The hottest Management Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Business Topics

Lululemon

Business Breakdowns • 275 implied HN points • 23 May 23
💼 Business Management
  1. Lululemon dominates luxury athleisure market with loyal customers and high-quality products.
  2. The company has strong revenue segments, with high margins in direct-to-consumer sales.
  3. Industry trends and growth opportunities in menswear and international markets support Lululemon's continued success.

Resilience Series Part 4: Ems-Chemie

Business Breakdowns • 275 implied HN points • 03 Oct 23
💼 Business Management
  1. EMS-Chemie maintains high and stable operating margins by embedding their products into the customer's processes.
  2. Investing in capital expenditures for long-term growth is crucial for resilience.
  3. Large insider ownership and intentional growth capex contribute to EMS-Chemie's success.
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Startups, This Is How You Update Investors

Points And Figures • 373 implied HN points • 14 Jan 25
💼 Business Management
  1. Startups should keep their investors updated regularly, like every quarter. Simple updates help investors stay engaged and offer support.
  2. When updating, focus on key points like growth rates, income or losses, and any future capital raising. It's best to keep it clear and short.
  3. Investors can be valuable beyond just their money. They can help with introductions and potential partnerships, so it's crucial to communicate effectively with them.

Commemorating the Time My Boss Called a Meeting at 9AM on December 23 to Call Us a Bunch of Losers

I Might Be Wrong • 22 implied HN points • 23 Dec 25
💼 Business Management
  1. The boss held a surprise all-hands right before the holidays and publicly berated the staff, which was demoralizing and tone-deaf. Yelling at employees in that way rarely motivates and mostly breeds resentment.
  2. The leader who blamed the team was later exposed for long-running fraud, revealing hypocrisy and that leadership, not staff, can be the real problem. Organizational failures often trace back to corrupt or incompetent management.
  3. When someone shows you who they are, believe them — small signs of abusive or unethical behavior can predict much larger issues. Trust your instincts about toxic leadership and prioritize working somewhere healthier.

How Lucky

The Weasel Speaks • 157 implied HN points • 13 Jan 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Productive and happy employees want purpose, care from their manager, and feedback.
  2. Employee engagement is driven by knowing why the job matters, getting personal feedback, and having autonomy.
  3. Top-down management doesn't work for knowledge workers - focus on individual needs and growth for organizational success.

Reverse engineering your perfect business

Tiny Empires • 122 implied HN points • 23 Jul 25
💼 Business Management
  1. Start by figuring out the life you want to live, then design your business around that life. Your business should help you enjoy your life, not take it over.
  2. Identify when you are most productive and build your schedule to fit those energy patterns. Work with your natural rhythms for better efficiency.
  3. Pick a business that matches your skills and preferences. Choose tasks you enjoy and are good at, and avoid things you dislike to keep your energy up.

Revenge of the Nerds

The Better Letter • 196 implied HN points • 08 Dec 23
🎾 Sports Management
  1. Baseball's analytics revolution owes its existence to a smart security guard creating statistical analysis accessible and interesting.
  2. The success of 'Moneyball' accelerated the statistical disruption in baseball and led to the widespread use of advanced statistical measures in MLB.
  3. The Bill James approach transformed baseball analysis to be more objective, relevant, and useful, impacting team strategies and decision-making.

Recommending Kent Beck: 2011

Software Design: Tidy First? • 1170 implied HN points • 08 Dec 23
💼 Business Management
  1. Kent Beck's role in enhancing engineering teams for growth and prosperity by working on product features and tool building.
  2. Kent Beck's impact through research and publication on software design, attracting new recruits and revolutionizing design ideas.
  3. Kent Beck's personal relationships and pair programming sessions significantly improving engineering skills and career prospects of individuals.

You Ain't Shit

We're Gonna Get Those Bastards • 11 implied HN points • 11 Jan 26
💼 Business Management
  1. Ego is dangerous and can wreck your career, relationships, and life, so keep it in check and don’t think you’re more important than you are.
  2. Money and small successes often inflate people’s heads, so don’t let a raise or a win change how you treat others; be respectful and empathetic to everyone.
  3. Stay grounded by accepting feedback, checking on friends who are struggling without trying to fix them, and remembering you’re never above honest work.

TBM 269: Three Organizational Design Principles

The Beautiful Mess • 1057 implied HN points • 27 Jan 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Hierarchical Collaboration Parity is crucial for success in organizations - leaders need to collaborate as much as front-line team members.
  2. Alignment and Work Style Gaps need to be addressed to improve team effectiveness.
  3. Organizations must confront deep-seated tensions, or 'Elephants in the Room', to prevent adverse outcomes and stress on teams.

Puzzles?

