There are some parts of your character that another person can see very clearly, but you cannot see. Even if you accept this premise intellectually and think "okay so i'll just ask everyone for feedback," it's still hard for you to catch your blind spots for 3 reasons: 1. Other people are very good at sensing whether you're ready to hear a hard truth or not. So they won't be fully honest with you. 2. Even if the other person is being fully direct, if you're not ready to hear something, their words will simply not penetrate. Your mind filters it out so that you believe they're rude, or wrong, or missing the point. This is why everyone walks around like naked emperors.

The Making of a Manager is launching a revised edition! After 6 years and 5K+ ratings, the Making of a Manager is stepping into big-kid clothes (aka paperback edition) with a refresh + 2 brand new chapters (on managing remotely and managing down times). I wrote The Making of a Manager because I saw the task of getting the best out of a team as its own kind of craft. To this day I am obsessed with this job and feel grateful I get to practice it daily with my phenomenal @TeamSundial. Like a slow climb, I've come to savor the satisfaction of company building even more than that of building product. It's more dynamic and enduring. If designing experiences is about stepping into user empathy, then managing is that, but ten times more visceral. In the era of AI, good management matters more than ever, for two key reasons: The first, a pragmatic one, is that the principles of managing AI agents well are not so different from managing humans well. You need to develop an intuition for this black box and its quirks. Get to know it deeply. Express your expectations clearly. Give feedback prodigiously. The second reason, a human one, is that AI is disrupting life as we know it. The pace of change has never been swifter. And while many changes will be for our benefit, any upheaval of "how things were done" breeds uncertainty and fear. The ground trembles beneath our feet. Jobs will be lost; power dynamics rearranged; unspoken rules rewritten. During these daily booms and busts, sturdy leadership matters more than ever. I care about this immensely. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has given this book a chance, and passed it on to their teams or managers or siblings or friends. It feels like getting postcards of your traveling gnome to see it make its way from Silicon Valley start-ups to dentist offices to government agencies across the world. The greatest compliment is hearing: "this book helped me become a better manager." Thanks for having that coffee chat with me. My belief in you is as deep as the Mariana Trench. The revised paperback edition with two new chapters has a gradient cover and a lower list price. It launches in September but you can preorder it today on Amazon. (Please note: the hardcover will get updated later this year; ordering a hardcover now does not guarantee getting the newly revised edition!)

Insane = definitively subpar to actually using AI in Canva itself.

How it started, how it’s going. (Thanks @tomaskafka for the intros to so many new friends in Prague! Still amazed how the internet can facilitate the meeting of like-minded people all over the world!)

The average NA cocktail is soon going to be tastier than its alcoholic counterpart for the simple reason that it doesn't need to be weighed down by flavor of alcohol.

No one is doing social AI well yet, which shocks me. The biggest opportunity with any new tech is awareness of its power. The easiest way to teach? Show them what other people are doing. Why don't we see trending prompts yet? Not to mention, there is a whole entire category of "fun + connective" social AI that we haven't yet scratched the surface of.

In prague this week. What should I do / see?

Psst, launching a new Substack. For decision-makers, data lovers, and truth-seekers -> We got a backlog of stuff to talk about but want to hear your topic suggestions too!

the fact that, sundial, a data analytics platform uses a font called 'funnel sans', makes my typography heartttt giggle but more importantly, congratsss @TeamSundial, and what a delightful website!

Sometimes I watch my son play a video game like and I imagine it's like watching Jiro make sushi. It is a thing of beauty, how much he craft he puts into the stabbing.