Anne Libby

September 10 update: as it turns out, the following post turned out to be a draft of the first email I sent out via a new-to-me newsletter provider. You may read the more refined piece over at the new home for my newsletter On Management, where I do most of my bloggity writing these days .

Last night I dreamt that my email newsletter, On Management was (already) up and running on Ghost. I haven’t published in a little over a month.

I’ve been running email newsletters on and off since the late 1990s. Originally, from my email client, RIP Eudora. In the late 00s, I sent out quarterly notes, using Constant Contact. There was a curation experiment in the early ‘10s, RIP Bitly Bundles.

I’ve published evolving iterations of On Management since 2015. I’ve used Mailchimp, Substack, and Buttondown.

The tl;dr is that I’m moving my newsletter to Ghost, where a version of this post will be the first email I send out. Some time after Labor Day.

I’m excited to get tools (content tags!) that better align with the way I write the newsletter. If the conversion process I’m now working through is any indication, I’ll also have more robust and engaged support than was possible from Substack or Buttondown.

(Mailchimp support for paid folks absolutely rocks. They’re also an apparently-profitable 20-year-old company with hundreds of experienced employees.)

Subscribers to On Management know that I send emails a couple of Sundays a month. I think the dream was my anxious wish that I’d be ready to send something out this weekend, after this long and conversion-related break.

The remainder of this post may be of interest to supporting members of the newsletter who pay to receive it, and/or newsletter and operations nerds.

Tl;dr for supporting members of the newsletter, if you’re reading the blog. Some of you received a notification that your subscription has been canceled. Others may receive such a notification, as I will not be able to move all of the paid subscribers to Ghost. I will make everyone whole, one way or another. I apologize, and thank you for your endurance.

Now, the part for the newsletter and ops nerds.

This has all been an absolute mess. Leaving Buttondown after leaving Substack has given me an insight about what made the mess. It’s a hypothetical insight. As such, it’s based on experience and inference. It may or may not be accurate.

The problem, as I see it, is with Stripe. You may know Stripe, a tech company that provides of many of the “frictionless” payments you’re making on the internets.

The problem is not Stripe itself. Works great, 10/10, would do business again.

It’s, hypothetically, that Stripe is an enterprise product. It’s meant to be used by companies that have teams of programmers who tirelessly integrate Stripe’s product with the company’s systems, so that the company can be paid.

So, paid newsletter companies like Substack, Buttondown, and Ghost serve as virtual teams of programmers for people like me, who can be paid, after simply connecting our Stripe accounts to the newsletter service. Boom.

The friction in these frictionless payments happens behind the scenes.

Because, hypothetically, like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each newsletter company has its own way of integrating with my Stripe account.

The Anne Libby Stripe account shows unique customer accounts for every paid reader. Leading Anne (aka me) to believe newsletter providers saying, they’re your readers, you can leave any time, and take them with you.

Bear with me, ops and newsletter nerds. It gets knotty.

A reader’s friction-free purchase of a newsletter subscription appears to create a customer account in Anne Libby’s Stripe account, and charges them for the subscription product they purchased. The product corresponds to the subscription price quoted at the time of purchase. The product, hypothetically, may be unique to the newsletter provider.

Example, one of my business values is to increase prices for my services every year. I work for myself, and nobody else is going to give me a raise. And, the newsletter is part of my business, where I see expenses go up every year. (Hashtag, capitalism!)

• So, 2018 Substack readers bought a different Stripe product — unbeknownst to me — than 2019 Substack readers, because they paid different prices.
• In my early Substack days, I experimentally offered discounts, which involved Stripe coupons. Each discount offer apparently created different Stripe products.
• Pre-Substack, I used Moonclerk as my Stripe payment processor. Early paid subscribers frictionlessly purchased unique Stripe products when their payments were processed by Moonclerk, which was never connected to any email service.

Hypothetically, different Stripe products at different prices — and possibly different Stripe-newsletter company/payment-processor integrations — do not lend themselves to automated conversion from one provider to the next.

