You’re reading The Steady Beat, a weekly pulse of must-reads for anyone orchestrating teams, people, and work across the modern digital workplace—whether you’re managing sprints, driving roadmaps, leading departments, or just making sure the right work gets done. Curated by the team at Steady.
Health = Wealth
If you think organizational health is a fuzzy HR metric, McKinsey’s data should change your mind. After two decades of research and 2,000+ companies studied, the verdict is in: healthy organizations don’t just feel better—they perform better. These companies are 3X more likely to deliver sustained returns to shareholders and 2X as likely to outperform their peers on financial metrics. And no, it’s not about perks and ping-pong tables. The secret sauce? Clear direction, strong leadership, high-quality coordination, and a culture of continuous improvement. McKinsey also debunks the myth that you need to score high across the board. Turns out, picking the right capabilities for your context (from a tested set of 37!) is the real power move. With AI, hybrid work, and economic uncertainty reshaping how we work, leaders can’t afford to ignore this lever. Healthy teams win, especially when the rules of the game keep changing.
— McKinsey, 8m, #leadership, #performance, #culture
AI Is Coming for the Middle
If you’re worried AI will take your job, you might be looking at it wrong. Camille Fournier (of The Manager’s Path fame) argues that AI isn’t gunning for the smartest or the scrappiest—it’s coming for the middle. The mid-skilled, mid-ambitious, mid-visible workers who fly under the radar. Why? Because LLMs are shockingly decent at producing “good enough” work, and good enough is often what middle-tier tasks demand. Fournier goes on to diagnose how AI is flattening value hierarchies and increasing the stakes for visibility and judgment. The winners? The people who can define what “good” looks like, not just produce it. The losers? Those who mistake being busy for being necessary. For tech leaders, this piece doubles as a quiet call to arms: elevate taste, cultivate judgment, and think harder about how your org measures value—before the machines do it for you.
— Medium, 7m, #futureofwork, #ai, #techleadership
Tech Eats World
Technology isn’t just back, it’s morphing into something bigger, broader, and less boxable. In Everything Is Technology, Packy McCormick argues that we’re entering a new golden era where the distinction between “tech” and “not tech” is collapsing. From biology to manufacturing to consumer goods, if it can be optimized, digitized, or scaled with software, it’s now part of the tech stack. The piece traces how a once-niche sector became the organizing principle of modern capitalism—through capital efficiency, talent concentration, and relentless curiosity. The thesis? We’re re-expanding: venture is diversifying, founders are building real-world products, and the next wave of disruption won’t just be screen-deep. It’ll be embedded in supply chains, physical infrastructure, and the atoms of daily life. This isn’t the death of tech. It’s its reawakening: as a mindset, not a sector.
— Not Boring, 17m, #technology, #startups, #futuretrends
Team First, Business Always
Want to know if your team is built to last or just built to look good? Rob La Gatta drops a 4-factor stress test to tell the difference. His core belief: you don’t work for your business. Your business works for your team. That shift turns leadership from output-obsessed to people-obsessed—with better results. The four factors are 1) Purpose Fit: are team goals aligned with individual purpose? 2) Character Fit: do people show up with integrity and self-awareness? 3) Skill Fit: can they do the job, not just interview for it? And 4) Culture Fit: do they bring energy or drain it? La Gatta makes a strong case that these are more than HR platitudes—they’re strategic imperatives. Ignore them, and you’re essentially scaling dysfunction. Embrace them, and you build what he calls a “true team”—a self-aware, values-aligned unit that can navigate uncertainty and growth without breaking down or burning out.
— Owner Institute, 5m, #leadership, #teamwork, #hiring
Don’t Mistake Motion for Mastery
In her latest punchy dispatch, Wes Kao tackles a trap that plagues ambitious professionals: thinking time served is the same as progress made. Just because you’ve done 100 reps doesn’t mean you’ve improved. Kao urges us to think in averages, not cumulatives. In other words, it’s not the years of experience—it’s the quality of your performance per rep that matters. This applies whether you’re public speaking, managing teams, or building product. If your performance isn’t improving, those reps are just busywork in disguise. Kao’s advice? Track your average over time. Notice patterns. And iterate deliberately. Repetition without reflection is just a hamster wheel in a fancier office.
— Wes Kao’s Newsletter, 4m, #performance, #leadership, #habits
Teamwork for the AI Era
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