2024 Weeknote 37 : I have concepts of a weeknote

September 9 – 15

My “weeknotes” capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, mostly focused on work. Learn more about the weeknotes concept here.

[1] Reddit therapy, growth mindset, psychological safety, and leadership

I don’t have a lot this week, but I did stumble across this little gem shared on Reddit…

This brought up all kinds of thoughts. It feels like this is the way government teams often think. And I can definitely point to cases where I’ve done this to myself or seen it in others. Those bars are very comforting to hold on to, even if they can hold you back.

At work, we’ve been promoting the “growth mindset” concept for a couple years now, and this graphic might illustrate it perfectly. Just fly out one of the open sides!

Of course, it’s not that simple. Flying requires energy. Having agency requires energy. It requires taking responsibility.

When all the articles about “psychological safety” at work started coming out a few years back, I thought, “What is this B.S.?” I’ve since changed my mind on that, and I think this graphic hints why. The bars in front of the bird, though they are constraining, are at least “safe” — the bird knows where they are, knows their strength, knows he can’t slip between them. Flying out the side of the cage requires the bird to plot his own course and take his chances. That’s not “safe” in a lot of workplaces.

So what are you doing, as a leader, to make flying to the left or to the right safer for your team? Or are you all about the bars.

[2] Miscellanea

• This weeknote is shorter because I put more energy intp a new post over on the GX Foundry site: Learning to share the joys of UX research in local government
• Next week is the culmination of the “recognition program” awards I started at the end of last year and start of this year with the GX Foundry. Now it’s going wide, with nearly 70 individual 2023 awards spread across our full organization. We share all the work on Tuesday… and it’s only several months late!
• We had our first Digital Services Academy with Granicus this past Friday. Good class, and Sarah had the smarts to invite everyone from across the GX Foundry. It’s a solid intro to some UX research concepts. 9 hours in total.
• We’re working on a proposal for some new branding for FCDC. Excited to put something together for consideration. No idea if it will fly. But it’ll be cool. We’re taking the core elements of the GX Foundry logo and remixing it into multiple logo treatments for use with the broader organization and her teams. It’s a fun “system” of branding. Not holding my breath, though.
• I finally opened a GX Foundry Swag Store this week. You can look, but don’t order if you don’t work with me. Everything gets shipped to our office. So buy me something if you like! 🙂

[3] Watch This

Back in the day I was a regular Chili’s customer and not just at the airport! But like its basic restaurant chain brethren, quality of service and food fell over time and I stopped going. In recent years I’ve assumed they were either out of business or headed there. So it was interesting to see Chili’s is a standout in their sector these days, increasing revenue quarter over quarter in the years since the pandemic eased. This is their comeback story (and I love a turnaround).

Still not going back, myself. (Though I do miss those southwestern eggrolls.)

[4] Internet Funnies

In the wake of the Harris / Trump debate this past week, there’s a lot less non-political funny stuff online, so this week’s edition of the Funnies is a bit limited.

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