Indeed, last month, as a final step in my extended conversion to Buttondown, with everyone “on Buttondown,” I closed seemingly redundant Moonclerk accounts for pre-Substack readers, to prevent double-charging anyone. I did this while in communication with Moonclerk support, and thought I was golden. However, though there was no relationship between Moonclerk and Stripe, closing those accounts triggered something at Stripe. Success? Nobody was charged twice — these readers were unceremoniously unsubscribed by Buttondown from their paid subscriptions, and won’t be charged at all. (Even though Moonclerk and Buttondown have never had anything to do with one another. WTH.)

Ghost’s conversion team has told me that that they can only convert member (paid) accounts that are currently being charged at the price I establish for subscriptions at Ghost. (Humming “Hotel California” rn.) Kudos to the folks at Ghost for not just telling me, “No problem.”

The bottom line is that some of the member (paid) accounts will not convert over to Ghost. And I’m worried that when I disconnect Buttondown from Stripe, more people will be unsubscribed.

I’ll take manual steps to be sure that everyone receives the correct level and term of subscription, and/or issue pro-rata refunds as necessary. If any of the supporting members happens to be reading this on my blog, I’ll be in touch with you directly after the conversion.

And true story, one of my goals with this newsletter was to write some weird and insightful things. Which I hope to get back to after this hopefully last conversion*.

While I never thought I’d stop consulting and coaching to make my newsletter a full time job (lol) my other goal has been to develop my newsletter, over a multi-year period, into a small but meaningful line item on my income statement. Over the last several months, my time that would have gone into working on that side of the newsletter has gone towards a lot of conversion stuff. And for the last month, so has the time I would have spent actually writing my newsletter. It has not been friction free.

Onwards.

(*It is certainly my last conversion to any service standing between me and Stripe. I also see Stripe working to service folks in the no-code space. If this is you, I’d say, be sure that you know how Stripe customer accounts and products actually work. I’m still not sure that I do.)

This is a lightly edited version of a piece that originally appeared in my newsletter, Summer Reading 2020: On Management #44.

If you’re reading this, you may be in tech, media, VC, not-for-profit, higher education, government, or beyond.

Maybe you lead a team, HR, an organization — or you own a business. You’re probably in the US, Canada, the UK, or Australia. Or not.

Hello.

I usually feel competent to share information that’s widely useful, based on experience and what I’m seeing Out There.

Right now, I have little sense for any sort of universal experience. Even here in the US. Even in my close cohort.

Some are safely working remotely, maybe challenged by home-work boundaries and child care. Others have been pressured to return to workplaces that may not be safe.

They’ve been let go, or work in organizations that are subject to rolling layoffs. Some are in job-search mode.

Others have gotten sick.

Right now, I only see one universal truth: you’ve got to be a better manager.

There’s no panacea. There’s no training, coach, newsletter, or book, that’s got you completely covered for this moment.

It’s time to practice what you already know. You can start by looking in the mirror:

• Be sure that people know what’s expected. Are you talking with people individually, and aligning goals with current priorities? Do team members have goals? Are you providing regular feedback?
  
• Get a handle on key projects and objectives. Does everyone know their role in moving things across the finish line?
  

• Understand where your team is under-resourced. What projects or processes are in trouble? Can anything be dropped? How can your support make a difference?
  
• Identify, if you can, whether anyone is struggling personally. This is tough. So many have been taught to hide when we have problems. Does your organization have an Employee Assistance Program?
  
• When you have a management challenge, get help from a human. Can you list 3 experienced managers in your circle who will take your call? (Hint: your mom counts.)
  
• Get feedback. “What can I do more/less often to make your job easier,” is a great question to ask team members in 1:1s. You are having 1:1s, right?

One of your best tools is your own moral compass.

Are you doing the right thing? Is the way you’re being treated okay? Are you treating others as you wish to be treated?

“Normal” is gone. It’s gone for good. We can’t be waiting to go back there. Our choices, in aggregate, will co-create our new normal.

Make good choices.

Image via @sketchplanator on Twitter; h/t Alex Wykoff, who tweeted it into my feed.

An earlier version of this piece first appeared in Slowness, Speed and Structure: On Management #31;  I’ve made some minor edits.  You can subscribe to my newsletter here.

So, you’re going to a manager training. You may/may not be stoked. How can it be a success? Spoiler alert: set some goals, for yourself.

That said, let’s start with your organization’s goals.

