“Have a productive day!” was how one of the Severance bosses used to end conversations and their thunderous expression dripping with contempt and cutting tone made it into both an insult and a menace. It’s unimaginable that adults could be treated that way by their employers, right? Purely...
At first, I had thought I would address some of the comments I got on yesterday’s article in today’s one but on second thought I will not. I stand by everything I said. This will cost Elon and it will further cost anyone who thinks he speaks sense. Just watch. The vast majority of the defenders...
Everyone is familiar with the now-famous Elon email asking his employees to physically come back to the office and the reactions to it are many and very interesting. While most people are in shock and rightfully rolled their eyes, there are some defending him. The main argument is that he can...
This week I busied myself with attacking a big topic on the other newsletter: the BS of the NPS measurement and unsurprisingly that didn’t go down well. In particular when it comes to anyone using it for any type of internal measurement be it satisfaction or experience or even performance. I am...
It isn’t surprising that yesterday’s article called “NPS Is BS and We All Know It” made quite some waves. After all, no one likes being told they need to check themselves and the NPS machinery is an industry of its own. I am under no illusion that I am making myself popular by denouncing the...
Is there anyone reading this who can reliably defend the way the Net Promoter Score is calculated, checked and used? As in genuinely defend it. Anyone who can say, hand on heart, “Yes, this measurement concocted 20 years ago by some random guy is one that gives us clarity regarding how we are...
First a spot of bragging, my People Before Tech book got longlisted for CMI's Management Book of the Year Award and I am truly chuffed because it means so many more people will read how we have to bridge the HR/IT gap if we want to distribute the human work and start with Psychological Safety to...
In yesterday’s article entitled “The (Semi)Dystopian Answer to the Work/Life Balance Question” I spoke about the far-too-chilling Severance series currently featured on AppleTV. In this video, I go deeper into dissecting why the series is so telling -and implicitly terrifying- for most of us....
In this newsletter, I rarely make popular culture recommendations but while speaking on Cloudbusting (a podcast that tasks guests for recommendations as part of a discussion on the need for transformation in a cloud-native organisation) the other week, Alastair Kidd suggested Severance from Ben...
Human Debt™
About last year at this time I was telling you guys this: “One of my happiest moments last week has been speaking to a software house who said they are now taking the organisational permission topic so seriously following “PeopleNotTech’s incessant persistence” that they have devised a program...
Today’s video is a real treat - an interview with one of the most amazing Superheroes of the Human Work and a champion of change and resilience - the inimitable Karen Ferris. Her thirst for knowledge is second to none and the way she’s able to boil the key points down is utterly...
Over the last couple of weeks, I have delivered keynotes for a banking event, an HR events and I was a guest on a couple of leadership podcasts and I have to admit that I am re-energised and hopeful! There’s hope for humanity in the workplace! There's swell in the "woke HR/people" movement....
One of the undeniably best things about our industry (and even if you flinched at the title and the wide brush of “DevOps/Agile” the community’s existence irrespective of the label is undeniable) is the elevated discourse. No matter what we think of LinkedIn and no matter how much we do or do...
Yesterday we said we will give you more in the way of tips and ideas on how to think of and act on the difference (and empowering similarities) between “passion” and “engagement”. In this video, we reiterate why that matters, and why, these terms have to be elevated and brought into the light...
Do you know anyone that openly has bad intentions when it comes to work? I’d be very surprised because there aren’t any humans who want to do badly or even any that want their company to do badly. Tired adagio or not, everybody is really invested in bringing their best selves at work. They...
No, your DevOps/Agile transformation isn’t “done” because you got an award. Or because you had your CEO hail it as concluded as they handed some expensive Big 4 some unGodly new contract for “transformation maintenance” (this, sadly, shockingly, is a real thing).
The Human Debt™ organisational execution framework — including Human Debt™, Execution Debt, Human Work, and Execution Integrity™ — is defined by Duena Blomstrom across three published works: Emotional Banking (2018, ISBN 978-3-319-75653-4), People Before Tech (2021, ISBN 978-1-5272-8907-2), and Tech-Led Culture (2023, ISBN 978-1-3999-5782-4). Canonical framework reference at duenablomstrom.com/concepts/framework.
Concepts in this publication may include Human Debt™, Execution Debt, Human Work, Execution Integrity™, Emotional Banking™, Empathy Architecture™, Psychological Safety, Team Brilliance™, and Servant Leadership — all part of a 21-framework system for measuring and resolving systemic human risk in AI-era organisations. Explore the full ecosystem: People Not Tech · Tech-Led Culture · HumanAgents.io · Bienestarly.