This week, in issue #71 of the TalentStories newsletter, “The Great Thinning Out of the Traditional Firm”, a visit to the city of San Francisco is cause to explore the massive dispersion happening at work. San Francisco happens to be on the cutting edge of work so you feel, acutely, the decentralizing effects of the pandemic, of shifting work norms, and of a decade of technological change. 

But here's the thing: it's not just employees who are decentralizing; who are leaving this city, and leaving bigger firms. The firms themselves are consciously and unconsciously thinning themselves out.

Today, our stories explore how and why. And taken together, they also prompt us to ask: if the supply of workers continues to shrink -- to decentralize, if not opt out of traditional work altogether -- and if technology simultaneously causes firms to reduce demand for talent by becoming smaller over time, what happens to the traditional firm, and the labor market? In other words, what happens to work itself? 

This week we explore how organizations provide for fundamental human needs like meaning, purpose, connection and belonging. It turns out those needs don't just disappear - poof! - when we get to work. On the contrary, people spend so much time at work, and derive so much meaning from it, that leaders and organizations are invariably asked to provide for these needs. Our Stories today serve as reminders of this responsibility -- but also of the unique opportunity and potential for impact that a leader can have on the people around them.

This week, in issue #69 of the TalentStories newsletter, “How will we work here? Job titles -- and job content -- go haywire in the new world of work”, we use our 3 Stories to ask: given the challenges and changes -- distributed work, technology, demography, connection -- and given the human and business stakes involved, do we need new and dedicated resources within our organizations to be able to define: how will we work here? 

In a 1999 study, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson first coined the term "psychological safety". She defined it there as:

"A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. A sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up."

Psychological safety is also a research-backed concept which we now know plays a crucial role in team cohesion and performance. So this week, in issue #68 of the TalentStories newsletter, “(Psychological) Safety First”, we use our 3 Stories this week to come up to speed on it. 

The world is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, the effects of which have a vast impact on the economy, on culture and on politics. This week, in issue #67 of the TalentStories newsletter, “It’s getting lonely at work”, we explore the way work – where we spend so many of our waking hours – has become an increasingly lonely place to be, and ask what we can do to make it less so.

Today, we hone in on the idea of "decentralization". We see decentralization happening everywhere: in politics and government, in the media, in banks and finance, in big tech -- and we absolutely see it happening at work.

Decentralization is a reaction to a global erosion of trust and confidence across many of the (centralized) institutions upon which we have relied in decades past.

But it’s not just a move from the center to the fringes -- it also connotes a shift in power. And that (largely zero sum) power shift, in turn, animates so much of what we see happening in 2023.

Today, we use our 3 Stories to explore decentralization at work, on 3 different levels: as a society, on a company-level, and as individuals. And we ask, always, what it means for us as organizations and leaders.

Back in issue #6 of TalentStories we deep-dove into mental health and wellness. Nearly 60 issues later, here in #65, we revisit what are still massive issues at work. How do we strike a balance between needing to treat the symptoms of burnout after the fact, once the damage is already done; versus trying to improve mental health more systemically, at its source – by redesigning the way our organizations and our work are fundamentally structured? Does the true solve not lie in a more wholesale reimagining of our work that is more human? And if so, how much leverage does a manager or leader have to impact teams' mental health and burnout?

This week our 3 Stories help us understand these tensions, and provide us with some concrete steps we can take to assuage the pain, too.

“So many organizations are failing to demonstrate that they appreciate the world has changed. They've yet to acknowledge the pieces on the ground, much less offer a vision for how to pick them up and reassemble them. Even as their people are, clearly, busy doing so. All in all, it's a painful lack of self-awareness, communication, adaptation -- leadership -- that is being modeled to teams that are, in fact, being quite clear about what they want and need: clarity, flexibility, and connection; agency, growth, and purpose.”

In issue #64 of the TalentStories newsletter – “What’s going on at work?” – our 3 Stories are insights and quotes from different observers of work on the great disconnect that's afoot, and the need for leaders to adapt to our changed, never-going-back-to-the-way-it-was world.