Humane Work Podcast

Modus Institute

We explore humane work, visual systems, and people acting with confidence. humanework.substack.com

  1. 2 FEB

    How To Survive LinkedIn

    Modus Institute | Personal Kanban | Upcoming Events In an information landscape, there is helpful and toxic information. We don’t get to just ignore our landscape, though. In our Humane Work Subscribers Lean Coffee today, where we talk about how we get our work done, one of the tickets was about how to use LinkedIn. There is a very predictable devolution of social media sites. Twitter went down first, then Facebook, and now LinkedIn…when the amount of toxic information outweighs the useful or supportive. On LinkedIn there are two rules: don’t post about politics and don’t post AI shlock. And…it’s 75% politics and AI shlock. So, you open LinkedIn with a specific purpose in mind. Job hunting, community participation, announcing something and you say to yourself: “Just five minutes.” Forty minutes later, you’re three layers deep into an argument about whether Agile is dead (again), you’ve scrolled past seventeen AI-generated listicles about leadership lessons with enough emojis that by the end you are certain you are going to the prom with this person, and are cognitively and emotionally overwhelmed from consuming information that looks professional but has zero soul. You close the window. You think you are done, but you are contaminated. For the next two hours, you’re more irritable, less focused, more cynical about your field. You are annoyed that you wasted forty minutes, but you’ve also really messed with your focus for the rest of the afternoon. Humane Work is reader-supported publication. To receive more from us, come to our subscriber-only calls, and just help us keep doing this, please become a paid subscriber (it’s like a cup of coffee…or so). LinkedIn in 2026. The radiation is real. But the value of the platform is still there. We can, like most toxicities, find a way to eliminate the negative and find some positive to accentuate. The Fallout 4 Framework or Binging LinkedIn “Accentuate the positive, e-limmmm-inate the negative.” ~ Bing Crosby I spent a lot of time playing Fallout Four. As did Andrew Lenards, in the call, but in the game, you run around a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with radiation. You can’t avoid it entirely…some areas are too valuable to skip, some resources are too important to leave behind, some bad guys are too bad to avoid. But you have a Geiger counter in your Pip boy. You track your exposure. You know your limits. And, you go out geared up, you wear a variety of hazmat suits to protect you in different ways at different times. But you have a key metric you are always watching: you leave before the contamination kills you. You see where we were going with this…LinkedIn is the same. For many professionals (looking for work, building networks, or establishing credibility) LinkedIn isn’t optional. It’s where opportunities live. But it’s also contaminated, diluted, and dangerous. Not by radiation, but by what we called in the Lean Coffee robot scrolling. The algorithmically-driven consumption of AI-generated or Process-doom content that makes you have to read it to find out if they are even serious. It’s all plausible enough to look like valuable content and then, when you are done, is either 100% confirmation bias or 100% anger inducing. In other words…toxic. But we need to use LinkedIn so we need to figure out how much exposure can we tolerate before I lose more than we gain? So, let’s grab some garb and build a hazmat suit. LinkedIn’s Specific Toxicities We need to understand the contamination and how it is spread so before we talk about mitigation, let’s diagnose the problem clearly. Signal-to-Noise Inversion LinkedIn used to have a decent signal-to-noise ratio. Real professionals sharing real insights, mixed with some self-promotion and the occasional praise for process. Maybe 90% signal and 10% noise. That ratio has inverted. We’re now swimming in 90% noise and desperately looking for the other 10%. The problem here, which was the same problem on Facebook is that this is intentional and algorithmically based. It’s actively engineered to look like signal. This means you used to go in and read, now you go in and spend serious energy trying to find the value. You went from berry picking in a fertile field to gold mining with an axe. Dopamine Exploitation In the call, Tonianne DeMaria used the phrase cheap dopamine. This is not the beautiful meal dopamine, it’s the McDonald’s burger dopamine. So, your brain on LinkedIn looks like: * Anticipation spike: Your brain gives a small hit of dopamine. “Maybe there’s a good post today. Maybe someone engaged with my content. Maybe there’s an opportunity. Maybe…” * The scroll begins: You encounter the first post. It’s AI slop—”Agile is really really dead: Thrive emdash smiley.” Mildly annoying, but you keep scrolling. * Intermittent reinforcement: Every fifth post, there’s something marginally interesting by someone you actually know. You like it. and…keep you scrolling. This is the most addictive reward schedule known to neuroscience and it is now a business model. * Emotional spikes: You encounter a post claiming “Agile is Dead” (for the 400th time this year). Even though you know it’s engagement bait, you feel a reaction—irritation, defensiveness, the urge to comment. * Compulsion continues: “The next one might be good.” Your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for executive function, decision-making, focus) is slowly being bypassed. You’re are now addicted to the dopamine-seeking loop. * Finally you close LinkedIn: You are shocked how long you were there. And your nervous system doesn’t reset. Your focus is fractured. The cognitive residue lingers for hours. You and your brain are responding to an engineered environment designed to maximize your time in their platform, not your professional growth. Let’s Build a Social Media Hazmat Suit We have to use LinkedIn, it’s literally a monopoly on business attention. So, lets build a system that protects us from contamination while still getting value. Your Helmet of Intention This is your radiation suit’s Helmet. * Go In With a Goal: * “I need to check messages from recruiters” * “I need to post this article I wrote” * “I need to DM three specific people about collaboration” * Go In With a Time Budget * Not “I’ll just check quickly.” Give yourself an actual number: 10 minutes. 15 minutes max. * Go In Self-Aware * “If I encounter three AI-slop posts in a row, I close the app” * “If I start feeling irritated or cynical, session over” This pre-load shifts you from reactive (algorithmic drift) to strategic (purposeful use). Practical implementation: Before opening LinkedIn, take three deep breaths. Literally. It sounds trivial. It’s not. Those breaths ground you, reduce your baseline stress response, and prime your brain for intentional action instead of compulsive scrolling. Your Time Suck Exposure Meter In Fallout 4, you track exposure. You need the same for LinkedIn. Create an actual budget, I’m thinking one 25 minute pomodoro a day: Weekly exposure limit: Decide how much LinkedIn time you can afford before contamination outweighs value. 1-2 hours per week maximum. Session length cap: No session should exceed 15-25 minutes. If you go longer, you lose control, the algorithm takes over. Set a timer. Your perception of time distorts on social media by design. Quality threshold alarms: This is your Geiger counter clicking. Define your personal “radiation alarm”: * Shlock Alarm: Three AI-generated posts in a row = session over * Click Bait Alarm: Two “Agile is Dead” / “Leadership is about super listening” posts = close app * Lost In Space Alarm: Any moment where you catch yourself scrolling without knowing why = immediate exit The Respirator of Strategic Whimsy This phrase came from our Lean Coffee, and I wrote it . Strategic: You go in with a plan. You know why you’re there, what you need, and when you’re leaving. Whimsy: You allow for serendipity. If you encounter something genuinely valuable, you engage with it. You’re not so rigid that you miss real connection. Find funny over fury. Look for ways to engage that aren’t doom, rage, or being duped. You dictate the terms, not LinkedIn’s algorithm. Decontamination Rituals You should, after an pomodoro, take a 5 minute walking break. This is especially true for LinkedIn, you need a decontamination ritual. The cognitive and emotional residue doesn’t disappear when you close the tab. If you go straight from LinkedIn into a meeting or deep work session, you’re bringing the contamination with you. 5-minute decontamination options: * Get up and walk around (physiological reset) ← Best one … * Write one paragraph about something you’re working on (forces your brain into creative mode) * Read one page of a physical book (shifts neural pathways from reaction to comprehension) * Solve a simple problem or puzzle (re-engages executive function) We Work Better Together—Even Here The reason we’re having this conversation isn’t because LinkedIn is uniquely toxic all the socials are challenged this way. But we still need community, and we need to figure out how to engage even when most internet traffic is artificial. Job seekers need visibility. Professionals need networks. Thinkers need audiences. Those are real needs, and LinkedIn still serves some of them. But we also need spaces where: * Robot scrolling doesn’t replace human curiosity * Performative expertise doesn’t crowd out genuine learning * Algorithms don’t dictate what matters That’s why we’re here on Substack. That’s why people come to our Lean Coffees. That’s why this conversation is the true final human frontier. LinkedIn isn’t going away. The radiation will probably get worse before it gets better. But you don’t have to be a passive victim of content quality devolution. Build yo

