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Disney
The Mouse Knew
What a company built on talking mice can teach the rest of us about experience design and storytelling. Turns out the magic isn't magic — it's relentless, deliberate craft, and we can steal plenty of it.
Employee Experience Doesn't Break. It Drifts.
Most leaders think employee experience is a state. Good or bad. Healthy or toxic. A number on an engagement survey that either clears the bar or doesn't. That's the wrong model. Employee experience is not a state. It's a slope. It drifts. Slowly, quietly, and mostly out of view — until one day the work is worse, the people are tired, and nobody can point to the moment it went sideways. There wasn't a moment. There was a slide. And the customer meets the bottom of that slide l
Even Disney Can Fall Into the Dark Age
I should warn you up front: I am a Disney Adult, and I am not the least bit sorry about it. If you grew up like me, you understand. I was raised by a single mom who worked herself to the bone, and every couple of years she scraped together enough to take me to Disneyland. When the real world got too heavy — and it got heavy a lot — we'd duck into a dark theater and let a Disney movie carry us somewhere kinder for ninety minutes. That wasn't escapism for us. It was oxygen. So
AI & Workflow Systems
The Best Chair in the House Didn't Look Like Anything
My father-in-law, Bob Dunwoody, had a chair at his ski house that fooled everyone.It looked like a chair. A good one, the kind of quietly handsome piece that belonged in a room with big windows and a fire going. You'd walk past it a dozen times and never think twice. Then someone would sink into it, find a hidden control, and the thing would come alive. Not a sad little buzz. A full, deep tissue massage that worked your back like it had opinions about your posture.That chair
The Performance of "Belief"
The problem with AI at work is not just bad outputs. It's that too many organizations now require a performance of belief. Not a result. Not proof. Belief. The willingness to say, out loud, in the right meeting, that AI is transforming your work — whether or not it actually is. And once an organization starts rewarding that performance, it stops being able to hear the one sentence it needs most: this is not working. The coordination problem nobody wants to name Cory Doctorow,
Employee Experience Doesn't Break. It Drifts.
Most leaders think employee experience is a state. Good or bad. Healthy or toxic. A number on an engagement survey that either clears the bar or doesn't. That's the wrong model. Employee experience is not a state. It's a slope. It drifts. Slowly, quietly, and mostly out of view — until one day the work is worse, the people are tired, and nobody can point to the moment it went sideways. There wasn't a moment. There was a slide. And the customer meets the bottom of that slide l
Product Craft & Patterns
The Best Chair in the House Didn't Look Like Anything
My father-in-law, Bob Dunwoody, had a chair at his ski house that fooled everyone.It looked like a chair. A good one, the kind of quietly handsome piece that belonged in a room with big windows and a fire going. You'd walk past it a dozen times and never think twice. Then someone would sink into it, find a hidden control, and the thing would come alive. Not a sad little buzz. A full, deep tissue massage that worked your back like it had opinions about your posture.That chair
Sep 76 min read
The Performance of "Belief"
The problem with AI at work is not just bad outputs. It's that too many organizations now require a performance of belief. Not a result. Not proof. Belief. The willingness to say, out loud, in the right meeting, that AI is transforming your work — whether or not it actually is. And once an organization starts rewarding that performance, it stops being able to hear the one sentence it needs most: this is not working. The coordination problem nobody wants to name Cory Doctorow,
Aug 65 min read
Organizational Systems
The Best Chair in the House Didn't Look Like Anything
My father-in-law, Bob Dunwoody, had a chair at his ski house that fooled everyone.It looked like a chair. A good one, the kind of quietly handsome piece that belonged in a room with big windows and a fire going. You'd walk past it a dozen times and never think twice. Then someone would sink into it, find a hidden control, and the thing would come alive. Not a sad little buzz. A full, deep tissue massage that worked your back like it had opinions about your posture.That chair
The Performance of "Belief"
The problem with AI at work is not just bad outputs. It's that too many organizations now require a performance of belief. Not a result. Not proof. Belief. The willingness to say, out loud, in the right meeting, that AI is transforming your work — whether or not it actually is. And once an organization starts rewarding that performance, it stops being able to hear the one sentence it needs most: this is not working. The coordination problem nobody wants to name Cory Doctorow,
Employee Experience Doesn't Break. It Drifts.
Most leaders think employee experience is a state. Good or bad. Healthy or toxic. A number on an engagement survey that either clears the bar or doesn't. That's the wrong model. Employee experience is not a state. It's a slope. It drifts. Slowly, quietly, and mostly out of view — until one day the work is worse, the people are tired, and nobody can point to the moment it went sideways. There wasn't a moment. There was a slide. And the customer meets the bottom of that slide l
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