Topic

People-First

A collection of 13 issues

#UnderdogChallenge—my 23-year journey from soloist to agency principal and back in under 500 words

After nearly 23 years, I’m back on the tools, working directly with amazing clients—designing and building beautiful, elegant, highly functional Shopify stores—learning and growing and achieving things I’d forgotten I was capable of.

“Kablooie!”

It feels like, almost overnight, the social web has fragmented into an infinite number of pieces. Is there hope for our preciouse, time, energy, and headspace?

Should I hire an internal Shopify developer for my ecommerce site instead of paying an agency on retainer?

While agencies might seem more expensive at face value, even if you work mostly with one person, you are typically getting the benefit of a team’s breadth and depth of knowledge, perspective, and expertise.

The journey isn’t just lonely at the top

In our effort to build lean teams, we tend to underinvest in team-building. We overload our teams with too much complexity and too many areas of responsibility without the frameworks or systems to support them or enable them to have sounding boards and forums for healthy discussion.

A first-principles mindset

If you’re building a people-first organization, you will grow faster and require less operational oversight if you develop and encourage a first-principles mindset in your team.

Reflections on what it means to build a people-first organization

As I strive at Lucid to build a healthier, people-first organization, I have been reflecting on some core principles of building a great team.

Are you striving to be a master of your digital craft? Where is your community?

I often reflect on the loneliness of the journey for founders but I am curious to understand if this is an issue for those of you working in teams as well?

Profit-sharing within an agency organization

Does anyone have great examples of simple, well-structured bonus plans, phantom stock options, profit-sharing, etc. for digital agencies?

“Before we begin, is there anything on your mind?”

It’s easy to forget that the people we are interacting with each day have their own stresses and anxieties and challenges that they bring to the table (or the Zoom call!).

How can we foster a culture of mutual empathy, integrity, and respect?

One thing is clear to me, though: rather than establishing rules for how employees should relate to one another or what they can discuss, surely the best approach is to encourage a culture of mutual empathy and integrity and respect.