    9 min

  2. 28 JAN

    We Can Be Accidentally Toxic...and We Can Not

    For a few years, we’ve had the toxic waste class at Modus Institute. It’s been an amazing experience, every month we have a call where people from around the world talk about the way work is impacting them and their teams and we, together, work on ways to remove those bottlenecks. We’ve created a lot of models of different types of toxicity, but one that always surprises us is Self-Isolationism. It’s when we do things that actively work against our own best interests and, in turn, make the team work less effectively. This is what we call a constellation. A group of actions that, alone or combined, create dysfunction, even when we have the best of intentions. This one you’ve seen a million times. The brilliant engineer who won’t ask for help. The dedicated manager who takes on everyone’s work rather than delegate. The talented professional who retreats into perfectionism instead of collaboration. They’re not toxic people. They’re people trapped in self-isolationism. A toxic pattern where well-intentioned professionals inadvertently poison their organizations by walling themselves off. We think this is about the person overloading themselves, but isolation doesn’t just hurt the isolated person. It spreads like a contagion through your entire organization. The Five Toxic Wastes of Self-Isolationism This constellation comprises five interconnected toxins: * Learned helplessness – Feeling powerless to change your situation, leading to inaction that isolates you from support networks * Self-hostility – Invalidating your own worth, competence, and contributions * Self-doubt – Pervasive lack of confidence that breeds paralysis and hesitancy to seek help * Imposter syndrome – The persistent belief that your accomplishments are inadequate, fostering anxiety that disrupts focus * Toxic fatalism – Losing the ability to envision or pursue alternatives, internalizing toxicity as inevitable Each feeds the others. Each compounds the damage. The Toxicokinetics of Self-Isolationism Really quickly… toxicokinetics is how a toxin flows through your body. So, if you think of office toxicity like a poison moving through a team or company, we can start to track it and work with it. Self-isolationism has a predictable progression: Entry: Self-doubt and insecurity—that inner critic questioning your worth—create the entry point. Metabolism: Those toxic thoughts breed learned helplessness. You compensate by taking on excessive work to prove your value. Confidence erodes under mounting responsibilities. Distribution: Now isolated and overloaded, you lose vital context. You’re blindly assigned disconnected tasks without understanding broader goals. Communication breaks down because self-doubt prevents you from asking clarifying questions. Unproductive silos form. Peak Toxicity: Lack of transparency becomes institutionalized. Professionals drift into dysfunctional silos, cut off from the shared leadership and knowledge flows needed for true teamwork. The Antidote: Visual Management and the Obeya Here’s what we’ve learned after decades of working with teams drowning in toxicity: You cannot fix what you cannot see. Toxicity spreads quickly in darkness. It hides in: * Invisible workloads that overwhelm people * Information silos that starve teams of context * Unstated expectations that breed misalignment * Hidden information or decision-making bottlenecks that create panic and firefighting Visual management, particularly through an Obeya, is how you expose and eliminate self-isolationism. What Is An Obeya? An Obeya (Japanese for “big room”) is a physical or virtual space where all the information a team needs to act with confidence lives. It’s not just a project room with sticky notes. It’s a beating heart that pumps clarity, context, and connection through your entire organization. When self-isolationism takes root, the Obeya becomes your immune system: It Makes Overload VisibleWhen someone’s Personal Kanban shows 8 items in their DOING column instead of 3, it’s not a personal failing…it’s a systemic signal. It’s a trigger for help can be offered before burnout happens. It Eliminates Information StarvationInstead of people making decisions in the dark, the Obeya shows strategy, current work, blockers, and progress in real-time. Context isn’t hoarded…it’s radiating. It’s actively working for you. It Destroys Silos Through CollaborationWhen work is visible to everyone, collaboration happens naturally. You see where colleagues are stuck. You offer help. You ask for help without shame. It Celebrates Learning Over ExpertiseColumns that specifically show “Success,” “The Unexpected,” and “Lessons Learned” combat the imposter syndrome beliefs that drive people into isolated overwork. Why This Matters Now Workplace toxicity costs American employers $917 billion annually. Self-isolationism is one of the primary drivers: * 26% of workers actively dread going to work * Employees in toxic environments are 3x more likely to report mental health challenges * Presenteeism costs $4,300-$7,200 per employee annually You can’t fix this with HR mandates or two-day workshops. You fix it by building humane systems of work where: * Information flows freely * Overload is visible and addressed * Collaboration is expected, not optional * People act with confidence because they have clarity Learn to Build These Systems If you’re a team leader, project manager, agile coach, or operations professional struggling with scattered information, unclear priorities, or siloed teams—visual management through Obeya is your path forward. Join us for the Guided Obeya Fundamentals Certification📅 February 16, 2026 | 10am-4pm ET🎓 Accredited by the Obeya Association👥 Taught by Obeya Senseis Jim Benson & Tonianne DeMaria What You’ll Master: * The 11 essential Obeya principles that separate high-performing teams from chaos * How to design physical and virtual Obeya spaces that teams actually use * Visual management techniques that make self-isolationism impossible to hide * Creating psychological safety through transparent information-sharing * Meeting rhythms that drive action instead of just talk Official Certification Included:✅ Obeya Fundamentals Certificate from the global Obeya Association✅ Digital badge for LinkedIn✅ One-year free membership to the Obeya Association Community (€75 value)✅ Pathway to advanced certifications Investment: $888 introductory price (regularly €1,500+ in Europe)Limited to 20 participants This isn’t theory. This is decades of work with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and startups across six continents—helping teams transform toxicity into clarity. 👉 Register now at https://luma.com/1dscf3cv Self-isolationism doesn’t have to define your team’s culture. You can see it. You can address it. You can build better. Let’s get to work. Jim Benson & Tonianne DeMariaModus Institute | Creators of Personal Kanban | Obeya Senseis P.S. Don’t see a date that works for you? Reach out to us and we’ll do our best to accommodate your availability. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humanework.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min
  3. Big Impact, Small Footprint

