2025 Weeknote 45 : It happened again

November 3 – 9

📆 My weeknotes capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, often focused on work, but with personal stuff, too. Learn more about weeknotes.

Professional weeknotes

• As I mentioned last week, there were 2 resignations on one of my teams. This week saw another resignation. In all 3 cases the departing folks found new opportunities / job offers they wanted to pursue. This is provoking a lot of reactions on the teams and my own thoughts, of course. For me, I’m actually impressed people are finding great roles out there. It feels like the job market, generally, is a mess, so it’s reassuring that yes, there are jobs out there, and yes, companies are following through on hiring. But of course it’s also a little unnerving when 3 resignations hit your teams in just 2 weeks. I’ve always said I don’t expect anyone to stay with our organization forever and we have to put our own career interests first (because companies either can’t or won’t). But I never meant everyone should leave in the same month! LOL
• The resignations are sparking some deeper conversations about culture, leadership, and opportunity. That’s normal. What it may also do in the short run is accelerate some changes I was already thinking about… but had planned to delay until we could complete our Team Topologies exploration. For now I’m thinking through some things. On the one hand, I like to say “never let a crisis go to waste” and I may want to capitalize on these changes. On the other hand, I don’t want to react too fast or too much. Watch this space, I suppose.
• Which brings me to a realization—captured through feedback that made it to me late this week. In introducing the Team Topologies exploration, I’ve consistently said these new models may spark an overhaul in how we are organized, but I’ve left the door open to the possibility that we may change nothing at all—maybe things are fine the way they are. I was trying to make space for “no change” as an option, and to de-pressurize the talks so folks wouldn’t feel threatened by potential change on the horizon. But that may not have been a good idea. It’s made some folks wonder why we’re doing the TT work at all, if not to change things. I need to let our teams know that, yes, it’s possible we won’t change… just like it’s possible I could be the next actor to play James Bond. No. The intent is to change, to find the next wave of innovation for our teams and possibly more parts of the organization, too. Status quo is not a likely destination. I have to find a way to telegraph that to the team, and let everyone sit with the discomfort. I owe them that professional courtesy.
• Meanwhile, the Team Topologies discussions start this week with a kickoff meeting. I handed out the books, and we established some group agreements on how we will talk about things, share things, and so forth. We have a great group (even if we’re losing 2 of the original team members even before we really get moving!), and my only real concern is having enough time to prep the syllabus and materials and discussions, amidst all the other changes swirling around us.
• The rest of the week was typical 1:1 meetings, project meetings, leadership meetings… pretty much the usual.

Professional links

This week has been a blur of conversations and figuring things out. Didn’t have time to pick up any new articles or resources out there. Maybe next week.

Personal weeknotes

• I voted on Tuesday in our local elections. And realized I have a couple hard-and-fast rules:
  • When there’s only 1 candidate, I don’t cast a vote. I’m not validating a lack of choice.
  • If you’re a candidate for elected office and you can’t be bothered to have a real website somewhere—even a Substack or WordPress site—I won’t vote for you, no matter the party. Even if you’re running for school board, put some effort in.
• We watched the end of the Columbus Crew’s season on Saturday evening. Expected it. But they started the game well, so there was some hope they could pull off an unlikely win. But Cincinnati bounced back to win at home and that’s that. Gotta wait for the 2026 season now.
• Family matters were quiet this week, aside from a brief phone call on Saturday. We still want to see things resolved around memory care and some resolution around where my parents live (geographically). One week at a time, I suppose.

About this week’s header photo