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Leaders who want to stay competitive can’t afford to ignore this. Whether an organization fully embraces AI or deliberately limits its use, it must know its appetite for risk, the degree to which it’s willing to accept uncertainty in pursuit of innovation. The answer to that question doesn’t come from technology. It comes from culture, ethics, and the willingness to design thoughtful systems of accountability.

Every thriving workplace has a kind of invisible gravity: the felt forces that keep people motivated, connected, and moving toward shared purpose. When that gravity is strong, people work hard because the work matters, not because someone is watching. When it’s weak, even talented teams drift. This framework translates decades of research into six conditions that reliably produce both high performance and high satisfaction.

In most workplaces, productivity is defined by what’s easiest to quantify: hours logged, tasks completed, revenue generated. But this narrow view misses the nuance of human work, especially as organizations scale and mature.

The secret to success? There isn’t one. We are all moving through life with some blend of privilege, effort, and luck. Pretending otherwise creates an unrealistic standard that if you just try hard enough, you’ll crack the code and reap all the rewards. But work--and life--isn’t a code to solve. It’s a practice. And like any practice, it requires two things we don’t often talk about together: grace and excellence.

“Managing up” is one of those workplace phrases that can make people bristle. It sometimes carries the whiff of manipulation: Are you trying to curry favor? Angle for visibility? Make your boss’s life easier at the expense of your own? But when you strip away the baggage, managing up is not about flattery or politics. It’s about influence and partnership. It’s about shaping how you collaborate with your boss so both of you can succeed.

At a recent staff retreat, someone asked a question that’s been stuck in my head ever since: what do you do when the culture isn’t what you want it to be, and it feels like a top-down issue?

In most organizations, executives are celebrated for their big decisions, bold strategies, and ability to drive growth. But, behind every successful leader is a support team working with these leaders whose work often goes unseen. This labor consists of a constant triage of calendars, emails, travel, and information flow isn’t just logistical support. It’s strategic leverage. Executive Assistants (EAs) transform leadership from reactive to proactive, creating the conditions w

Board meetings are where strategy becomes action. The minutes captured in these meetings don’t just document discussions: they become the official record of organizational direction. For junior admins, mastering board minutes is a high-impact skill that builds credibility and trust.

Junior admins often feel like they’re spending their days chasing executives and putting out fires: managing inbox chaos, juggling meeting prep, and reinventing the wheel with every recurring task. The reality is without systems, admin work eats time. The good news? You don’t need fancy software or years of experience to make a big impact. By mastering these three frameworks, you can reclaim hundreds (even thousands) of hours each year.

Let’s be honest: workplaces love a dashboard. Leaders want the comfort of numbers: utilization, KPIs, engagement scores and this is because data feels clean. But, culture is never clean. Some of your “top performers” are quietly dragging down the system, hiding in plain sight while the spreadsheets insist all is well.

Every team has them: the quiet disengager, the loud go-getter. One fades into the background, contributing little. The other leaps in with lots of opinions until their presence overwhelms the room. As organizations grow, it gets harder for leaders to tell the difference between true contribution and the illusion of it.

Becoming an “emerging cat lady” wasn’t on my five-year plan. But living in a household with three cats has unexpectedly sharpened my leadership skills. As it turns out, managing a team of employees has more in common with herding cats than I ever imagined.

Leadership isn’t a finish line, it’s a constant state of calibration. Yet too many organizations only measure management effectiveness during performance reviews, exit interviews, or after crises surface. By then, the damage is done.

When managers struggle with their teams, we often jump to familiar explanations: lack of training, unclear processes, or competing organizational priorities. While these are valid, there’s another layer we often avoid discussing--the personal histories managers carry into the workplace.