    22 JAN

    Big Impact, Small Footprint

    Today Tonianne asked me to write case studies for some of our larger clients…Turner Construction, the World Bank, The Library Corporation. Big names. Big projects. Impressive scope. And while I was writing about these massive engagements, I was thinking … This isn’t where we started. And it’s not actually where most of our work happens. The truth is, over a hundred of our clients have been small, short focused visits. They used to be all in person, but they are increasingly remote. A few hours or a few days where we come in, work intensively with a team to figure out what needs to happen, help them build a way to make it happen, and then we leave. They take it from there. And I love that work. Humane Work is reader-supported. Toni and I put a lot into the newsletter, the lean coffees, and other events. Please join, become a paid member, and we have a lot fun things coming to paid subscribers in the next few months. The John Shook Moment Years ago, I was working on a project with John Shook from the Lean Enterprise Institute. We were walking into a manufacturing plant, just talking, when suddenly his head swiveled. He looked across the factory floor—materials moving this way and that, people working, the sounds of assembly and construction and shipment—and he just looked at me and said: “You know, I really love a factory. I love everything about what’s happening here. People working together to get stuff done.” That’s how Tonianne and I feel when we work with a small group. We just love ways of working. Every team is different, personalities…challenges…what they need to see. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing sales or marketing, building something, inventing something, researching something. What matters is that human beings are getting together, caring about something in real time, and making that thing happen. This is because work isn’t just work. Work is your life. It’s what you spend so much of your time on. You don’t want to do it in a way that’s upsetting. Your bosses don’t want to give you work that upsets you. What we all want is to figure out: What’s the right thing we should be doing right now? What’s the right way to get that done? And how do we move forward with that? Five Quick Case Studies I want to share five short engagements we had. They were so fun, so memorable, that even though a few of them happened several years ago, the people we worked with still reach out. You make friends quickly when you are dealing with people’s livelihood. I wanted these to just be stories, no a logo parade, so they are blind itemed. Communicating Learning and Discovery Where: Research Triangle, North CarolinaHow long: A few daysThe challenge: A group of scientists trying to discover things, but struggling to communicate their real-time, super-fast learning We came in with some tools…Personal Kanban, value stream mapping, visual management…and asked: How are you going to deploy these in a way that allows you all to communicate this constant discovery? Scientists are used to the scientific method. They know hypotheses change. Experiments fail. Discovery is nonlinear. They needed a system that matched that reality. A few days. That’s all it took. They took the tools and the ideas, created their own versions. And they reported back just recently that what we built together continues to impact them and help them be more successful. Every Request Sounds Like an Accusation Where: Northeast United StatesHow long: One weekThe challenge: Fast food to fine dining, every restaurant has the same problem, communication that sounds like combat. Our client’s restaurants were drowning in toxicity and the customers were noticing. In restaurants, things move fast. You’re barking at each other all the time: “I need three fish fired up!” “Why isn’t the bus station set up?” “Why isn’t there salt on the tables?” The problem wasn’t that people were rude. The problem was the pace made every interaction hostile. Staff couldn’t see their work in the chaos, so nothing got done until someone yelled about it. What we did: We set up visual management systems that created triggers for action. This is when supplies are running low. This is when the bus station needs attention. This is when that task needs to be done. No one had to yell “Why isn’t this done yet?” anymore. Staff could see their work and get their work done. The barking stopped. The environment became more hospitable for staff, which made them more hospitable to customers. Three Founders, Conflicting Assumptions Where: Northeastern AustraliaHow long: One weekThe challenge: Three young entrepreneurs who’d just sold a company wanted to build townhomes…but each had different assumptions about how. They had money. They had ambition. What they didn’t have was alignment. They had to do everything: funding, permitting, design, clearing lots, construction, sales. Soup to nuts. An incredibly long value stream they had to create from scratch. What we did: We took over a huge conference room. Went all the way around the walls with their assumptions…this happens, then this, then this…tons and tons of sticky notes. Forming. Storming. Norming. Sometimes arguing. But always moving toward consensus about how they were actually going to operate. One week. By the time we left, they didn’t have a business plan on paper. They had an operations plan for how they were actually going to achieve this thing. Don’t Fix Defects, Prevent Them Where: Scotland (global bank, one very large 80 person team)How long: A few daysThe challenge: Software quality issues…costly, recurring, exhausting They came to us looking for ways to do better bug fixing. But here’s what we said: “You already know how to fix defects. You’re good at that. Let’s find out when they’re about to happen and stop them from happening at all.” What we did: We used Personal Kanban to create triggers that allowed them to see problems before they became problems. When dependencies were forming. When miscommunications were brewing. We helped them design a system they’re still using after a decade. A few days. Over ten years of impact. Montessori-ing Montessori Where: Southern EnglandHow long: Ongoing (they buy hours as needed)The challenge: Everything from internal communication to planning to stakeholder management This school has two locations and a lot of stakeholders: students, parents, the community, other instructors. Lots of people deeply invested in the school’s success. What we did: They bought a chunk of hours. We get together for an hour at a time. We have conversations about where they’re going. We visualize things. We solve specific problems. It’s been amazing. No long-term contract. No massive engagement. Just expertise when they need it, on their terms, at their pace. Small Engagements Work (And We Love Them) Here’s what all these have in common: Quick, surgical, expert interventions. We bring the right expertise, the right conversations to your right moment. We get creative together. We don’t need months to understand your work. We don’t need enterprise budgets to make an impact. What we need is: * A real problem you’re trying to solve * People who care about solving it * A few focused days (or even hours) to work together And here’s why this matters right now: Everybody is really worried about AI, about tariffs, about market uncertainty. So we aren’t acting. That worry, that inaction, is costing us…not just time and energy, but stress. Real, grinding, exhausting stress. We want to help with that. We want you to get to work during the day and to sleep at night. Not by selling you AI solutions. Not by promising magic. But by doing what we’ve always done: helping you see your work, understand your work, and control your work. We want to do this like a pit-stop. We pause, we get you better tires and clean the windshield, and then you are off. You walk away with something that works for you, your team, and your reality. The Real Point Work is your life. It’s where you spend your days, your energy, your creativity. You deserve to do it in a way that doesn’t make you miserable. Your team deserves systems that actually match how they work, not generic “best practices” that ignore your reality. And you don’t need to be Turner Construction or the World Bank to get that help. You just need to reach out. Let’s Talk If you’ve been thinking “Modus sounds great, but they probably don’t work with companies like ours,” I’m here to tell you: You’re exactly who we work with. Small teams. Startups. Nonprofits. Schools. A single department inside a big company. Three people with a vision. The vertical doesn’t matter. Biotech, restaurants, real estate, banking, education—we’ve done it all. What matters is you’re people doing work with other people, and you want to do it better. No obligation. No sales pitch. Just a conversation about what’s not working and whether we might help. → Let’s have that conversation Because the beauty of a small engagement is this: Big impact doesn’t require big budgets or big timelines. Sometimes it just requires the right help at the right moment. And that moment might be right now. P.S. — One of my favorite clients is a small nonprofit in Australia. Another was a small biotech in North Carolina. Another is a school in England that books us an hour at a time. If you’re waiting until you’re “big enough” for expert help, you’re waiting too long. Start now. Start small. Start with what actually works. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humanework.substack.com/subscribe

