📖 Recent Quotes 📖

• So was lost the army's leader,
  Ethelred's earl. They all saw,
  his hearth-men, that their high-lord was dead.
  Yet still advanced these valiant men;
  fearless warriors, they came forward readily;
  they all wanted one of two things,
  to avenge their lord or lay down their lives.

  an excerpt from The Battle of Maldon, written by Anonymous in 991

• Interestingly, this shift in thinking may not so much change our behavior with subordinates or with bosses; instead, it changes the context in which we operate. We continue to support, reward, and influence people, but we do it out of our own sense of what is right and wrong. We do those things as an ethical stance, or a philosophical stance, rather than as a motivational strategy. We construct processes that are transparent and as fair as possible. High performers should definitely make more money, but we do not have to rank order people or stamp a number or letter grade on their forehead.
  
  As employees, the moment we accept our freedom, we stop treating leaders and managers as if they were so important. We hope they are smart about the business we are in, but they are no longer the cause of our satisfaction or our performance. They just exist as partners or colleagues to be dealt with, as does all that comes toward us in life. My anxiety, my willingness to accept the fact that I am running out of time, my guilt for what possibilities I have not yet fulfilled, all belong to me and the subjective manner in which I have constructed or constituted my own experience. This is at the center of an alternative story I can live into.

  an excerpt from Confronting Our Freedom, written by Peter Block in 2023

• Most workplaces are breeding grounds for unfulfilled expectations, which easily turn into resentment. Too often we expect things from the institution and its leaders that were unfulfilled for us as children. We want our bosses to be congruent, to walk their talk, to get along well together. We want to be the favorite employee, just as we wished to be the favorite child. There is no more constant and plaintive cry heard from employees than the wish for their bosses to be something more, something different. They claim their bosses don't communicate about what the future looks like....
  
  The gap between what our workplace is and what we wish it to be gives meaning to our being there. Even if we are there only two days a week. It creates a vacuum that can only be filled through the discovery of our freedom and accepting the accountability to re-found our institutions to become places we wish to inhabit. Our institutions are transformed the moment we decide they are ours to create.

  an excerpt from Confronting Our Freedom, written by Peter Block in 2023

📓 Recent Notes 📓

• It's the Aeneid! What are you looking for from me here - it's like the tenth most famous book in the world.

  an note about The Aeneid, written by Publius Vergilius Maro Virgil in -19

• You can't say Choose Your Own Adventure because that's copyrighted by the Choose Your Own Adventure people, but here's the same mechanic but retelling Romeo and Juliet. There IS a single pathway through that gets you to a similar story arc, but North's retelling has wild options, and wild characters, and you're just as likely to 'play' as Juliet and become a pirate or 'play' as Romeo and die horribly. Ryan North is always funny (he's the Dinosaur Comics guy!), and his usual charm and casual verbosity is on display here.

  an note about Romeo And/Or Juliet, written by Ryan North in 2016

• It's a bit funny, because it's really structured like an airport-bookstore business/selfhelp book, and has the same breezy tone. You can imagine one that's much more pointed about drawing the connections between 'managing your employees' and 'should your slaves be allowed to get married'. But Toner takes a more balanced approach, having Falx say 'some people do this, you might consider that' and then Toner walks it all back with historical references and disclamations. All in all this flattens the effect. I think it would be more compelling if it leaned harder into its own joke!

  an note about How to Manage Your Slaves, written by Jerry Toner in 2014

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