Ideas on power, ownership, and what comes next
Articles and notes on expertise, communication, and the rooms shaping what comes next.
CEOs to L&D: Prove ROI or Lose Budget
Recently a panel of CEOs and business leaders said out loud what corporate buyers around the world have been thinking for years: learning and development spending needs to prove it moves the needle, or it goes.Not “we’d love to see more connection to strategy.” Not “let’s explore ways to measure impact.” A direct, public statement that training disconnected from business outcomes is on…
Read →Why Your Culture Training Isn’t Sticking And What Actually Builds Trust at Work
Culture isn’t a slogan or a workshop. It’s the quality of the relationships between the people doing the work — and most leaders are getting the math wrong.A note from me: I founded the Octagon Experts Bureau to put the sharpest experts in front of the rooms, stages, and teams that need them. Michaun Elise Winborn is one of them, and the insights below are exactly why.Most organizations talk about culture as if it…
Read →Why AI Won’t Break Your Company — Your Middle Layer Will
A note from me: I founded the Octagon Experts Bureau to put the sharpest experts in front of the rooms, stages and teams that need them. Nikki Cates is one of them, and the insights below are exactly why.The Diagnosis Most Leaders Are AvoidingMost conversations about AI in the workplace start with the technology. Nikki Cates starts somewhere else: with the load-bearing walls of the organization itself. Her central…
Read →Credibility Tax: Stop Paying. Start Collecting.
You have the degrees. The receipts. The decades of results. You have sat in rooms where you were the most qualified person present and watched someone with half your experience get handed the contract, the stage, the rate, the trust.This is not imposter syndrome. This is not a confidence problem. This is not something a vision board fixes.This is the credibility tax and accomplished Black women experts have been…
Read →How to Translate Workforce Trends Into Profitable Offers
I previously wrote about Positioning Your Expertise for Market Demand. Now I’m going to show you how to turn translate those trends into offers.In January, Gartner published its 20626 future of work trends. Corporate HR leaders read it to figure out what’s about to land on their plate. You should read it for a different reason.It’s a list of the nine problems corporations are about to spend money trying to solve.…
Read →Qualified Enough to Interview. Too Qualified to Hire.
A man protected his money. I catapulted a woman’s career.That’s the shortest version of the story.I saw her post recently. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular — you know how it goes, you scroll, a face you haven’t thought about in a long time surfaces, and suddenly you’re curious. I clicked on her profile because I wanted to see how long she’d been at that company. The one she went to after we both left…
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