    10 min

  4. 15 JAN

    How to be a Product Owner, Everywhere

    “Be a jerk, go to work,” ~ Frank Zappa At work we have things to do. Tasks, deadlines, things to focus on. Then things go wrong and then we are blamed for things or we blame other people for things. Lots of … things. In the Collaboration Equation, I say that individuals work in teams to create value. People have taken that to heart, but value ends up being the focus. People get so focused on the value that they forget about the individuals. They get so focused on completing tasks that they miss who those tasks actually exist for. We work with and for people. Value is always a relationship. Most of the stress in your work doesn’t come from the work itself. It comes from people asking, “Where is the thing I asked for?” or “Why did you do it that way?” And almost always, that stress exists because you’re managing the work and not the relationships. The Quick Story Involving my Mom and Snails My mom and I went to have dinner at a nice Italian place in Omaha. We sat at the chef’s counter where the people cooking studiously ignored us. We ordered and watched them expertly create our meals which looked very delicious. We sat there and watched them…less than a foot away from us … prepare our meals. They then went over to a serving station where they sat for FIFTEEN MINUTES. We just sat there and stared at our sauces breaking, our expertly created food cooling, pasta hardening. The people who cooking for us were breathing the same air. Sharing the same space. But they were so focused on their part of productivity, they completely destroyed the value of the meal and us as future customers. And…they could have touched us they were so close. We were saying things like, “That sure looks like our food.” and “Excuse me, but I think our food is just sitting there.” So, we were stakeholders. They, in their minds, had provided value. Our first visit to the restaurant was nice. This was our second, and our last. As Gordon Ramsey would say, “Such a shame, I expected more from you.” So, your stakeholders and you, when you are a stakeholder, have expectations and when those expectations are not met…you have a dependency. The cooking team was not delivering food to the eating team when the eating team needed it. So, to make this clear, dependencies are not a natural outgrowth of work, they are a failure state borne of crappy relationship management. The Invisible Stakeholder Map When Tonianne and I work with teams, we ask them a simple question: Who are all your stakeholders? And every single time, in the first hours and days of working together, we find stakeholders they didn’t even know they had. People wearing different hats. Playing different roles in their lives. But we all lose track of people and promises. Even me. (especially me) We have one truth about work we need to hold onto. Your work is fundamentally about meeting stakeholder needs. And if you don’t know who your stakeholders are or, if you know but don’t take them seriously, your relationships break down. Dependencies form. Bottlenecks appear. Conversations don’t happen at the right time with the right people. And no, you don’t get to say things like, “They’re doing it too.” So Map Your Relationships In practice, I have business partners, development partners, customers, team members, family members. Each plays a different role in my life. Each needs different things from me. Each needs those things on a different cadence. My primary client? I talk to them every day. My wife? We talk every day too, but we set aside specific time weekly to talk about finances. My colleague Karl? He’s a stakeholder, a team member, and a development partner. So we talk daily about some things, weekly about others, monthly about others still. And don’t you boil this down to schedule. The point here is you have to be intentional about knowing: * Who needs what from you * When they need it * What role they play in your life * What role you play in theirs (Okay, you see how I started bolding things here because I wanted the main points to stand out… well… imagine they are all bold. Because we get this so consistently and catastrophically wrong.) The Reciprocal Nature of Relationships When you have a relationship with someone, it is reciprocal. They need things from you. You need things from them. If it’s one-sided, then you’re only taking and it’s not a relationship. It’s exploitation. Even in a client relationship where they pay you money, it’s still reciprocal. They give you money. You give them value. There’s a give-and-take. And the reason this matters is simple: You build relationships through giving and receiving, not through demanding. When you understand that, you’re no longer just some Transactional Task-based Tommy. You’re collaborative, you are professional, you are focused on what keeps the goal moving forward and not just the tasks checked off. Need vs. The Asked-For Task You should really watch the video for this part. When you map or manage a relationship, you need to four areas of clarity: * What do they need? Not what they asked for. What do they actually need? * What did I promise? Be honest. What exact thing did you commit to? * What are they worried about? This is critical. Context changes everything. If your boss is worried about whether the company will survive a market downturn, asking them about continuous improvement ROI in dollars misses the point entirely. * What’s the context? What artifacts, links, and background information help you understand the full picture? Why you might ask? (Though I’d hope by now you would know)… Look, when your boss asks you, “What’s the ROI on your continuous improvement project?” they’re not actually asking for a spreadsheet. They’re asking for reassurance that you’re making decisions that protect the company’s future. Even if they only know how to ask for a spreadsheet (because they aren’t managing their relationships either). If you answer with the task you did yesterday, you will answer the question, and fail the test. Your answer will be correct, but the person you are talking to didn’t get their unstated value need yet. Then they will criticize what you did or your capabilities, because they .. again… suck at relationships as much as anybody else. But if you answer with what you did and a quick story about how what you did helps them be less worried about whatever is keeping them awake at night, everyone wins. They now know they can count on you. They know, even just slightly, that you are paying attention to their needs. You know you’re having a meaningful conversation. You’ve completed a full value loop. Your touch with them has been meaningful for both parties. That’s a healthy relationship. So… think about your work. Think about your relationships. Think about what you are waiting for and what you are annoyed about and ask, “Who should I be talking to today?” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humanework.substack.com/subscribe

