there doesn't have to be an end goal you can just make useful things for people who want to use them, and live a happy life
Mariesa
@mklenz.bsky.social
Curious builder of things. Principal & Founder @ Ideālis. “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” ― William Blake https://buildidealis.com/ https://wildenough.substack.com/
As a leader, your number one job is to create trust. You can raise millions, vibe code anything you dream up, land huge contracts with whales, and hire the fastest most AI fluent employees in the market. But if your team doesn't trust you, you can guarantee it'll all ultimately go to shit.
Nailed it. Minus that the background would be better if it was SF and not NYC... ☠️
Marko Bajlovic@marko.tech · yesterday
If you can’t clearly articulate your understanding of the people who use a product, the problem its trying to address, and the outcome you’re trying to achieve before building, it doesn’t matter what role you’re in, you don’t belong behind the wheel of the maker-machine. medium.com/@MKLenz/what...
What Being a Chief of Staff Taught Me About Being a Designer
A year as Chief of Staff, and why I’m going back to design leadership
medium.com
What Being a Chief of Staff Taught Me About Being a Designer Finding space to breathe again. I return to my desk, newly assembled after making the almost 3,000 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean from Washington State to Hawaii. The space is new but the tools are so familiar. I look around and…
What Being a Chief of Staff Taught Me About Being a Designer
Finding space to breathe again. I return to my desk, newly assembled after making the almost 3,000 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean from Washington State to Hawaii. The space is new but the tools are so familiar. I look around and it feels like seeing good friends after a long hiatus. There’s something different though in this new space and it has nothing to do with the contents of the room.
buildidealis.com
While many executives publicly endorse psychological safety, Norman says consistent implementation remains elusive because leaders often underestimate the level of self-awareness required. www.forbes.com/sites/rodger...
What Leaders Often Miss About Psychological Safety
You want to foster psychological safety in your relationships at work and at home? Work on your listening skills.
forbes.com
Allyship means advocating for someone by listening to them, not by making decisions for them behind closed doors. www.forbes.com/sites/juliek...
How To Make Better Decisions Aligned With Your Leadership Values
New Tedx speaker Jenny Bates Heaton shares how value-based decision-making and employee-led talent systems can reduce systemic workplace bias and boost retention.
forbes.com
Love the idea of archetypes vs dedicated title & rigid responsibilities list. This is so flexible and inclusive - and in a moment when the lines of so many of our jobs in tech are blurring together, a bit more of this mindset is exactly what we need. www.inc.com/ashley-couto...
The Head of Claude Code Says Your Startup Needs These 5 Employee Archetypes
Job titles like 'engineer' and 'designer' are melting into something new. Here's how to build your hiring plan around the roles that actually matter.
inc.com
The study showed that when your people feel like they are blocked from having impact — when their purpose cannot be achieved — they will “withdraw effort, speak less positively about their organizations, and are far more likely to quit.” www.inc.com/peter-econom...
New Data Shows Purpose Alone Isn’t Enough to Keep Employees Engaged
When leaders block people from achieving their purpose, engagement drops, performance suffers, and they’re far more likely to leave.
inc.com
“It’s tough being a manager,” Noor said. “You talk to people all the time and you think what you get is the whole story – but you never get the whole story on anything. Never assume you’ve gotten the whole story.” today.duke.edu/2026/06/why-...
Why One Duke Leader Says Curiosity Makes Better Managers | Duke Today
today.duke.edu
I'd like to thank the unemployment gods and my former employer for laying me off two weeks ago. No really. I couldn't have pulled this move to Hawaii off without you and I've never felt more free and relieved to be starting something totally new.
Some thoughts on leadership I need to get off my chest: Every "signs your boss is a bully" list is really just a leadership spec sheet written in reverse. The bad behavior is easy to name. The standard baseline of how to be a good leader underneath, is the hard part. So let's name both.
In Spain today: installation of solar panels above major irrigation channels. Channels of more than 100 kms transport water from dams to farmland. - Reduces evaporation -Provides large agricultural areas with power & supports irrigation -Decreases use of water in food production, doubling the crop.
Wait, what do you mean it's Thursday, it was just Monday yesterday
This seems so obvious I'm not sure why it needed a study to prove it or an article to explain it. "We found that those who had previously reported the highest levels of thwarted impact were almost five times more likely to have quit." hbr.org/2026/06/when...
