed when its primary plant operated at less than 1% capacity.
"Technology is not just about machines, blueprints, and financial capital. Its successful deployment depends on the tacit, hard-earned knowledge that exists within experienced teams."
The culprit? Not market conditions or capital constraints, but the company's failure to integrate its complex supplier ecosystem and give itself time to develop the tacit knowledge needed before aggressive scaling.
My take: We keep mistaking money for momentum. Northvolt had billions in funding but it missed what money can't buy: the tacit knowledge of an 'invisible orchestra' playing in harmony. Complex systems don't yield to capital. They yield to craft and time. Some lessons are earned. You can’t buy them.
What If You Trusted Your Team Completely?
When Jean François Zobrist was dropped off by helicopter to lead struggling FAVI, he immediately dismantled every control mechanism in the French factory — removing time clocks, eliminating bonuses, unlocking supply rooms — and watched productivity soar for the next 25 years.
"I was dreaming of a place where everybody would behave like being at home, nothing more and nothing less." — Jean François Zobrist
By organizing workers into autonomous "mini-factories," he created a workplace built on freedom and trust. The results? Twenty-five years of 20% net cash flow, 50% European market share, and a factory that thrived in Europe while competitors fled to low-cost countries.
Sadly, FAVI's story also reveals how fragile such cultures can be. When new shareholders prioritized control over client focus and employee autonomy, profits plummeted from 20% to 5%. As Zobrist noted, "The more the net cash flow went down, the more the shareholders increased the control."
My take: FAVI didn't succeed despite giving workers freedom. It succeeded because of it. The real story isn't their unusual approach but how quickly control returned when leadership changed. The true challenge in implementing trust-based systems is finding the courage to resist the pull toward control when pressure mounts.
Could Your Team Run Better Without You?
When software company Basetis reached 150 employees, founder Marc Castells made a radical discovery — eliminating the CEO position entirely led to faster decisions, higher engagement, and a thriving business.
"We didn't know that it works before, and now we know that it works." — Marc Castells, Founder of Basetis
Without announcing grand self-management philosophies or citing trendy frameworks, Basetis quietly distributed decision-making power across the organization, made salaries transparent, and replaced control with trust.
Trust people. Most organizations struggle because they don’t.
Self-management isn’t radical. It’s just a natural evolution of work.
Not everything needs a policy. Sometimes, common sense is enough.
Iterate, don’t copy. Your company isn’t Basetis, so find what works for you.
Expect skeptics. But do it anyway.
Celebrate your wins. “We focus so much on what we need to improve, but we should also take a moment to recognize what we’re doing well.”
Now Castells is considering his next radical move: "killing the owner" by exploring steward ownership models that distribute power even further. It's not revolution—it's evolution.
My take: What's revolutionary about Basetis isn't the absence of a CEO but is the absence of jargon. Rather than implementing “a transformation framework”, they simply removed what wasn't working. The most radical act in business today might be trusting common sense over consulting decks. No 200-page playbook required.
Further reading: Maverick by Ricardo Semler
A Final Thought
Work, leadership, and growth rarely follow a script. The best insights challenge, unsettle, and demand a second look. If something in this issue made you pause, sit with it. That's where the real learning happens.
Until next month,
Richard
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