Here’s a not-secret about management development programs.

The list of skills you need to learn, and master over time, is not long. On theme with my chat with Bethany Crystal: this list is not evolving terribly fast.

This stuff is not brain surgery.

“Setting mission-aligned goals, using 1:1s to create relationship and accountability, giving actionable feedback, developing and coaching team members, and so forth.” (- one of my own recent descriptions of best practices *)

When your bosses send you to training, tbh, they aren’t always thinking about where management development fits into the organization’s strategic goals.

They’re thinking about how much time. How much money.

And they hope. They hope you’ll learn the practices and processes of management.

Mostly, they hope you will change.

There is a space between what you’re already doing, and what they hope. This gap can look like a performance shortfall. This may/may not be fair.

Mind the gap.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: figure out how you need to change. Because training won’t “install” a gap-fixer on you. You’ll have to do some work, with your community, by practicing.

1. Inquire. Ask your boss, your team members, “I’m setting goals for what I need to learn in manager training. What do you suggest?”

You may not get a good answer. Persevere.

Unearth feedback about your performance as a manager. Are there results from employee engagement surveys? Your last review?

You may need to read between the lines. Persevere.

Form a hypothesis about what you want to do differently after completing the training. Share this with others. Ask for feedback; revise as necessary.

2. Prepare. Preview the subject matter to be covered. Consider how the topic comes into play in your work. Develop questions around each topic.

Decide what you want to learn. Write it down. Share, ask for feedback, revise.

3. Engage. Use the instructor: bring your questions with you. Ask them.

Take notes, by hand.

Unless there’s an unfolding family emergency, stow your devices during the session(s), and mute your notifications.

4. Integrate. After the session, review your notes. What was new, or surprising? What do you disagree with?

What are your questions, now? Write them down.

Discuss your questions with a peer, your boss, or another manager in your life. (Hi, mom.)

The most important question: what will you put into action, in your work, starting today?

5. Mind the gap. If one could learn to manage people in a classroom, every MBA would be a great manager. #truth

So if you didn’t learn what you wanted to learn, it might be because you have to practice, in real life.

Or maybe you weren’t stoked, and tried to look like you were taking notes on your laptop. No shame, no blame.

Review your notes and materials from the training again. Get some direction from a manager or a mentor.

What can you put into action, right now? Figure this out, and then start to practice.

6.  Check yourself, before you wreck — well, everyone.

You know what?  After you’ve been managing for a while, you may start to feel that being a manager isn’t working for you.  You don’t like it.  You don’t want to improve.

You would not be the first.

Maybe you took the promotion, without understanding that the job requires a lot of previously invisible work.  It just might not be for you. That’s not your failure.

The failure would be to continue along in the role, faking it. You’ll be miserable, and so will your team members. This is one of those “call a lifeline” career moments. Talk this one through with someone you trust.

Photo:  wocintech (microsoft) – 173, by WOCinTech Chat on Flickr, under CC BY2.0.

Ok, yesterday was actually Labor Day.  I took the day off.

Now that I’m “blogging” at my newsletter, this space has become a bit ghost-towny.  I’ve decided to occasionally share some of the newsletter posts here, too.

“Vocational awe and (short)changing the world,” first appeared in Minimum Viable Passion:  On Management #37.  I’ve edited the original piece slightly for clarity.

You can subscribe to the free newsletter here.

And if you don’t buy into it, if you’re one of those people who say, “Well wait a minute. Yes, my job is important. Yes, I really care about my career, but I also want to have a family. I also want to engage in a robust personal life.”

Then…you become someone who is seen as less effective, solely because you’re quote-unquote “less passionate” about your job. And if you’re seen as less passionate, and therefore seen as less effective, well, then there’s no room for professional growth.

Fobazi Ettarh in conversation with me, On Management #37

Fobazi Ettarh joined me to discuss narratives about changing the world and passion in the workplace. And a concept she named, and is exploring: vocational awe.

Is an organizational mission or profession so important that it’s beyond criticism?

There’s more from Fobazi in our audio. I edited our converation for length and clarity.

Fobazi’s work on vocational awe is informed by her experience as an academic librarian.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.  Look for vocational awe when you see a workplace narrative about being mission-driven, or passionate.  I see it in tech and startups. In not-for-profits.

