Human Work
What If the Rules
Were Wrong?
"These systems were built by people.
They can be changed by people."
Most of what we have been taught about leadership was designed by someone else, for a world that no longer exists. Human Work is the practice of examining what we have inherited — and deciding what to keep.
"We do not need more leadership advice. We need the courage to examine what we have already been handed — and the honesty to change what is not working."
The Practice
What Human Work
Actually Is
For decades, we have followed blueprints for what good leadership looks like, what a successful organization is, what it means to be productive, professional, or worthy of respect. Most of us never chose those blueprints. We inherited them.
And here is the most important thing Human Work wants you to understand:
That reframe changes everything. A system that feels like gravity — fixed, immovable, just the way things are — becomes furniture the moment you realize a human being designed it, with specific beliefs and specific blind spots. Furniture you can move. Furniture you can replace.
Examine
Who built this — and what did they believe when they built it? Where did this come from? Does it still serve the people I lead?
Decide
Keep what serves people. Name what does not. Stop following by default what you can now follow — or replace — by conscious choice.
Change
Do the actual work. Personally — in how you lead and how you show up. Organizationally — in the systems and structures you have the power to shape.
Human Work Research
How Much of You
Comes to Work?
Most of us adjust who we are to fit what work expects. Some of that is healthy flexibility. Some of it costs more energy than we realize, and the brain registers that constant adjustment as strain.
This 10 to 12 minute reflection compares your engagement at work with your engagement in the rest of your life, then shows you which parts of yourself you turn up or down to fit in. No name or email required. You get your results either way, and you can choose to add your anonymous responses to the research.
Take the Survey →
About Jessie
This Work Comes From
Lived Experience.
I did not arrive at Human Work through research alone. I arrived through 30 years in the pit — coaching leaders, building teams, and doing the real work alongside the people I served. As a gay man, as someone who grew up without the blueprints others seemed to have, as a leader who had to unlearn as much as he learned.
Human Work exists because I believe that. The neuroscience confirms it. And the workplaces that understand it are the ones worth working in.
Read the Full Story →Join the Conversation
The Work Continues
on LinkedIn
Articles, frameworks, and honest thinking on leadership, published in the Human Work newsletter on LinkedIn. The kind of content that makes you stop and reconsider something you thought you already knew.
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An Honest Note
What Human Work
Is Not
This is not another leadership blog telling you to wake up earlier, be more grateful, or adopt a morning routine. It is not productivity hacks dressed up as wisdom.
Human Work is the harder, slower, more honest practice of looking at what you have been following — and asking whether it is actually worth following.
"If you are willing to sit with that discomfort, you are in the right place."