    11 min

  5. 8 JAN

    I Built a Real Pomodoro App Because No One Else Would

    I’m always hunting for tools that actually work. Tools that don’t force me into someone else’s idea of how I should work. Tools that respect the reality of my day. For years, I’ve been looking for the right Pomodoro app. And by right I mean one that actually did something other than give you a timer. I found ones that were close—close enough to make me think, “Maybe this one...” So I reached out to the builders. I wrote to them. I said, “Here’s what you need to add. Here’s what’s missing. Here’s what would actually make this useful.” And nothing happened. This is because most people who build an app don’t actually know what it could do. (Cough, Trello, cough). So we gave up waiting for other people to build the things we know people need. This year, we decided: stop waiting. Build the things ourselves. Build the tools that match what we actually teach, what we actually know works. Today, I’m showing you the Pomodoro app we created. Not because we think we invented timers…but because we built something that does what we’ve been telling people to do for years. Focus. So this creates the flows between focused work, self-awareness, and the ability to actually improve how you work. The Problem With Pomodoros (And Most Productivity Tools) Here’s what drives me crazy about Pomodoro apps: they track time. That’s it. You set a timer. You work. It dings. You’re done. Excellent you’ve reached 1695 and built the stopwatch. How about we move forward in time a bit? I mean, what does that timer actually tell you? Nothing. It runs, it dings. And it tells you “dinger-all” about your work. Nothing about your capacity. Nothing about what’s getting in your way. It’s just a timer that makes you feel productive. … not effective. We’re going for effective. I use Personal Kanban every day, you all know this. But it’s part of my system. It’s the part where I visualize my work because invisible work kills everything. It drains you. It makes you second-guess yourself. You finish an eight-hour day and think, “What the hell did I actually do?” When we focus and finish, we need to focus. What if a Pomodoro app actually helped you see what you’re doing? What if it connected focus time to insight? What if deep work had a repeatable pattern? What if flow could be scheduled? So, that’s what we built. How Modus Pomodoro Works Let me walk you through the my workflow, mostly because I’m still shocked that this worked as well as it did. First: your Kanban board. You’ve got your pending work. You’ve got your active work. You’ve got your “well of commitment” … your annoying backlog that keeps growing no matter how much you complete. So you go to your Personal Kanban and you want to focus. You don’t just grab whatever’s on top. You think about it. You sort it. And not by arbitrary priority lists. By what the work actually is. So we built this in a way that lets you take those things you are going to focus on and drop them into different contexts. You want to understand what is actually happening with your work. Is this work a heavy lift but a quick win? Then you know you can knock it out in a focused sessions with a colleague. Is this flow state? The kind of work where you lose yourself for 25 minutes and forget to check Slack? Mark it and protect that time, use it as a reward. Is this supported delegation? Work that needs someone else’s input or feedback? That tells you something important about your capacity. Is this thankless work? Important but stuff nobody celebrates? At least now you can see it. You can see it in context. This is what changes everything. Context. Now here in this view you see your tasks and their contexts. You’re not just marking down “contact new students” or “taxes and licensing.” You’re noting: Why is this here? What does it actually mean for how I work? What kind of energy will it take? Once you’ve sorted your work with that clarity, you pull one thing into your focus zone. Just one thing and you do a Pomodoro all Francesco Cirillo style. The Pomodoro Itself You start the timer. 25 minutes. The app doesn’t do anything fancy here. It just gets out of your way. You work. When I’d do this in the other apps, I’d just work, but I couldn’t track anything. So with ours, you can take notes. But here’s the part that matters: as you work, you can take notes. You need to remember what you’re learning or discovering or what’s changed between when you started and where you are now. With this we are building memory. You’re creating the story of your work. Twenty-five minutes later, the timer ends. You enter your energy level (you’d like to spend a day not burning out) and anything that interrupted you. Then the Modus Pomodoro tells you to: “Get up and walk around.” The thing about Pomodoro is that your brain needs to process and we never give ourselves time for processing. When you work for 25 minutes straight, your short-term memory gets maxed out. You need those five minutes, not necessarily to rest, but more to to consolidate what you just learned. To move it from your working memory into something more permanent. You need to actually remember your life. Every Pomodoro app glosses over this. Just like Trello glosses over WIP limits. But this is real neuroscience. When you skip this, you get to the end of your day (or your week) and you can’t remember what you did. The work disappears into fog. You may as well not be even trying to improve. So, with this … I tell you (and I tell myself) to get off your butt and walk around. What Happens Next: The Insight After your break, you come back. Then you move on to the next thing. Other Pomodoro apps just were like Yeah! Productivity! and you just moved on to the next task. But I wanted to build a picture of how I work. You’ve completed some Pomodoros. Your energy averaged 7.5 out of 10. You had some friction. Maybe some context switching, maybe missing information. The app gives you stats over your day. So by the time you complete you have an idea of: * Your actual capacity (how many Pomodoros you can sustainably do) * Your energy patterns (when you’re strongest, when you fade) * Your drag profile (what gets in your way most) * Your completion rate (did you finish what you said you would?) You have tons of context. So, Why and Stuff We teach people that invisible work kills you. We teach Personal Kanban because visualization is power. You can’t improve what you can’t see. We teach Personal Kanban because the moment you see your capacity and work within it, you start making real choices about what you can promise and what you cannot. We teach Pomodoro because focus is a skill you acquire through practice. We don’t naturally avoid email and doomscrolling. How to Use the Alpha We’ve built this as an alpha…a New Year’s gift, honestly, for people who are tired of tools that don’t let them focus. Go to pomodoro.modusinstitute.com. Start a session. Work on something that matters. Actually focus on it. Take notes. Log your energy. Let the app see your patterns. Then come back and tell us what you think. Tell us what breaks. Tell us what actually helps. Tell us what we’re missing. P.S. We’re building more of these tools this year. Tools for focus. Tools for clarity. Tools to help us get things done in a constant shark tornado of distraction. If there’s something you’ve been waiting for someone to build—something that would make your work visible and meaningful—tell us. Maybe we’ll build that next. Try the Pomodoro App: pomodoro.modusinstitute.com Want to go deeper? Check out Personal Kanban and our courses on visual management. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humanework.substack.com/subscribe

