We each have 730 hours in a month. I spend one of those hours each month on making and evaluating my Personal Commitments. I started doing this practice 18 months ago after my colleague, Kairi, introduced this idea of “the five balls of life,” credited to Brian Dyson and summarised on this blog post Before I started this practice, I’d occasionally look back at my week or my month and wonder, “where did all my time go?” I’d be left with this dreadful, sinking feeling that I've spent my 73...

We each have 730 hours in a month. I spend one of those hours each month on making and evaluating my Personal Commitments. I started doing this practice 18 months ago after my colleague, Kairi, introduced this idea of “the five balls of life,” credited to Brian Dyson and summarised on this blog post Before I started this practice, I’d occasionally look back at my week or my month and wonder, “where did all my time go?” I’d be left with this dreadful, sinking feeling that I've spent my 73...

If you’re just joining, this is the third and final part of a series on self-leadership. It’s based largely on the book Reinventing Organisations by Federic Laloux and my experience at Wise circa 2015. Jump back to the start here. All quotes, unless otherwise mentioned, are from this book.How Wise uses self-leadership principlesAs of now (Nov 2015), Wise is largely driven according to Evolutionary-Teal (self-leadership) principles. We have a strong purpose. Our Wise values are deeply embedded...

If you’re just joining, this is the third and final part of a series on self-leadership. It’s based largely on the book Reinventing Organisations by Federic Laloux and my experience at Wise circa 2015. Jump back to the start here. All quotes, unless otherwise mentioned, are from this book.How Wise uses self-leadership principlesAs of now (Nov 2015), Wise is largely driven according to Evolutionary-Teal (self-leadership) principles. We have a strong purpose. Our Wise values are deeply embedded...

An unconventional approach to get a more interesting role, at a cooler company, with nicer people, with a lot less stress. I wrote it originally for my brother-in-law who just finished his PhD and wanted to get his first real job. His challenge, like so many, is that a lot of his experience, as great as it is, doesn’t count for that much when he switches industries. Also, he doesn’t know anybody in the industry, or the best companies, or even what the roles typically do. He’s likely to spend ...

An unconventional approach to get a more interesting role, at a cooler company, with nicer people, with a lot less stress. I wrote it originally for my brother-in-law who just finished his PhD and wanted to get his first real job. His challenge, like so many, is that a lot of his experience, as great as it is, doesn’t count for that much when he switches industries. Also, he doesn’t know anybody in the industry, or the best companies, or even what the roles typically do. He’s likely to spend ...

Seychelles, a gem hidden in plain sight, begs for our attention with its impressive potential, despite its unassuming size. It’s amazing as a tourist destination, but there’s so much more to it than that. The best illustration of Seychelle’s potential comes from a book written in 1997 called The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg (Amazon) This book, more than any other, guides my understanding of our evolving worl...

Seychelles, a gem hidden in plain sight, begs for our attention with its impressive potential, despite its unassuming size. It’s amazing as a tourist destination, but there’s so much more to it than that. The best illustration of Seychelle’s potential comes from a book written in 1997 called The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg (Amazon) This book, more than any other, guides my understanding of our evolving worl...

This is part 1 of a 3 part series on self-leadership, based on my reading of Frederic Laloux’s excellent book Reinventing Organisations. All quotes, unless otherwise mentioend are from this excellent book. This post in particular summarises this book’s research into how humans have gone from tiny bands of cave dwellers to enormous organisations.Organisations throughout human historyIn order to understand organisations in the modern day, some context of the different ways people have organized...

This is part 1 of a 3 part series on self-leadership, based on my reading of Frederic Laloux’s excellent book Reinventing Organisations. All quotes, unless otherwise mentioend are from this excellent book. This post in particular summarises this book’s research into how humans have gone from tiny bands of cave dwellers to enormous organisations.Organisations throughout human historyIn order to understand organisations in the modern day, some context of the different ways people have organized...

I wrote this in November 2015 while I was at Wise (formerly TransferWise). I wrote it after being completely captured by a book I read called ‘Reinventing Organisations.’ It was such a good book, and it applied so closely to Wise that I couldn’t not write it. I was so inspired by the book an Wise that I wrote this long essay (6000+ words), hosted a long lunch interview on the topic with Wise co-founder Kristo, and got probably 100 Wisers (of 500 at the time) to read the book. Looking back, my...

I wrote this in November 2015 while I was at Wise (formerly TransferWise). I wrote it after being completely captured by a book I read called ‘Reinventing Organisations.’ It was such a good book, and it applied so closely to Wise that I couldn’t not write it. I was so inspired by the book an Wise that I wrote this long essay (6000+ words), hosted a long lunch interview on the topic with Wise co-founder Kristo, and got probably 100 Wisers (of 500 at the time) to read the book. Looking back, my...