At best, mission is a roadmap to a goal, not a license to treat people poorly.  Passion is an emotional state, not an achievement.

Seek to understand what’s actually being asked of you.  Also:

Passion, devotion, and awe are not sustainable sources of income.

Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves, by Fobazi Ettarh

Fobazi Ettarh is the Undergraduate Success Librarian at Rutgers University-Newark.  She specializes in information literacy instruction, K-12 pedagogy, and co-curricular outreach.

Her research interests include equity, diversity, and inclusion in librarianship, and the ways in which societal expectations and infrastructures privilege and/or marginalize certain groups.  You’ll find more of Fobazi’s work here:

• Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves
• Becoming A Proud “Bad” Librarian, and more, is at her blog.
• Killing Me Softly: A Game about Microaggressions

Photo:  20091128 by Douglas O’Brien, via Flickr, used under CC BY-SA 2.0.  Chuck’s cottage looks awesome.

My summer reading list is topped by two (not-quite) thrillers about secrets, lies, and workplace culture, and I write about them in Issue 29 of my newsletter, which goes out to subscribers starting on July 15.

Everyone seemed to be reading Bad Blood:  Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley (library).  I discovered Ranger Games (author’s site) (library) via a blog post by its author.

Sometimes the books I’m reading seem to talk with one another.  I love that.

If friction between culture, ethical choices, and free will interest you — and it should — Ranger Games and Bad Blood both explore workplaces where something has gone off the rails.

…

In On Management #29, I also talk with Orbital founder Gary Chou and entrepreneur/developer Kirsten Lambertsen about their favorite books about work.

Neither of which turned out to actually be a book, which was fine by me.

As previously noted, much of my writing energy is now being channeled into Anne Libby On #Management.

On #Management is free, though I recently launched a supporting membership program, which you can find over on Substack.

• This month, Supporting Members will receive my additional analysis about new developments in managing people in a #Me Too world.
• I’ve also opened my calendar one day a month to supporting members, for 1:1 office hours.  In the next week or so I’ll open up appointment slots for August 16.

Photo:  Reading, by mrhayata, used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

When I was more actively blogging, I wrote about Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, as a lesson in hiring.

I recently re-read Moneyball, and watched the film again, too.  This time, I took away lessons about change at work.  And I wrote about it in my most recent newsletter.  Here’s an excerpt.

“…people didn’t want to change.

Players were comfortable in the status quo, even when it was painful to be on a losing team.  Scouts and coaches told Beane it wouldn’t work, that they knew better. 

Others said, “Yes, ok” to his face, and then kept doing what they wanted to do.  (The worst.)

Some who couldn’t get on board had to go.  After they left, they weren’t quiet:  they took their opinions to the press.  Ever find out that a former employee is still trying to exert influence by whispering negative things to your team?  Change is hard.

The film also shows, subtly, that you can’t go it alone.  You need support from your boss.  And from your people:  results started to come after Beane enlisted team members as leaders in the change process….”

In On Management #28, I also talked with Karin McGrath Dunn, President of PRD Management, about change as a  multi-year journey, and how organizational values matter when you’re leading people and change.

As previously noted, much of my writing energy is now being channeled into Anne Libby On #Management.  On Management #28 actually went out a few weeks ago; new subscribers will receive a link to all of this until Issue #29 goes out, probably in early July.

On #Management is free, though I recently launched a supporting membership program.

• This month, supporting members received my essay that’s actually a response to a member’s question, “You Don’t Need to Change Your Culture.  You Have to Change the Way You Treat People.”
• I’ve also opened my calendar one day a month to supporting members, for 1:1 office hours.  I’m currently booking appointments for July 19.
• To get my (free) newsletter, or become a supporting member, head over to Substack.

Photo:  Changing Skies by Ronnie Robertson, used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

“If you read about learning at work, you may come across “70-20-10.”

70% of learning comes from experience.  20% from other people.  And, 10% from formal training and coursework.  Or so they say.

70-20-10 is likely more an aphorism than a fact of math. That said, its intuitive appeal aligns with academic discussion of deliberate practice as a prerequisite to expertise.  (AKA the 10,000 Hour Rule.)