    12 min
  6. How Twelve Strangers Built a Complex Product in One Week (And What That Means for 2026)

    22/12/2025

    How Twelve Strangers Built a Complex Product in One Week (And What That Means for 2026)

    Speed Creates Chaos It’s 2010. Carbon credit programs are exploding globally, but no one has figured out how to distribute money equitably. The stakes are enormous. They needed a system that could channel hundreds of millions toward the right individual landowners. A poorly built system could perpetuate inequality at a massive scale. So someone decides: let’s build it in one week. And not with a team that’s been working together for years. With twelve relative strangers who have never met. Each one is an expert in their domain… we had economists, geologists, geographers, agriculturists, policy specialists. Each one brilliant in isolation. And that was the problem. The experts had done their work in isolation and there was an assumption that they could get together and just fold them into one system in a week. The reality was: brilliant experts + isolation + deadline = twelve incompatible documents heading toward catastrophic misalignment. Speed might hide the chaos, but it certainly didn’t eliminate it. Humane Work is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Individual Expertise Alone Fails Fast (all) Projects Since there were 12 chapters, each belonging to one subject matter expert, the obvious move is let them own their subject. Let them do their deep work. People don’t quite get that these things have parts. Each chapter isn’t a project on it’s own, it is a part of a machine. That means that for every chapter on economic distribution, there are elements about geography, supply chains, and more. No chapter can possibly stand alone. So deep work does not mean solo work. Isolated expertise produces isolated results. Person A writes a brilliant chapter (to themselves) on economics. Person B writes a brilliant chapter (to themselves) on agriculture. Person C writes something on geopolitics (to themselves) that’s technically sound but incompatible with A’s assumptions. Then, when you go to bring all that work together, it’s instant crisis mode. It’s totally Muppets. You waste days on rework, trying unsuccessfully to find all the little bits of wrong in the document. Isolation is always a precursor to failure. Collaboration Isn’t About Being Nice On day one of the REDD+ project, we made two leadership decisions that looked like a huge mistake. 1: “No one is writing their own chapter anymore. You’re all grouping on chapters.” The expertise didn’t change. The time constraint didn’t change. What changed was the visibility system, the speed of feedback, the relationships of the authors. Instead of twelve isolated experts, we had cross-functional teams…economists paired with agriculturists, policy specialists working alongside geologists. Each chapter had multiple perspectives embedded from the start. 2: “Every 20 minutes, we review.” Literally every 20 minutes, we’d stop and ask how far people were on their outlines and writing. And we would expect people to have questions for others in the group. So, every 20, the work paused, the teams talked. Questions were asked. Conflicts surfaced immediately. Adjustments were made in real-time. Every 20 minutes = constant steering of the ship. Over a week of intense work, that’s dozens and dozens of micro-corrections. A potential misalignment caught on day 2 averted a crisis that would have easily killed the report later. The second night, a team stayed late making major revisions to the model. This is group deep work. We created a system that compounded clarity in real time. Why This Matters Right Now My Christmas wish: 2026 needs collaboration. We need to work together. We think collaboration means: more meetings, more communication, more tools, more accessibility. What the REDD+ experience shows us the opposite: fewer meetings, more visibility, structured interruptions, and seemless, constant improvement. The detail of my holiday wish: 1. Visibility eliminates blame. When twelve people can see what everyone else is producing, like seeing it literally, on a board, there’s no mystery about who’s ahead or behind, what’s working or what’s stuck. You can see the problem, not the person. This removes the fear that kills collaboration. (yes, this happens on digital on-line boards too). 2. Structured interruptions prevent invisible chaos. A 20-minute interrupt wasn’t a distraction. It was a feedback loop. We created a quick, painless way of saying, “Are we still together on this?” Most fast projects (or projects at all) don’t have that. Work compounds for days in isolation, then you discover misalignment when it’s too late to fix. 3. Cross-functional grouping allows constant project steering. It could have been something like, “Let’s have economists talk to agriculturists in a meeting.” But we opted for the more effective, “You’re writing this chapter together. You can’t move forward until you’re aligned.” The system makes collaboration mandatory. 4. We do the right amount of work when we feel a bit of pressure. When you are writing or creating something for yourself, you are answering your personal need for the perfect product. You will write more or less than is needed. You will do more or less than is needed. When someone else is there working with you, you will both see when things are becoming overkill or under expressed. 4. Coherence emerges from repeated correction, not perfect planning. We didn’t spend three days planning the perfect chapter structure. We started working, interrupted constantly, corrected frequently, and let coherence emerge through iteration. This is faster than planning, we made small adjustments instead of big pivots. Humane Work is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support Modus’ work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. What This Means for Your Team If You’re an Individual Contributor: Stop assuming silence means alignment. In your next fast project, ask: “How will we see the work? How often will we check in? How do we know when we are done?” If the answer is “updates on Friday,” you’re in a chaos-hiding project. If the answer is “we’ll check the board daily (or better) and interrupt every morning (or better),” you’re in a system designed for real-time coherence. If You’re a Project Manager: Your job is to manage the visibility of the work and how the team coordinates. Build the system first: * Physical visibility: Board, stickies, or shared space where work is constantly visible * Cross-functional grouping: Stop isolating expertise. Pair or mob people across functions early and often * Clarity Compounding: What are you doing to make sure that people know are doing the best thing they could be doing right now? Then start the work. The system does the managing. If You’re Leading: Stop measuring output, throughput, or velocity: they lead to rework and failure demand. Start measuring alignment and rapid problem solving, they lead to products that go out strong and at the right time. How fast can your teams detect misalignment? How quickly can they correct it? How early can they surface integration problems? The teams that win in 2026 won’t be the ones that move fastest in isolation. They’ll be the ones that move coherently. Teams that are constantly checking, constantly correcting, constantly steering. The 2026 Challenge 2026 will be chaotic. There’s strife in the world. There’s uncertainty. There are constraints you can’t control. You can’t control the chaos. But you can structure how you respond to it. The teams that thrive won’t be the ones that move fastest. They’ll be the ones that see the fastest, correct the fastest, and integrate the fastest. Build the board, the room, whatever visualization is needed. Group the experts. Interrupt the work. Let coherence emerge. We work better together. We fail alone. Have a good 2026. And when you start a fast project, start with visibility. What You Can Do Next: * Join us for the Personal Kanban workshop. We’ll go deep on your actual limits, help build visuals that work for you personally, and create boundaries that work. Spend some time with us:Deep Dive See Your Work-shop * Read the full Personal Kanban book to understand the humanity behind the practice. * Read the Collaboration Equation to learn more about this type of leadership. * Take the Personal Kanban class on Modus Institute * Work with Jim and Toni for personalized guidance implementing visibility in your specific situation. Like and subscribe and all that stuff. But … really, everyone is running way above capacity and it’s hurting us all. So, please … opt out of that pain. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humanework.substack.com/subscribe

