✅ Today’s Checklist:
🤔 Riddle me this: What is there one of in every corner and two of in every room? (Find the answer on the bottom).
🚪 Is it time to leave your company? A few prompts for finding out.
🔄 How to reframe false ‘career failures’.
🚫 Workplace bullying stifles opportunities for women in developing countries.
🛠️ Office makeover? Consider the on-trend speakeasy.
It’s hard to make things happen.
It’s especially hard to make things happen when you lack autonomy in the form of things like decision-making authority, influence, and stuff like that.
The Management Center’s 6-step guide to managing sideways might be exactly what you need to make progress toward key goals even when you feel like your hands are tied.
“Effectively managing sideways involves some of the same practices you would use when you’re managing direct reports: setting up clear roles and responsibilities, being clear about the desired outcomes, checking in on progress, and so forth,” they say.
“But when you’re managing sideways, it helps to take extra care in how you approach your colleagues with each of these items.”
When you lack formal authority, getting buy-in and moving projects forward often relies on clear communication, streamlined workflows, and smart collaboration.
These tools can help you manage sideways (and upwards) like a pro:
💬 Slack
No authority? No problem. Slack helps you maintain momentum through quick pings, project channels, and real-time updates—so you can keep everyone in the loop without long, drawn-out emails.
📊 Zoho
Build influence through data. Zoho’s task management and reporting tools help you highlight progress and outcomes, so your peers (and leadership) can see the results you’re driving.
Simplify complex team projects with interactive boards, automations, and visual timelines. monday.com makes it easy to organize tasks, clarify responsibilities, and track results—no micromanaging required.
🔧 Wrike
Projects coming at you like dodgeballs? Wrike turns chaos into clean, manageable tasks. Say goodbye to hunting down files or wondering, “Who’s on this?” Wrike knows—so you can too.
📅 Calendly
Scheduling, but make it painless. Calendly syncs your calendar, so people can book meetings without back-and-forth emails. Smooth, effortless, and makes you look like an efficiency goddess.
🛠 Zoho
CRM, accounting, and email marketing in one sleek package. Zoho streamlines your workflow, juggles client relationships, and doesn’t judge you for those late-night snack breaks while catching up.
When formal authority is out of reach, the right tools can give you the clarity, structure, and visibility needed to move projects across the finish line.
One TA reader wants to find some stability: The biggest challenge I am currently facing is trying to stay positive when the company I work for is going through some significant issues.
This is a classic ‘circle of influence’ challenge. The entire situation sucks, but only a sliver of it is within your control or ‘circle of influence.’
However, focusing on that small controllable sliver can be incredibly fruitful. Finding ways to feel good about the work you do for your company, even as it faces significant issues, might present a monumental learning experience.
The HBR evergreen classic, Strategies for Learning from Failure, contains a comprehensive game plan for doing exactly that—for leveraging this time of risk and uncertainty to learn.
Writer Amy C. Edmondson believes that managers should spend less time worrying about being too lenient and more time being curious about problems, risks, mistakes, and complete failures.
“This common worry should be replaced by a new paradigm—one that recognizes the inevitability of failure in today’s complex work organizations,” she says.
“Those that catch, correct, and learn from failure before others do will succeed. Those that wallow in the blame game will not.”
Read the full article, Strategies for Learning from Failure >
P.S. While we focused this segment on ways to approach staying with the company, we also felt the need to say: Never be afraid to decide that parting ways with the company is the best choice for you.
You are your own secret to success.
As a female director in a growing global organization and with a four-year-old daughter, it can be challenging to find a healthy balance. Working with an organization that believes each person is the key to their own success has been life changing. Executing on our fine-tuned system provides an ROI in 1 year.
The single best lesson I have learned from our Founder, Ray Russell, is to spend my 8 hours productively and efficiently and to have fun along the journey to wherever my destination will be.
Get Inspired.
Sarah J., National Director of Franchise Sales
“Becoming a Director and Chief of Staff starts with realizing that nothing is beneath you for daily tasks. Show up and be the example.”
— Patricia S. (Deputy Chief of Staff)
🎲 “We play this dice game every year at our annual Xmas eve party and it’s always a boisterous time. Makes a great stocking stuffer too!” — Joanna (TA Co-founder)
🧣 Stay cozy and stylish with this silk-lined beanie, your new go-to accessory for colder days!
💼 Simplify your workday with Rippling: from instant employee updates to seamless onboarding—all while earning a $100 gift card.
📊 Capsule is a top notch CRM that streamlines tracking, organization, and follow-ups, so nothing slips through the cracks.
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