When Purpose Backfires
Purpose-driven organizations create an implicit promise that employees will be able to make a meaningful difference, but when rules, metrics, and processes prevent them from doing so, that promise is ...
hbr.org
Leaders of companies that made the leap from average performance to sustained greatness shared an unexpected trait: Humility. It improves judgment, opens the door to others’ expertise and helps to ensure success does not become complacency. www.forbes.com/sites/marycr...
Humility Is The Leadership Superpower We Keep Misreading
Humility may be one of the most misunderstood dimensions of character. This article describes what it is, why it matters and how to develop it.
forbes.com
These skills are intangible, yes, but by no means are they soft. They’re hard because they are often unspoken, unlearned, and underappreciated, so we ignore their import, erroneously, and, therefore, suffer from the repercussions. www.fastcompany.com/91547022/why...
Why the hardest skills in leadership are the ones we’ve typically called soft
Leaders undervalue ‘soft skills’ at their own peril.
fastcompany.com
"The real competitive advantage will belong to the people who can still think critically, identify unmet human needs, connect disparate ideas, challenge assumptions and shape coherent experiences in an increasingly noisy world." www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-can...
If AI Can Replace Your Designers, You Never Understood Design
We’ve reached a strange moment in tech where generating an interface in 12 seconds has convinced an entire industry that design was never more than arranging rectangles on a screen. Prompt in.
linkedin.com
Every leader in tech should put down their steaming hot cup of hubris, and read this. “The most dangerous person on your team isn’t the loudest critic or the lowest performer. It’s the one who has quietly decided they don’t belong here.” open.substack.com/pub/mikefish...
You Can’t Fake Belonging
What the science says about why feeling like you fit in
open.substack.com
It's possible to build better things in the world. Collectively, we can accomplish a lot.
On Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran What does it mean to raise a child with the dignity of being an unrepeatable miracle of atoms that have never before constellated and will never again constellate in that exact way? www.themarginalian.org/2026/05/14/o...
On Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself… You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. …
themarginalian.org
People do not follow simply because of titles or authority. Every interaction with a leader is filtered through a set of implicit questions: Does this person make things better? Can I trust them? Do they help me succeed? hbr.org/2026/05/are-...
Are You Meeting the Needs of the People You Lead?
Organizations often assume leadership succeeds or fails because of a leader’s style. But research on follower psychology suggests the bigger issue is alignment: Employees judge leaders based on whethe...
hbr.org
I get the biz strategy here that people get more valuable the longer they stay and that this is a savvy retention play by Loveable, but it certainly has nothing to do with curing a toxic work culture. In fact, in some places, you might be perpetuating one instead. techcrunch.com/2026/05/07/c...
Could Lovable's automatic 10% pay raise be the cure for toxic cultures? | TechCrunch
Stockholm-based vibe-coding platform Lovable is offering employees an automatic 10% raise as a way to sidestep classic corporate politics.
techcrunch.com
"Just as in the days before AI, the hardest problem for a business is still creating this vision and alignment around it—how to keep an entire team of humans, and now humans and agents (and humans with agents), building toward the same vision." every.to/thesis/the-c...
The Culture of AI Engineering
A framework for getting humans, agents, and everything in between to build the same vision
every.to
AI readiness is not primarily a technology capability. It is a leadership discipline: the capacity to decide what should move faster, what should slow down, and who has the authority to know the difference. www.forbes.com/sites/jasonw...
Vibe Coding Will Break Your Company
Vibe coding is collapsing the distance between idea and deployment. But the real risk is whether your company has the judgment system to govern what AI can now build.
forbes.com
The design industry has spent years framing entrepreneurial instincts as a management problem. They're not. www.fastcompany.com/91528880/why...
Why designers make better entrepreneurs than they think
Maybe you're not hard to manage. Maybe you're just not meant to be managed.
fastcompany.com
The Narrow Path: Why AI is Our Ultimate Test and Greatest Invitation open.substack.com/pub/centerfo...
The Narrow Path: Why AI is Our Ultimate Test and Greatest Invitation
TED Talk by Tristan Harris
open.substack.com