    5 min

  7. 12/12/2025

    Wait, You Want To Do What? A Reality Check For Your Post-its

    Modus Institute | Our Upcoming Calendar Your Backlog Is Not A Museum For Your Good Intentions Your brain lies to you. It tells you that every idea you have is a precious diamond that must be acted upon immediately. But they aren’t diamonds. Most of your ideas are just shiny rocks. And if you put every shiny rock on your desk (i.e., your Kanban board), pretty soon you can’t find your computer. When you come up with something to do, it’s often a real need that you haven’t thought through yet. We have a term for this: Solutioning. It’s when you decide how to fix something before you even know what is broken. It’s like buying a cast for your leg because you might fall down the stairs next week. Pawel Brodzinski (see above) pointed out that most of the stuff in our backlogs is just noise. It’s clutter. We stare at 50 items, paralyzed, wondering which one is the “priority,” when in reality, 40 of them are just vague wishes written months ago. The problem is that we confuse “The Need” with “The Solution.” And we make our tasks solutions and not need. Ideas are not action, but we need to turn ideas into action. Humane Work is reader-supported. You are a reader. Become a free or paid subscriber and get in on our subscriber calls and more content. What To Do With Ideas If I put a card on my board right now that says “Make Pizza,” that’s a solution. But the actual need is “Make Dinner.” By the time 6 PM rolls around, nobody might want pizza. If I’ve committed to “Pizza” as a task, I’m stuck. But if I have a pantry full of ingredients, I can look at the hungry people (the market) and say, “What do y’all want?” And they say, “We can Carne Asada Tacos.” I go to the pantry and I make some tacos. Or worse yet, and to torture the analogy even more, it’s like your ticket is make buttered scampi and then you find out your guests have shellfish allergies. But anyway you need a pantry. You need something to make sure that when the market wants something from you, you have the ingredients and the recipes. The Idea Factory So, let’s get some ideas and then hold them until they are ready with three quick visualizations: * The Idea Supermarket: This is a nice way of saying “Purgatory for Good Intentions.” Put your ideas here. Let them sit. If they are actually good, they will wait until you and the market are ready. If they are bad, they will quietly decompose without cluttering up your actual workday. * The 3 AM Notebook: I write things down in the middle of the night. It usually looks like a 6 month old got a sharpie and went nuts. That’s fine. The point here is to leave a trail to that 3 am idea that I’ll forget otherwise. If the evidence is compelling in the morning, I’ll do something with it. If not, it leaves something for the Jim Benson historians to decipher. * The Quality Filter: This one is deceptive. Only put stuff in your board’s backlog that you are ready to actually do. First, don’t be vague. If a sticky note says “Do Strategy,” that is not a task. That is a cry for help. A task is “Email Dave.” A task is “Write paragraph one.” If you don’t know the physics of the verb, it’s not a task. It’s a solution you haven’t earned yet. Kick it back to the pantry until you learn what you need to cook. * Second, if it’s something that you could do a million of (for me it’s posts like this one) putting everyone one you could do, into your options column means an insane number of options. Your real option that day is “write something that makes sense for the audience right now”…it’s the dinner. The subjects all go in the super market, they are ingredients. Closing on Maybe My friend Jeffrey White asked me recently about the “Maybe” column you see in some Kanban systems. A space for things that might happen. It sounds nice. It sounds like a gentle way to hold space for the unknown. And this can work for some people, giving them sort of an idea buffer. But, for me, “Maybe” is ambivalent. And ambivalence is justification for clutter that hasn’t found the courage to leave yet. It’s that roommate we all had in college. The image below shows a pantry, with shelves specifically market for different ingredient types. Don’t make a “parking lot” with stuff just thrown in it. Don’t maybe these things. Make them actionable future yeses. Today’s metaphor mixer: If you don’t know if an idea is dinner or just a shiny rock, don’t let it sit on your board staring at you like a bad roommate. Put it in the Supermarket. Put it in the Notebook. Get it out of your face. Your Personal Kanban isn’t a museum of things you thought about once. It’s a kitchen. And you need to cook. Also H/T to Janis Ozolins for the nifty graphic in the video. What You Can Do Next: * Join us for the Personal Kanban workshop. We’ll go deep on your actual limits, help build visuals that work for you personally, and create boundaries that work. Spend some time with us:Deep Dive See Your Work-shop * Read the full Personal Kanban book to understand the humanity behind the practice. * Read the Collaboration Equation to learn more about this type of leadership. * Take the Personal Kanban class on Modus Institute * Work with Jim and Toni for personalized guidance implementing visibility in your specific situation. * The board above is on Kanban Zone. Subscribers to this substack can get a bunch of templates from us there. Like and subscribe and all that stuff. But … really, everyone is running way above capacity and it’s hurting us all. So, please … opt out of that pain. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humanework.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  8. 11/12/2025

