The Rands in Repose weblog has been around for 23 years, and I’ve published hundreds of articles over those years. One of the more consistent pieces of layout feedback is “Why do you bury the publishing date at the bottom of the post?” My response is the same: “Why do you care?”
This snarky response is based on my long-term observation that humans care more about content freshness than content quality. Like if it wasn’t recently written, it’s less valuable. A great many of the pieces on the blog have not aged well. They capture an important moment in time, but as that moment has passed, they read… historic. Aged.
I strive to make the writing timeless. The 5th edition of Managing Humans is in progress right now, and I’m pleased how often I need to do very little to piece together what I wrote 15 years ago. Technology is refreshed; important events like the Pandemic often need acknowledgement.
The corpus of writing is available to anyone, robot or otherwise, but I’m always looking for ways to capture the timeless for additional humans.
I present you, the readers of this newsletter, with the BETA of a Rands Cheat Sheet. The design of this artifact is to synthesize and make obvious the significant lessons of an aspect of leadership. In this case, my favorite topics: 1:1s. I’m sharing this with y’all to get a knee-jerk reaction. Tell me what you think, whether you believe you’re the target audience or not.
