The recent rounds of layoffs, which have hit middle managers particularly hard, have raised an important question. 1 Do we even need middle managers anymore? On one side, companies have flattened their hierarchies, and the managers they retain are…

I have gotten some feedback that what I have been writing has been too dense and not actionable enough. This week, I am going to try something different. Please share your thoughts by replying to this email. I don’t…

In past newsletters, I have reviewed several books on the transindividual, and while those were densely theoretical, I am now working on making them more practical as a basis for a new approach to change. The fundamental question I…

In the previous newsletter, we looked at how Yves Citton defines power (as the flow of desire and belief) in his book Mythocracy: How Stories Shape Our Worlds. In this newsletter, we will explore narrative as a form of…

‘I’m telling people that they’ve tried everything, and now they have to try mythocracy. They’ve got a democracy, theocracy. The mythocracy is what you never came to be that you should be.’ – Sun Ra 1 Yves Citton’s Mythocracy:…

This summer, I will give a talk at Agile 2025 on how we shape and are shaped by the systems we inhabit. For research on that talk, I have continued to investigate the concept of the transindividual. In this…

It is a common theme to hear from coaches that change isn’t good or bad; your mindset makes it what it is. These coaches then teach you to change your mindset to take advantage of any disruption as a…

There are two standard views about individuals and groups. The most common view is that individuals are primary. This is usually characterized by people thinking that to build the best teams, you need the best people (as if these…