Timothy Burkhardt

As technology improves and communication speeds up, so does the pace of life. Email replaced snail mail, and now messaging apps like Slack can keep us in touch with our work wherever and whenever we are. Instead of having more time for relaxation, we end up trying to be more productive. Work projects seem to go on forever and the “To Do” list never ends.
With so much to accomplish, it’s easy to lose track of what’s important, of why we work in the first place. Is work there to help us generat...

“Brady and Jordan are both considered to be the best athletes in their respective sports. Both have led their teams to multiple championship victories and are superstars in their own right, but they have vastly different leadership styles.”
1989 NBA Playoffs: Game 5
Bulls vs. Cavaliers
The Bulls and the Cavaliers are tied for victories 2-2. Game 5 will decide who goes home and who moves on to the next round. The game is close, with both teams trading the leading position over and over as the ...

Great news!
My solarpunk vampire story just got accepted into an anthology that pays pro rates. “The Sun Also Rises in Space” will finally see the light of day (unlike the villain, Bojunk Bojanx, who has to hide from the light of day, even when surfing the stars).
The best part? The max word count for the anthology is eight-thousand words. At eight cents a word, that comes out to $640! The Sun Also Rises in Space is only 3,500 words right now, but that is OK because I have a whole other subpl...

Intro
As leaders, our job is to determine the “what” and the “why.” When we let our team figure out the “how,” we can create a context where they’re able to perform at their best. Sometimes this can feel risky, but it can give us far better outcomes than we could have expected if we had imposed our way.
Phil Jackson and Dennis Rodman
In the late 90s, Dennis Rodman was one of the top three basketball players on the Chicago Bulls, right behind Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan. Known for his ag...

“As leaders, we need to get more comfortable with conflict and make space for disagreements. Messy is a valuable part of the process. Struggles, disagreement, and conflict in the mix creates authentic unity over time. Great work involves struggle.” - Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown
I often work with leadership teams on problems that don’t have a fixed answer. Like heroes on a quest, we might know the direction of travel and have a sense of where we’re going, but we don’t know exactl...

After dozens of drafts, workshops, and consultations with editors, my vampire solarpunk short story, The Sun Also Rises in Space, is finally ready for publication. My grammar is on point, my plot holes are all filled in, and my villain—Bojunk Bojanx, the star-surfing vampire—is a complex antagonist with the perfect blend of pathos and hatefulness. Plus he has a solar surfboard and some sci-fi sunscreen that keeps him safe from UV rays while he’s riding the electromagnetic waves of the sun.

No...

Some organizations I work with feel like perpetual startups.
They’re constantly moving in new directions, adding new technologies, and inventing new ways of working (I’ll admit that I feel like I’m like this sometimes, too).
It’s not that inventing things or exploring new ideas is bad. Of course not! Imagine a company that could never try or do something new. Over time, those companies go stale and, eventually, they all get a familiar label: bankrupt. However, companies that continually chang...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the consequences of following rules (and its complement, innovation).
Everywhere you look there are rules and regulations written in BOLD.
NO TRESPASSING
PARKED CARS WILL BE TICKETED
KEEP REFRIGERATED
USE BY 04/28/2022
But what happens when one breaks the rules? Are the penalties severe and immediate, or are they mild and under-enforced? Is there some level of cost/benefit analysis that can be applied to petty shenaniganry?
My partner seems to innately un...

One of my friends and clients is the founder and CEO of a medium-sized, financially successful tech company. He's kind and witty and down-to-earth, and I like and admire him a lot.
A while back, he was part of a conversation I facilitated about the nature of leadership, particularly when there is great uncertainty in your world.
There were about a dozen participants, and many shared their experiences. At one point, I turned to my friend and asked him if he, as the CEO and chairman of his comp...

One of my friends and clients is the founder and CEO of a medium-sized, financially successful tech company. He's kind and witty and down-to-earth, and I like and admire him a lot.
A while back, he was part of a conversation I facilitated about the nature of leadership, particularly when there is great uncertainty in your world.
There were about a dozen participants, and many shared their experiences. At one point, I turned to my friend and asked him if he, as the CEO and chairman of his comp...

Every organization has two important objectives. They need to streamline and exploit their strengths and successes while also remaining creative, exploring new ideas, and keeping an eye on the horizon for future trends.
One of the most important modern leadership challenges is how to balance these activities, how to innovate and look ahead even as you’re improving what you’re doing now. Few companies do this well.
When the pandemic hit, companies changed how they worked because they needed to...

In this series, author and organizational coach Chris Clearfield talks with leaders who manage technology-driven teams at innovative organizations across the world. The series will examine universal big-picture challenges as well as specific lessons on sparking ideas and accelerating innovation.
More in this series
Many of us travel routinely for work or leisure. We think little of the tasks required — booking tickets, checking bags, earning or redeeming frequent-flyer miles — but modern air ...

Hi there, it’s Tim, one of your (usually) friendly editors at The Dread Machine, and I’m here to share my method for evaluating submissions for the slush pile. This is not meant to frustrate or discourage you (it might), rather to let you know my thought process as I read submissions. Not everyone uses the exact same methods: Monica and Tina have their own vetting procedures, as I’m sure do the rest of the TDM slushmuckers. Hopefully, by reading each of our posts and learning what we are each...

One of my kiddos was doing a class project (a custom-made Valentine’s Day lunch box!) and got interested in making a solar system. (His friend, the recipient of the lunch box, is really interested in space.)

After considering the idea for a moment, he dismissed it, lamenting, “It would be too hard to make a good one.” His mom and I got curious. To us, this was a matter of spray painting some styrofoam balls and arranging them in a figurative solar system. What could be easier than that?

But, ...