Karina West

I think I’ve cracked the obsession amongst much of the Silicon Valley set with compressing work life, sacrificing everything until the big exit, and running fast while breaking all the things: If you don’t plan to stick around, who cares how you leave the things behind?

…g to eradicate them completely, nice though the idea may be. These words are helpful to start with. They come into existence to fill a gap in the lexicon, and make it easier to communicate with each other about our work. But then they get popular, and lots of people start using them for different reasons and to refer to different things. These words get slippery and their meaning starts to shift. You can be having a conversation with someone, thinking you’re talking about the same thing, when you’re not.

Responsive organizations let those closest to the work decide how to do the work. They make explicit a team’s decision-making authority — with a bias towards increased autonomy. Thi…