    Stop Trying To 'Mindfulness' Your Way Out Of A Traffic Jam

    “Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch. It’s a high-speed collaboration resembling, at its best, ballet or modern dance.”~ Anthony Bourdain We love the word “Flow.” It sounds magical. It sounds like a river. It sounds like a state of pure bliss where you are a productivity god and work is effortless. Flow isn’t magic; it’s just what happens when the friction disappears. It’s that quiet, humming moment when the tools get out of the way, the noise stops, and you realize, ‘Oh wait, I’m actually really good at this.’ It’s the feeling of the machine working exactly as designed, and realizing the machine is you. You ever see a jazz drummer? Or a line cook during a rush? They aren’t thinking. They aren’t planning. They’re just doing what comes next, what feels right, what’s not necessarily easy, but it effortless. They are creating value. That’s flow. Not cycle time, not throughput, but intentionality and correct action that improves what you do. Humane Work is reader-supported. You are a reader. Become a free or paid subscriber. You know what else flows (downhill)? Sewage. And for most of us, that’s exactly what our workday feels like. Because we don’t know what to do next, we don’t know the why, we don’t even know our own stakeholders. For most companies, work is a backed-up wastepipe of interruptions, bad policies, and meetings that could have been emails. You wanna be “in the zone.” You’re in a hostage negotiation with your own calendar. You want to be a drummer, but instead you are playing whack-a-mole in a rigged carnival. FLOW OR FAIL We can fix this. But if we just talk about our work (which no one understands) our conversations will just be shouting matches. If you treat work like a transportation problem, you realize there are actually Three Flows you need to worry about. And right now, all three of them are permanent red lines in your google map to the future. There is one key driving idea here. If things are in your way, go around them or get them out of the way. That’s it. Flows for better flow 1. The Road (Operational Flow) * Appreciate: This is the way you work. The road is the physics of your company. The highway. The rules of the road. * Accept: Everyone thinks the road is an Autobahn. In reality, the road is filled with potholes, road blocks, and toll booths. * Acknowledge: Every time you hit a pothole (a missing tool), a roadblock (an approval queue), or a toll booth (a “quick sync”), you stop moving. You can’t drive 100mph on a road that is actively trying to kill you. * Attention: Stop blaming the other drivers for swerving into your lane. Fix the pavement. A process that doesn’t help the car move forward is debris. Clear it. 2. The Car (Workflow) * Appreciate: This is the actual value. The project, report, code, sold house, plate of food…the thing you are trying to deliver. * Accept: You aren’t driving one car. You are trying to drive a fleet. You have the “Project A” sedan, the “Q3 Report” truck, and the “Favor for Dave” scooter. You are trying to drive five vehicles at the same time. * Acknowledge: A parked car delivers zero value. When you switch cars every 15 minutes, all of them are parked 90% of the time. And you have to run from car to car. You feel busy, but you aren’t moving. You’re just wasting energy. * Attention: Focus! Pick a car. Drive it to the destination. Get out. Go back. Drive the next one. 3. The Driver (Psychological Flow) * Appreciate: This is you. The creative engine. The poor soul behind the wheel. * Accept: You want to be a Formula 1 driver, but you’re stuck in a clown car, in a hockey rink, surrounded by … you get the idea. You can’t find “creative bliss” when you have to slam on the brakes every 45 seconds to answer a Slack message. * Acknowledge: You burn out. You get road rage. You start looking at Facebook marketplace for bobbleheads. * Attention: You cannot “will” yourself into flow if the road is broken. You have to protect the driver. “Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable, and satisfying. And I’ll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day.”~Also, Anthony Bourdain The Done Column Why does this matter? Why fix the road? Why stop driving five cars at once? We have a choice. When we finally unjam the sewage from the pipes, work stops being a traffic jam and starts being a jam session. How’s that for a mixed metaphor? As Anthony Bourdain said, ‘Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable, and satisfying.’ That’s the feeling we’re chasing. Not magic. Just the noble satisfaction of a machine running exactly the way it’s supposed to. That’s humane work and it is the only way any company can be reliably profitable and innovate. What You Can Do Next: * Join us for the Personal Kanban workshop. We’ll go deep on your actual limits, help build visuals that work for you personally, and create boundaries that work. Spend some time with us:Deep Dive See Your Work-shop * Read the full Personal Kanban book to understand the humanity behind the practice. * Read the Collaboration Equation to learn more about this type of leadership. * Take the Personal Kanban class on Modus Institute * Work with Jim and Toni for personalized guidance implementing visibility in your specific situation. Like and subscribe and all that stuff. But … really, everyone is running way above capacity and it’s hurting us all. So, please … opt out of that pain. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humanework.substack.com/subscribe

    11 min
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About

We explore humane work, visual systems, and people acting with confidence. humanework.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Modus Institute
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    45
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Modus Cooperandi, Inc
  • Show Website
    Humane Work Podcast