10 Things We Loved About 2021

Here we are at the end of the year, so it’s only fitting we take stock - I wrote over 100 editions of this newsletter this year. Frankly, they’re too many for me to write a detailed (but likely “I-told-you-so”) retrospective -or even re-read TBH!:)- but we have predicted and debated much of what we saw happening this year in the world of work and then we always returned to the main compass - the ideas that are the pillars of how we can make it all about the people not the technology, the organisation, the numbers, or the process.

These are the big themes we have been hammering at PeopleNotTech on relentlessly on repeat:

• These are the big themes we have been hammering at PeopleNotTech on relentlessly on repeat:
• Increase Psychological Safety if you want to see happy, retained teams and high performance - stop impression management, start working on a feedback loop of data and action!
• Teams themselves can put in the work to better their team dynamic -if you’re an organisation- empower and give autonomy and support and if you’re the team itself - stop the excuses and do the work!
• The HumanDebt™ (all of the things we left undone that we owe our employees so we make them feel valued, respected, happy and performant) needs to be worked on intently and that needs to happen NOW!
• There’s a lack of true organisational permission from encouragement to resources!
• There’s a clear and present danger in the Great Resignation - the resignation of the leavers and that of the stayers!
• The human work needs to be made a true day-to-day work priority and it needs to be done before the ops and coding work!
• Servant leadership is the only way to go in the advent of hybrid-only but it needs rewiring the mindsets of micromanaging leaders who are clinging to command and control!
• HR and Ops/Tech need to build a bridge and tackle the HumanDebt together. Or else!
• All of them are worthy of that dramatic exclamation point at the end, because they’re all urgent and super important.

Increase Psychological Safety if you want to see happy, retained teams and high performance - stop impression management, start working on a feedback loop of data and action!

Teams themselves can put in the work to better their team dynamic -if you’re an organisation- empower and give autonomy and support and if you’re the team itself - stop the excuses and do the work!

The HumanDebt™ (all of the things we left undone that we owe our employees so we make them feel valued, respected, happy and performant) needs to be worked on intently and that needs to happen NOW!