The Weasel Speaks • 137 implied HN points • 27 Jan 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Solving puzzles is like writing software, involves pattern matching and learning from failure.
  2. Managing teams involves debugging interpersonal relationships and motivating behaviors.
  3. Understanding human behavior in the workplace is crucial for managing and creating effective teams.

5 Things I learn in my Engineering Manager Journey

Better Engineers • 19 implied HN points • 16 Jul 24
💼 Business Management
  1. The Pareto Principle says that 20% of your tasks create 80% of your results. Focus on those key tasks to be more efficient.
  2. The 2-Minute Rule encourages you to do any task that takes two minutes or less right away. This helps prevent small tasks from piling up.
  3. Using a method like Kanban helps manage your tasks visually. It allows you to see what you need to do, what you're working on, and what’s done.

Letter #73: Jon Pollock (2015)

A Letter a Day • 255 implied HN points • 15 Apr 23
💼 Business Management
  1. Jon Pollock discusses how activism fits into Elliott Management's overall investment strategy by seeking to positively shape investment outcomes and drive returns.
  2. Elliott Management excels in activism in the Technology sector due to the complex nature of the industry and the potential for unlocking value through operational improvements.
  3. Elliott Management's success in attaining board representation without launching proxy fights is attributed to strong relationships with institutional shareholders and the identification of situations where change is needed.

TBM 268: "Going Deep"

The Beautiful Mess • 1018 implied HN points • 23 Jan 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Leaders should 'go deep' and understand team-level details to ensure success.
  2. During challenging times, it's crucial for leaders to understand tradeoffs to make informed decisions.
  3. Leaders should re-establish foundations to encourage direct interactions between teams and senior leaders.

TBM 340: Path to $

The Beautiful Mess • 304 implied HN points • 13 Feb 25
💼 Business Management
  1. Different teams have varying impacts on business outcomes, making it easier for some to show their value than others. For instance, a team focused on improving sales can clearly demonstrate their contribution, unlike teams juggling multiple tasks.
  2. Startups often change their team structure frequently to tackle immediate challenges, which can lead to chaos, but also strong focus when everyone rallies around a project. This flexible approach can help in growth and development.
  3. It’s important for organizations to recognize how their teams collaborate and support each other. Finding ways to help less effective teams focus or connect with important goals can boost overall performance and success.

When the ladder disappears

The Engineering Manager • 10 implied HN points • 23 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Management
  1. A lot can change in five to ten years, often unpredictably, so planning toward a specific job title or destination is unreliable.
  2. Three big forces — AI changing how knowledge work gets done, flatter organisations that cut management rungs, and a shifting idea of “senior” toward orchestrating systems — are making traditional career paths less certain and changing which skills will matter.
  3. Instead of aiming for titles or ladder rungs, define a personal north star: who you are, what you value, and the kinds of work you want to do, then use that as your guide for decisions and for coaching your team.

The Cultural Characteristics of Fast-Paced, High-Performance Teams

Voohy Leadership Insights • 2 HN points • 15 Sep 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Teams work best when all members collaborate to solve problems together. It's important for everyone to see problems as shared challenges.
  2. Recognizing and valuing each team member's contributions helps build trust and improves teamwork. This makes it easier to work through complex tasks.
  3. Diverse skills within a team can lead to great ideas, but can also cause confusion. Leaders should encourage collaboration and shared problem-solving to bridge these gaps.

TBM 318: Why Orgs Become Too Tall

The Beautiful Mess • 449 implied HN points • 31 Oct 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Organizations can become too tall when they grow too big, leading to excessive layers of management. This often happens when companies cannot adjust their team sizes effectively as they deal with market challenges.
  2. Narrow spans of control make it hard for managers to handle large teams, resulting in more layers. This could be due to inexperienced managers needing more guidance or a culture that prefers smaller teams.
  3. A lack of trust and delegation can make organizations taller. When managers feel they need to oversee everything, it creates more layers instead of empowering teams to work independently.

Re-release: ‘Scrum is an awful project management methodology’

Ageling on Agile • 139 implied HN points • 07 Feb 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Consider re-evaluating your project management methodology if it is causing stress and hindering productivity. It is important to adapt and make radical changes when necessary.
  2. Embrace an iterative approach in your product delivery process, especially in unpredictable environments. Small steps, clear goals, and team collaboration can lead to valuable results.
  3. Empower your team by giving them ownership of the backlog, focusing on iteration goals, and encouraging discussions and improvements during demos and retrospectives. Allow flexibility and adaptability in your work processes.

What are your job's lighthouse questions?

Lessons • 235 implied HN points • 17 Apr 23
💼 Business Management
  1. Job descriptions in rapidly changing organizations expire quickly.
  2. Use guiding questions instead of bulleted lists to navigate through chaos.
  3. Lighthouse questions act as anchors in a storm of scaling by keeping focused on essential tasks.

