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Challenge How does a Board of Directors (re)craft its annual assessment of the CEO when that role is filled by a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team? This was precisely the challenge the Fractured Atlas Board faced in early 2019. Below, in detail, we describe the process we crafted to answer this question.

Virtual Realities and a Fully Distributed Workplace Fractured Atlas “Fun” Fact Of the eight staff members currently at the Senior Director and C-level tiers, none live and work in the same state (Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Vermont). And more than half of our Fractured Atlas team now live in 11 U.S. states and 6 countries, with fewer than half spending any time in our sole physical office on 35th Street in New York City. Long exposure image I captured after a productive day of writing in this former one-room school house.

by Nicola Carpenter, Associate Director, People Operations at Fractured Atlas Full team photo from All Hands 2019 At Fractured Atlas, about half of our team work fully distributed so we started having full staff events 6 years ago when we realized that there are conversations and activities that are better to do in person. We originally called these week long events “OkTECHberfest” but changed to “All Hands” last year. Through these years, we’ve found ways of creating an event that supports our organizational shared purpose.

It is December, which means that I am watching way too many holiday movies -(specifically the romcom variety that Hallmark and Netflix do so well), and it seems like I’m not alone. As I’ve been watching movie after movie, I have noticed some common themes: baking cookies (yum!), accidentally falling in love with a prince (or Santa’s son!), really fake looking snow (or incredibly not winter friendly outfits!), and people loving their jobs (just kidding).

Deadline to Apply: January 15, 2019 We’re thrilled to announce that we are once again offering our one-day Strategic HR Bootcamp on Saturday, February 23, 2019 in New York City. Only 25 spots are available for this cohort due to space constraints, and the deadline to apply is January 15, 2019. (Don’t sweat, it’s a brief application with only two questions aside from your name and contact information). Cost, with scholarship, is $100.

Earlier this year I wrote a post explaining why I think Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are great ways to track goals. As a quick refresher, OKRs allow teams and organizations to align goals for a set period of time in a transparent and connected way. Since then, I’ve gotten questions about the logistics of implementing the OKR framework in an organization and the process that Fractured Atlas uses. I decided to compile this information into a toolkit that you can use and iterate on. I hope that it helps in your process of deciding whether to use them in your organization and how to implement them.

An Early Look Into Fractured Atlas’s Shared Leadership Model Preamble Those playing along at home will recall that Fractured Atlas recently embarked on a few new adventures. One of which is the creation of a four-person, non-hierarchical leadership team for the organization. (I recently shared a collection of research on the topic. If you can wait a bit longer, I’m publishing a subsequent post that distills the key findings from the hundreds of hours I spent reviewing material.)

Photo by Oliver Fluck. (Image unfortunately does not represent the setting of my actual think week, which is more along the lines of small apartment in New York City.) I’m going off-the-grid for a sorta annual Think Week. On the docket for this year: process and distill learning from material related to non-hierarchical, shared leadership teams, the role of the CEO, and — if I have time (fingers crossed) — global virtual teams.

Resource scarcity leads us to borrow, and that pushes us deeper into scarcity. Why? Because when we have scarce resources we tunnel (i.e., we focus on the here and now, the fires, what needs to get done right now). Tunneling leads us to neglect. Tunneling today creates more tunneling tomorrow, and leads us to borrow — in a borrowing from Petra to pay Paula and eventually needing to pay back Petra with significant interest scenario — so that we’re using the same physical resources less effectively, placing us one step behind.

Welcoming a new addition to the family can elicit all the feels, excitement, anxiety, joy, and wonder (like what is a nose frida and why is everyone raving about them?). There will be lots of changes in store both at home and at work, so the more you can prepare yourself and your team for the new unknown the better. I’ve been at Fractured Atlas through the birth of both of my kiddos, and was the first person to use our company’s family leave benefit in its entirety. Below are some of the things I’ve learned that may help you and your team prepare for leave.