2025 Weeknote 44 : Resignations and reverberations

October 27 – November 2

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

• There were 3 resignations this week, with 2 of them on my teams, including a team manager. Both of my resignations were career-trajectory-related, meaning my two folks had virtually irresistible new opportunities—one leading a team in a local nonprofit and the other taking on a major consulting role in the govtech space that will send her to New York City. I’ve always hoped folks could give us some good years but ultimately find the best next opportunity, whether that was inside the organization or elsewhere. Not every employer is the right place for every employee at all times. Organizations and employees move at different rates and in different directions at different times, so sometimes advancement or professional growth requires moving on.
• These new resignations follow another prominent one in another agency, and may presage additional resignations to come. In fact, our organization asked all staff to assume a 3-day-in-office hybrid work model starting in January (which was announced months ago), and that’s going to spark at least a few more departures. These reverberations are likely to go on for a while—similar to how I’ve seen these waves wash over teams in the past. The key is to see these changes as opportunities for renewal and reflection, and new people may help us take some new directions in culture or practice. These changes are never easy, but they can be rewarding in the end.
• This coming week marks the formal launch of our “Topology 2026” effort. This is where I’m leading a team of 9 in discussions around our current environment, ideas from Team Topologies, and whether we should consider making structural changes. Looking forward to it. But with those departures coming up, I’m thinking we may want to accelerate our talks, which won’t be easy. I’ll be reporting back on this, of course.
• Finally, a discovery of sorts: Product Owners ≠ Sales Engineers. I heard about one product owner promoting their particular product to customers as a near-universal solution for the challenges our customers face. And that’s… problematic. When customers have needs, we have to examine that need in partnership with them and figure out what the right solution(s) might be. In fact, we have a 3-stage process that helps pull this off in a thoughtful way with customers. But if a product owner short-circuits those efforts, it could cause a lot of pain down the line. I gotta figure out how to blunt the impact of POs being their own sales engineers, or we’ll regret it.
• Finally, some fun. One of our teams went all-out for Halloween this year, going so far as creating a unique email account, posting mysterious (and funny) messages in Teams, sponsoring an office scavenger hunt for tiny raven figurines, hosting mini-events in the office (some with food), and leaving printed notes and other items at people’s desks. They dubbed the effort and the user account “Haunted Resources” and kept all this going for a full month. This effort was not assigned or expected. They just felt moved to make people smile. The only problem: How do you top it?

Professional links

• HBR IdeaCast: What’s holding you back from being a great leader? — In this podcast episode exec consultant Muriel Wilkins advises leaders to pay attention to their “beliefs” — those things that we think are true about the world around us and guide how we interact with it. The things we believe (or feel are true) setup our mental framework and directly impact how we act around those we are leading or serving. Well-adapted beliefs can power our careers through different phases, but not all beliefs are valuable in all stages of our careers. We must be aware of our beliefs and adjust them over time as we change, our teams change, and the world changes around us. This podcast is related to the original HBR article titled The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Leaders Back, which lists 7 example beliefs Wilkins has seen in her consulting work:
  • I need to be involved
  • I need it done now
  • I know I’m right
  • I can’t make a mistake
  • If I can do it, so can you
  • I can’t say no
  • I don’t belong here
• VIDEO: Team Topologies in Practice: A Journey of Re-Teaming Using Architecture for Flow — I’m continuing to absorb Team Topologies ideas as I’m gearing up for internal talks about team restructuring, and this video was a favorite this week. Like other talks from conferences in Europe, the content is dense and will take time to fully understand. But I appreciate how detailed and realistic they approach these ideas.

Personal weeknotes

• I completed another blood donation on Halloween, taking my “unit” count to 18 since starting in February 2022. A unit of blood is roughly a pint, so that means I’ve donated 2.25 gallons of blood in the last 3.5 years. Looking forward to 2026, when I will add 0.875 gallons to that total! I start again January 2.
• To prep for late April’s Camino de Santiago (Portuguese coastal route), I’ve set myself an expanding goal for walking each week, starting with a low of 5 miles each week and rising to 30 miles per week before hopping flights to Porto at the end of April. My major concern isn’t the walking, but the time commitment. I struggle to prioritize healthy activities when there’s so much work to be done, whether for my job or lately for my family.
• Speaking of family, the wife and I made a trek to Toledo this weekend, to meet up with my parents. It was a nice-ish visit. But it’s so very clear my mother needs more care than can be offered in basic assisted living, even with my father’s efforts (which are not always helpful because they aren’t tuned to the needs of dementia patients). I’ll be curious to see how Thanksgiving plays out, as my sister comes up and we converge on Toledo to spend time together and hopefully take some time to start clearing out stuff from the old house. Man… this is so strange and frustrating to navigate. I know this experience is common, and indeed we have it pretty “good” compared to a lot of families. I wish I could call more of the shots in this situation.
• Finally, the wife and I enjoyed watching the Columbus Crew stick it to FC Cincinnati in game 2 of this first round of MLS playoff games. (We watch via MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.) The Crew has had a rough year with a lot of injuries, players lost to international moves, and players being called up to special teams and events all year long. I don’t expect the Crew to take the MLS Cup this year (like they did in 2023), but it’s nice to see them pull off one more win in the home stadium before winter.

About this week’s header photo