what consumes me, bud caddell

We live in the era of metamodernism. It consumes all art. It’s what you listen to, watch, and see. Quick refresher: Metamodernism is often depicted with a pendulum swinging back and forth between modernism and post-modernism. It compares and contrasts meaning with meaninglessness, irony with substance, pleasure with despair, etc. The comparison is the form. And it’s a fucking chore to sit through. Barbie, the film, is peak metamodernism. It needs to be feminist and […]

This is advice I give internally at NOBL when folks struggle with their writing. Trash or treasure, as we say. Not Simple Simple The ability to support individuals to truly understand the context they are working within and what that means for their personal growth is key to keeping good people.  To keep your best people, help them see how their work connects to 1) the company’s mission and 2) their personal ambitions. Write foremost […]

Probably not this year, likely not even this decade, possibly not this century, but sometime ahead of us lies the very real chance that our species may birth another: artificial general intelligence. And if the promise of software that can improve itself is real, we’ll just be playing god to a creature that will quickly become god-like. Before I had a child, I spent a lot of time trying to ready myself and his environment […]

Today, our son Quinn turns one. With a woolly brain, addled from both pandemic and parenting, I have been attempting to reflect on the journey so far. Mostly my hands feel full of unintelligible puzzle pieces. There seems to be no box with a master picture I can follow or even convenient edge pieces to start hanging everything else from. But as a person who must make sense of things, I feel compelled to begin […]

There’s a lot being written about Elon Musk and Twitter right now, but I wanted to address his leadership, what’s happening with leadership in general right now, and my own thoughts on continuing to use the platform. In related news, looks like I’ll be publishing here a bit more frequently. ____ Organizational change, particularly in companies that have repeatedly failed to make change in the past, requires what’s known as ‘transgressive leaders.’ These leaders don’t […]

Uncertain, unprecedented: every week in 2020 forced organizations to adapt—in many cases overnight—to a remote workforce, changing consumer demands, fluctuating government restrictions, employee struggles. At NOBL, we wanted to look beyond the headlines to help leaders navigate this unique moment in history, and assess whether responses were quick fixes to immediate problems, or more permanent shifts in how business is done. View the full post, including a direct link to the slides.

A craftsperson is someone who practices a trade or discipline with the ultimate goal of mastery. Anyone, in any discipline, can be a craftsperson if they so choose. Each and every one of us has the capacity to do good work of some kind. I myself am a consultant by trade and the founder of a consulting company. I approach my work as a craftsperson (and it so happens I was raised by multiple generations […]