What's making work harder than it needs to be?
Practical resources, expert insights and tools to help you lead better, manage people and build stronger organisations. Main
My managers bring me everything
Build manager independence and accountability.
I can't find good people
Attract, hire and keep the right talent.
We're using AI but I can't see the ROI
Make AI useful, not just interesting.
I'm the bottleneck
Scale your impact and build a stronger leadership team.
Someone isn't performing
Handle poor performance fairly and effectively.
I'm worried about losing my best people
Increase engagement and build a culture people want to stay in.
Remote work isn't working
Build connection, productivity and trust across distances.
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If the business stalls whenever you're on holiday, you haven't built a company — you've built a very demanding job.
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Every decision that reaches you is one your managers have decided is safer to hand up than to own.
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Do I need to deal with someone who hits their numbers but is making the team miserable?
Yes — and the fact that they hit target is exactly why this has probably gone unaddressed for too long. "Performance" isn't only output; it's output achieved in a way that doesn't quietly cost you everyone else's. Get specific about the behaviour, not the personality — what they do, in what situations, and what it costs the team — and have that conversation as directly as you would a missed target. Protecting a high performer's behaviour because the numbers are good is a decision, even if it doesn't feel like one.
Senior Manager · 50-100 employees
The real reasons your best people are leaving
It's rarely the counter-offer. By the time someone hands in their notice, they've usually been gone for months.
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Al and Leanne break down why people actually leave — and it's rarely the reason they give in the exit interview.
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I think my best hire is about to quit, but they haven't said anything. What do I do?
Trust the signal, not the silence. People rarely announce disengagement — they show it through smaller effort, less initiative, or simply doing exactly what's asked and nothing more. Don't open with "are you leaving," which invites a denial either way. Open with genuine curiosity about how the role is actually going for them right now, and be prepared to hear something you don't want to. If there's a real issue, you likely still have a small window to address it — but only if you ask before they've already decided.
Director · 100-150 employees
Remote work isn't broken. Your management was always the risk.
Remote work didn't break management. It just removed the things that were quietly covering for bad management.
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Remote work exposed a lot of management habits that only worked because everyone was in the same room. Al and Leanne on what to fix.
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Explore all resourcesHow to have difficult conversations at work, with Kathleen Troyer and Liz Bronson
HR experts Kathleen Troyer and Liz Bronson join Al and Leanne to talk through the conversations most managers avoid — and what it costs when they keep avoiding them.
Truth, Lies & Work · Episode 137
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Find out how many days your business could run without you, and what's actually stopping that number from growing.
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Al Elliott
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A short video series answering the question every leader is quietly asking: we're using AI, so where did the saved hours actually go?
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Our flagship podcast — one of the ways Oblong publishes, not the whole of it. ~180k downloads a month, two episodes a week.
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