The wisdom of old maps

Hey there,

You might be surprised to be getting a newsletter-y thing from me. I’m sort of surprised to be sending one. Some time ago, you put your name on a list to get one of these whenever it came out. Maybe you forgot, and that’s ok.

What’s up?

Maybe it’s been a few weeks since we last talked, perhaps it’s been a few years. Like many people, I’ve pulled way back on social media, which is a good thing. However, that means I’ve lost a lot of my channels for talking about work-related things with work-related people.

But before we get into that, here’s a quick catch-up:

I took some time off - about 1.5 years worth, which was simultaneously the right amount of time and slightly too long. If you are thinking about it and are fortunate enough to be able, I definitely recommend it.

After that, I’ve been quietly working in two areas:

Coaching/mentoring/advising and investing in people and companies that aim to reduce toil and increase joy and purpose at work. That loosely falls into the “Future of Work” category; I think of it as better tools for humans.

Building mini-products, exploring what it would take to build a product company in the recruitment space. Hiring is a challenging area, but one where the potential (200+ billion dollar market) and the impact (replacing shitty, biased recruiting processes that managers and candidates both hate) is right in my wheelhouse.

Of course, I’ve been doing a whole host of other things like helping launch a contact tracing platform, moving to Seattle in the middle of a pandemic, and adopting a rescue dog.

So what’s this thing all about? Maps?

Certain kinds of old maps are embellished with aphorisms like “Honor the Past, Consecrate the Present, Have Faith in the Future.”

I like this framing for beginning new things - I’ve framed the beginning of many a planning session and strategy off-site this way. It seems like a fitting framing for this thing as well.

This is an experiment. I’m not sure what I want it to be yet.

These days, my professional conversations are either happening in private Slack communities or 1:1 with my customers or advisees. These are great, but something is missing. Topics that are too verbose for Slack, content that is great for individuals and teams but deserves to be shared more broadly, those kinds of things.

For now, it’ll be a mix of long-form content and some short-form stuff. Mostly what I’m working on, thinking about, and what the people I coach and advise ask me for help with.

I’m certainly going to be talking quite a bit about recruitment, because that’s my focus at present, professionally. I will also be talking about leadership, building teams, and building products, which I’m sure comes as no surprise.

I’m not trying to turn writing into my full-time gig, so I make no promises about the timing of future posts, other than to almost certainly guarantee they’ll be sporadic.

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I’d love to hear from you about what you’d like to hear from me! I’d also like to hear how you’re doing, so drop me a line.

I hope you find some useful and interesting things here. If you do, I’d appreciate you sharing it with anyone else who might benefit.