We expect training to change minds, and behaviors.  That’s a heavy lift.

You probably know from experience that training isn’t a silver bullet.

Every MBA is not a good people manager.  QED.

…”

Thus begins Issue #27 of my newsletter, which also includes the rebooted/re-edited audio of my conversation with diversity and inclusion expert Juliette Austin, of FrankEvans Consulting, and the rest of this article.

To read on about what you can do, personally, to level up the impact of training efforts, and my thoughts on a one day training we’re hearing about in the media, either check your inbox, or subscribe.

As noted late last year, I’m largely redirecting my blogging energy to my newsletter, Anne Libby On #Management.  Which I’m also evolving.  For one thing, I’ve soft-launched a supporting membership.  This month, paying members will receive an extended reading list for Issue #27.

(September, 2018 update:  my (free) newsletter, and supporting membership are both available in my spot over on Substack.)

Photo: Exercise „Ziema” in Ādaži Training Area, 2017, by Kārlis Dambrāns under CC BY 2.0 license via Flickr.

To reckon is count, estimate, or compute.  Or to consider.  In the cascade of media coverage on workplace harassment, “reckoning” has emerged as a word, or maybe the word, to describe this moment.

The word acknowledges that we’re not done yet, though:  we’re in more than a moment.

Dead reckoning is a navigator’s iterative calculation process used to estimate location.  Given information believed to be certain, like starting point, distance traveled, and speed, a navigator can calculate a ship’s dead reckoning position, or fix.

Per the American Practical Navigator, dead reckoning’s “…most important use is in projecting the ship’s position in the immediate future and avoiding hazards to navigation….

(continued in my December, 2017 newsletter)

For the last 2+years, I’ve been experimenting with sending my work out to a more targeted audience.  If you’d like to read my entire take on “reckoning” and the top workplace story of 2017, it will go out on 12/31 in my December, 2017 management newsletter.

Down the road, I may link back to the newsletter for the rest of this article.  I haven’t decided about that.  There’s more on my thinking about this in the newsletter, too.

Thanks very much for reading.

September 2018 update:  I’ve moved my newsletter over to Substack.  You can subscribe here, and at some point I may transfer the newsletter archives over there…)

Photo:  Navigation, by Julien Carnot, on Flickr, under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

Leaders frequently refer to mission and values as though they are fully realized operating systems.  And when you’ve done the work, they can be.

Often, they’re a bit intangible.

Values are more than what you say you believe.  They’re what you actually do:  what you allow, and what you hold people responsible for enacting.

I’ve written about this before, so won’t go on and on here.

Codes of conduct address behavior and action; at best, they allow people to recognize the embodiment of values.  And when values are being violated.

There’s a deeper dive in my October/November newsletter, where I talked with Jed Schmidt, one of the founders of Brooklyn JS.  Here’s a teaser for our conversation.

The audio will be available in the newsletter, which goes out in mid-November.  You’re invited!

Photo:  Knights, by Brad from Flickr, used under CC2.0 license.

The word “ire” doesn’t describe my feelings about several accounts I read yesterday of a powerful man’s (allegedly) horrendous treatment of young, talented, ambitious women in the workplace.

What struck my heart hardest was a remark by filmmaker Karen Katz, also called out in a piece by Rebecca Traister, “We were so young at the time…We did not understand how wrong it was or how Laura should deal with it.”

Whatever my emotion was last night, this morning it has annealed.

Growing up in suburban Chicago in the 70s, there were PTA “Block Angels.”  Women posted signs in their front windows — as I recall, the image was a blue and white icon of an angel.  The sign meant that if you were hurt or scared, even if you didn’t know the mom, you could ring the doorbell and get help.

If you’re reading this blog post, you probably know me.  Or you know someone who knows me.  The tech/startup community is pretty small.

If you’re being harassed, if you’re seeing situations that make you feel unsafe or uncomfortable at work, you can reach out to me.  Even if you don’t know me.

I’ll help you.

Brava, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.

Photo:  Angel by Mike Knell, via Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0.  And, what a delightful collection Mike has made in his Roundel Project.  No, Mike, it is not wrong to collect shots of platform signs from every London Underground station.  It’s lovelyl