If you’re just joining, this is the second part of a 3-part series on self-leadership. It’s based largely on the book Reinventing Organisations by Federic Laloux and my experience at Wise circa 2015. Jump back to the start here. All quotes, unless otherwise mentioned, are from this book. Self-leadership is the latest evolution in how people organize. It’s relatively new and not yet well understood. Although we at Wise are working this way every day, there are many myths that can be put to res...

If you’re just joining, this is the second part of a 3-part series on self-leadership. It’s based largely on the book Reinventing Organisations by Federic Laloux and my experience at Wise circa 2015. Jump back to the start here. All quotes, unless otherwise mentioned, are from this book. Self-leadership is the latest evolution in how people organize. It’s relatively new and not yet well understood. Although we at Wise are working this way every day, there are many myths that can be put to res...

Cover image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay All quotes throughout this blog post come from the article “We Will See the Return of Capital Investment on a Massive Scale” by Mark Dittli on themarket.ch published 14-Oct-2022. It’s well worth a read. — I read this thought provoking article which was an interview of investment strategist and historian Russell Napier. I was so enthralled by his article that I did something I never do: I watched youtube. Just to glean a little more insight from a...

Cover image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay All quotes throughout this blog post come from the article “We Will See the Return of Capital Investment on a Massive Scale” by Mark Dittli on themarket.ch published 14-Oct-2022. It’s well worth a read. — I read this thought provoking article which was an interview of investment strategist and historian Russell Napier. I was so enthralled by his article that I did something I never do: I watched youtube. Just to glean a little more insight from a...

I wrote most of this with my colleague, Mallory in late 2018, when we were both at Wise (formerly TransferWise). That’s why it’s a bit more readable. -- How to think about the tensions scaling up a startup This is too simple, but hear me out. You can split start-up people into two camps. Some we’ll call Prophets. The others are Professionals. Organizations like Wise have both. Every company has both.Why do we care? Three reasons.The first is that when startups are fortunate enough to grow up ...

I wrote most of this with my colleague, Mallory in late 2018, when we were both at Wise (formerly TransferWise). That’s why it’s a bit more readable. -- How to think about the tensions scaling up a startup This is too simple, but hear me out. You can split start-up people into two camps. Some we’ll call Prophets. The others are Professionals. Organizations like Wise have both. Every company has both.Why do we care? Three reasons.The first is that when startups are fortunate enough to grow up ...

I was fascinated when I first came across the idea, popularised by radreads, that no matter what your actual salary level, some of the actual work you do is worth something like $10/hour, but sometimes it’s worth a whole lot more. I've been thinking about this idea that we all do a mix of different types of work with markedly different values. $10/hr, $100/hr, $1000/hr and $10,000/hr. I realized a few things.It’s not hard to figure outFirst, I was surprised but it’s relatively easy to kn...

I was fascinated when I first came across the idea, popularised by radreads, that no matter what your actual salary level, some of the actual work you do is worth something like $10/hour, but sometimes it’s worth a whole lot more. I've been thinking about this idea that we all do a mix of different types of work with markedly different values. $10/hr, $100/hr, $1000/hr and $10,000/hr. I realized a few things.It’s not hard to figure outFirst, I was surprised but it’s relatively easy to kn...

I wrote this in 2018 when I was at Wise (formerly TransferWise), but never hit publish. It offers some evidence that a slow, bureaucratic hierarchy isn’t inevitable end as you scale up. -- With 50+ autonomous teams and 1,000 employees, we’ve learned how to scale autonomous teams and avoid creeping bureaucracy. I recently spoke to a founder of a small startup. They had 15 employees and were starting to defined clear roles and teams. He knew that the organization structure decisions he was maki...

I wrote this in 2018 when I was at Wise (formerly TransferWise), but never hit publish. It offers some evidence that a slow, bureaucratic hierarchy isn’t inevitable end as you scale up. -- With 50+ autonomous teams and 1,000 employees, we’ve learned how to scale autonomous teams and avoid creeping bureaucracy. I recently spoke to a founder of a small startup. They had 15 employees and were starting to defined clear roles and teams. He knew that the organization structure decisions he was maki...

Need a new compensation plan?My sister runs a fantastic car dealership. They closed for the first couple of months of the pandemic but slowly were able to restart their business. The problem was that the straight sales commissions that made sense pre-pandemic weren’t attractive during the pandemic. Sales people, rightly, had no clue whether they’d sell a car. Her plan was to effectively give a fixed salary instead of pure commissions, at least for some time. I’d been thinking about compensati...

Need a new compensation plan?My sister runs a fantastic car dealership. They closed for the first couple of months of the pandemic but slowly were able to restart their business. The problem was that the straight sales commissions that made sense pre-pandemic weren’t attractive during the pandemic. Sales people, rightly, had no clue whether they’d sell a car. Her plan was to effectively give a fixed salary instead of pure commissions, at least for some time. I’d been thinking about compensati...