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Posts from Awesome Folks: year round up 2025

Posts from Awesome Folks: year round up 2025

Emily Webber
December 19, 2025

Hello folks,

2025 has had some ups and downs, but I’m fit and healthy, and work has kept things interesting and enjoyable, including working with great clients such as DWP, GLA, DBT, Thompson Harrison, Nesta, DNV, National Trust, and Conflux.

I have also returned to public speaking after taking a break in the second half of last year, including conferences in Sweden, Manchester, Cambridge, London, Bristol, and Amsterdam.

And, I launched my online course, Building Successful Communities of Practice, at tacit.pub/learnCoPs (grab yourself an end-of-year discount using the code hello2026 until 5th January) as well as a new company website at hellotacit.com.

Look out for the second edition of my book Building Successful Communities of Practice, coming in 2026 and join the mailing list here.

As for this newsletter, this year I shared 380 posts from 254 Awesome Folks. Thanks to all the awesome folks for posting and to you for following along with my weekly reading habits, and have a brilliant festive break.

Enjoy this week’s posts and see you in the New Year.

Emily

Some common themes of the year

Firefighting and Overload, like The deadline doom loop and The key to breaking free from the negative feedback loop of operational overload.

Hybrid Work Realities, like What Is the Office for Today? and Hybrid Work Is Not the Problem — Poor Leadership Is

The Human Cost of Modern Work, like The Hidden Toll of Meeting Hangovers and Quiet cracking is the latest workplace epidemic

And the blogoverse was full of posts on AI, like Research: Gen AI Makes People More Productive—and Less Motivated, and The AI productivity myth is more harmful than you think

The top clicked posts of 2025

Transform teams and boost your EQ with this invisible leadership skill

Jackie Colburn

Some of the most effective and motivating leaders know how to create an environment where people feel safe to think, speak, and contribute…

jackiecolburn.medium.com/transform-teams-and-boost-your-eq-with-this-invisible-leadership-skill-30f879a854db

Three Nonnegotiable Leadership Skills for 2025

Melissa Swift

Work will be messy and volatile in 2025: Focus on developing these leadership skills.

sloanreview.mit.edu/article/three-nonnegotiable-leadership-skills-for-2025

The Scaling Teams checklist

Emily Webber

How do you know when you're ready to scale your team(s)? Jamie Arnold and I have been exploring this topic and have created a handy download to help leaders and teams answer the question.

emilywebber.co.uk/the-scaling-teams-checklist

How to Reduce Planning, Deliver More, and Surprisingly, Reduce Pressure

Johanna Rothman

In my first post, Why We Have Too Much Pressure and Planning & Too Little Delivery, I discussed the issue of too much planning and how that reduced delivery. In this post, I'll address how to increase delivery by planning less. (I have a draft post of the system view of how too much planning reduces […]

www.jrothman.com/mpd/2025/03/how-to-reduce-planning-deliver-more-and-surprisingly-reduce-pressure

The holy framework war.

Oli Lovell

The approach you take to delivering things has a profound effect on your likelihood of success. And yet, time and again I am encountering organisations that are stuck in approaches that are slowing…

snufkinstravels.wordpress.com/2025/04/12/the-holy-framework-war

TBM 366: Empowered For Delivery, But...

John Cutler

There's an emphasis on team independence and autonomy, but also fairly traditional ideas about the role of the manager (as gatekeeper, filter, escalation resolver, etc.). In many ways, these ideas are complementary to one another. After all, how else do you achieve empowerment and independence without holding someone accountable for keeping things "clean" at the edges?

cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-366-empowered-for-delivery-but

Productivity v Impact

Jessica Kerr

Here’s a familiar 2×2, the Important & Urgent quadrants: Very early in my career, I was taught to beware the “Not Important & Urgent” quadrant. I’m used to work…

jessitron.com/2024/12/15/productivity-v-impact

Eight Ways to End Meeting Misery

William Reed

Experts share small, intentional changes leaders can make to transform meetings from tedious to time well spent.

sloanreview.mit.edu/article/eight-ways-to-end-meeting-misery

Why Your Manager is (Probably) Incompetent

Joost Minnaar

Tired of clueless managers and bloated bureaucracy? Discover 3 laws that explain corporate dysfunction and how to fix it with self-management.

www.corporate-rebels.com/blog/why-your-manager-is-probably-incompetent

Why power skills – formerly known as ‘soft skills’ – are the key to business success

Sandra Sjoberg

My experience in the corporate world showed me how much the human element matters. I went into academia to translate theory into practice.

theconversation.com/why-power-skills-formerly-known-as-soft-skills-are-the-key-to-business-success-257310

think do think do

Katherine Wastell

I’ve just finished reading Don’t Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen. One of the main concepts in the book is the difference between thoughts and thinking. It explains how overthinking can destroy our motivation and hopes. Too much thinking takes the raw, joyful thoughts we have and turn

www.katherinewastell.com/blog/think-do-think-do