Insights from Peter Drucker's Iconic Book "The Effective Executive"

The Digital Leader Newsletter -- By John Rossman • 235 implied HN points • 20 Jul 23
💼 Business Management
  1. Being an effective executive is about managing yourself, not just others.
  2. Key practices for effective leadership include focusing on opportunities, not just problems, and running productive meetings.
  3. Decision-making involves understanding principles, making opinion-based choices, and following through with effective communication.

stuck in the moat

Dan Davies - "Back of Mind" • 235 implied HN points • 12 May 23
💼 Business Management
  1. The concept of a 'moat' in business, popularized by Warren Buffet, has been misunderstood and misapplied by many.
  2. The original idea behind a 'moat' was to protect a business's unique advantage, not simply to create barriers through legal means.
  3. The focus on 'moats' led to a shift in management attention towards maintaining profits through artificial means rather than product improvement.

Putting the I in Team

In My Tribe • 364 implied HN points • 02 Dec 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Teamwork relies on everyone doing their part. If some people don't contribute, it can hurt the whole team's chances of success.
  2. Hiring people who are responsible and committed can help encourage teamwork. When employees feel connected to their mission or colleagues, they're less likely to slack off.
  3. Measuring how well employees cooperate can improve teamwork. Giving clear examples of what good teamwork looks like can help everyone understand how to contribute.

The Success Trap

Fish Food for Thought • 30 implied HN points • 26 Nov 25
💼 Business Management
  1. Success often feels like freedom but quietly narrows your options; the more you specialize and optimize, the harder it becomes to change course.
  2. The 'success trap' happens when you reward exploitation over exploration, so companies and people stop experimenting and become vulnerable to disruption.
  3. Avoid it by deliberately preserving optionality: make time for experiments, rotate roles, learn new skills, and treat success as stewardship that must be renewed.

Your complete guide to board rooms

Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged • 276 implied HN points • 05 Feb 25
💼 Business Management
  1. Know who's in the room during board meetings. The CEO, CFO, and tech leaders each have specific roles and responsibilities that are crucial for a productive discussion.
  2. Keep your board meetings under 3.5 hours. Long meetings can tire everyone out, so aim for a focused agenda that encourages valuable input from all members.
  3. Send out materials for the meeting 48 to 72 hours in advance. This allows everyone to prepare without being overwhelmed, and it helps keep the meeting on track.

TBM 205: "Process" vs. Systems & Habits

The Beautiful Mess • 1613 implied HN points • 12 Mar 23
💼 Business Management
  1. Team A focuses on rushed, performative annual processes, while Team B prioritizes continuous improvement and thoughtful feedback.
  2. Team A's lack of customer-centricity and reactive approach leads to institutionalized mediocrity, while Team B's positive habits and systems drive effectiveness.
  3. Breaking the loop of reactive processes and establishing human-centric systems and valuable habits is crucial for better ways of working in organizations.

The Most Important Job of a Leader

Timeless & Timely • 216 implied HN points • 15 Feb 23
💼 Business Management
  1. Effective communication requires effort and intentionality.
  2. Clearly communicate the vision to guide the organization.
  3. Key elements for great communication include engagement, consistency, simplicity, active listening, storytelling, and aligning words with actions.

When Creatives Quit

The Intersection • 217 implied HN points • 27 Aug 23
💼 Business Management
  1. Quitting can be a complex decision, especially for creatives tied to visas or seeking new challenges.
  2. As managers, it's important to listen and not react immediately when creatives want to quit.
  3. Offering value beyond monetary incentives, nurturing like flowers, and accepting when it's time to let creatives go are key to managing a creative team.

Prompting is Managing

Breaking Smart • 125 implied HN points • 19 Jun 25
🕹 Technology Management
  1. Using AI tools like chatbots is similar to managing interns. It's not about doing the work yourself but overseeing the process.
  2. Focusing on sameness in writing can help maintain quality, but it may also limit creativity. Good management knows when to stick to the rules and when to encourage originality.
  3. We need to change how we teach writing and management skills for the AI era. It’s important to build skills for overseeing new technologies rather than just avoiding them.

The collapse of Alibaba’s New Retail? - Part 1: Shopping Malls & Home Furnishing

Tech Buzz China Insider • 79 implied HN points • 15 Mar 24
💼 Business Management
  1. Alibaba's New Retail initiatives, including offline investments, are facing challenges and potential failures.
  2. The focus on consumption upgrade led Alibaba to miss the shifting consumer trends towards practical and inexpensive purchases, affecting their strategies.
  3. There is a shift within Alibaba towards returning to prioritizing online business, user experience, and supporting small and medium businesses once again.