Work is a Verb A newsletter by You know what ruins a board game? House rules that only one person knows. “Oh, we don’t do it that way.” “No, you can’t buy that yet.” “Actually, you owe me rent twice.” Most workplaces run the same way: pay bands no one can explain, promotions that feel mystical, flexibility that’s technically allowed but quietly punished. When the rules aren’t explicit, proximity to authority becomes a cheat code. Equity is simply this: everyone gets the same rulebook and the...
14 days ago • 4 min read
Work is a Verb A newsletter by The Friction Tax Here's a number that should make every leader uncomfortable: 91% of employees report being frustrated with their workplace technology. Not "mildly annoyed." Frustrated. Most companies measure technology like a utility: Uptime System status Ticket volume But employees don’t experience “uptime.” They experience friction. This week: Technology — the "T" in REMOTE Score, and why the tools you're forced to use might be killing employee satisfaction....
21 days ago • 4 min read
Work is a Verb A newsletter by Your first week at a remote job is a test. Not of your skills but of your company's infrastructure. You sit at your home desk, laptop open, waiting. Someone sends you a Slack message at 9:03am: "Welcome! Let me know if you need anything." And then... silence. In an office, you'd wander over to someone's desk. You'd absorb context from hallway conversations. You'd learn who actually knows what by watching people interact. Remote? All of that is invisible. And if...
28 days ago • 4 min read
Work is a Verb A newsletter by A leader posts in Slack at 4:57pm on a Thursday: “Quick update: we’re making some changes. More details tomorrow.” That single sentence is a morale test. Not because people are fragile. Because morale is the story your team tells itself when information is missing — and in distributed teams, the “story gap” fills fast. This week: Morale — the capacity to maintain belief in the organization and its goals, even in the face of opposition or hardship. Great morale...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Work is a Verb A newsletter by You've been in the job for six months. You know the systems. You hit your numbers. You show up to the meetings and nod at the right times. But when someone asks what you're working on, you give them the two-sentence version and change the subject. You're not disengaged exactly—you're just...there. Here's the thing nobody talks about: that feeling costs everyone. It costs your company measurable performance. It costs your coworkers extra work to compensate. And...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Work is a Verb A newsletter by Year three is when you become dangerous. You're not learning the system anymore. You're building it. You know which "urgent" pings can wait, which processes are real, and how to ship decisions without six meetings. That's also when the LinkedIn messages start looking good. Last week I introduced REMOTE Score. This week: the "R" for Retention, and why it matters more than you think. The Retention Gap Companies love talking about ramp time. Month 1: 25% Month 3:...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Work is a Verb A newsletter by We measure everything. Revenue per employee. Time-to-hire. Net Promoter Score. Quarterly OKRs broken into weekly KPIs broken into daily standups. We've built dashboards for dashboards. But ask most companies about their culture... and you get vibes and platitudes. What gets measured gets managed Even the crunchier numbers like cost of turnover and time-to-hire are generally overlooked. There's just a few more dots to connect between people metrics and revenue....
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Work is a Verb A newsletter by The question your performance review won't ask Story one: “My review said I was doing great. I hit every target. I got the raise. And I was bored out of my mind.” Story two: “I thought I was doing great… until my review blindsided me with ‘concerns’ nobody had mentioned once all year.” Very different outcomes, same root problem: most performance reviews only ask if you’re doing what the company needs. Even when you are asked to review yourself it's usually a...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Work is a Verb A newsletter by First AI, Now "Culture": How Companies Rebrand Layoffs to Control Workers Every time a company posts record profits and announces mass layoffs in the same breath, the media spins it the same way: AI is replacing human workers. The robots are here. It's a great story. Click-worthy. Scary enough to drive engagement. It's also not true. Amazon isn't replacing 30,000 people with AI. They're redirecting capital to buy data centers and chips so AWS can compete with...
3 months ago • 4 min read