From medieval Europe to the modern office: CEOs as monarchs, directors as dukes, employees as digital serfs. Corporate meritocracy is aristocracy in disguise, where corporate rituals reinforce feudal hierarchies. Are we ready to say goodbye to corporate suzerains?

Technological progress promises to solve our most pressing problems, but it is creating others that are more subtle and deeper. Between the obsession with efficiency and the loss of what makes us human, what choices are we really making?

The more people talk about autonomy at work, the less autonomy there seems to be. The more we proclaim that we want mature, responsible people, the more childish management practices become. Even leisure time at work must now "develop skills", "strengthen the team", "improve communication". Has non-instrumentalized pleasure become a threat to the corporate order?

The obsession with excellence is making us less excellent. By relentlessly pursuing perfection, we lose sight of what really matters: the ability to learn, grow and contribute meaningfully to the world. What if, instead of trying to be perfect, we focused on being 'good enough'?

Some distractions are meaningful and productive, just as certain objects hardly deserve the attention we give them. Perhaps you're envy-scrolling on Instagram when you hear a strange chirp overhead and find yourself marveling at the sight of a violet-backed starling. In that instant, negative attention transforms into a beautiful distraction.

Intuition, deduction and inference are fallible. On the other hand, it is precisely these characteristics that allow us to move forward, create and imagine future scenarios that sometimes scare us, sometimes inspire and excite us.

How much is a conversation worth? And how much does it cost? The expressions "good conversations are priceless" or "conversations are invaluable" could well fit into philosopher Daniel Dennett's concept of profundity. Let's delve deeper.

A thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis on the reasons why ghosting in a professional context exists and is apparently on the rise.

Self-help is always an invitation to submit one's own thinking, critical thinking, to the thinking and experience of another. Critical thinking is the exercise of questioning one's own thinking. Only after that should you even think about directing your attention to someone else's thinking.

Way Beyond and pur'ple have been together since last October, complementing each other in the creation of solutions and helping to transform people, teams and organizations in a deeper and more transversal way. The two brands now share the same office, but the communication channels and areas of activity remain independent, respecting the path built by each over years of relationships and experience.

To return or not to return? Control or freedom? Rigidity or flexibility? Blind traditionalism or naive progressivism? A reflection on what limits the quality of the questions with which we entertain ourselves.

It is convenient to close or at least half-closed our eyes to the problems that exist around us and our own contribution. Sometimes it is good not to see reality clearly, lest it make us depressed or give us even more work.

When we feel lonely, bored, angry, frustrated, worried, we distract ourselves with the shiny screen that is more accessible, that shows us often irrelevant things. We distract ourselves with distractions. Let us distract ourselves better.

I realize and recognize that there is a before and after I joined Way Beyond. What was left behind I remember as a climb to a mountain peak. The hard trial of life in which, in order to become great, in our eyes, we so often feel small. What came after is like a dip in the ocean.

Machines have already freed us from many heavy jobs and make our lives easier in so many others. How much better is our life? What have we done with this (supposed) evolution? We have created new problems instead of solving other important and avoidable problems. What problems are we neglecting as the myopia caused by our dazzle worsens?

Let's solve the "workload" problem; more conversations and fewer meetings; let's take an organic and not a mechanical/mathematical perspective of growth; let's educate middle management; let's define and defend causes instead of purposes; let's cut the crap.

Everyone suddenly has something special to say about important matters, and what there is to say must be said in a hurry to get there first. Haste is the enemy of listening, observation, introspection and reflection, which are the ingredients of thoughtfulness, wisdom and consideration. Good conversations are also made without haste.

The sold are the ones unable to see the falseness of their absolute and indelible truths. They are the ones blinded by the need, which has become belief, to always be right. These are the ones who accumulate truths without ever surrendering to the possibility of being wrong.

About this world of ours today, which is evidently not taking the best course, because of us above all, it is easy to argue that both common sense and consensus are lacking. Nevertheless, neither concept will lead us to better paths. Both the cause and the solution may lie in common sense.

How do you integrate new people in a team that already exists? Or should we rather ask: how do we make new people feel "at home" in a house that already has other people (and furniture, pictures, lamps in the right place?).

What do you think and feel when someone tells you that another person is "hard"? And when a person is "soft"? Words are loaded with meanings, stories and history. The same word can mean different things in different contexts and with different intentions. But what is left behind? What trace is left of other uses when the story we want to tell with that word is different?

"We need to save leadership from leadership people," wrote Megan Hustad. Taking it a step further, I believe we urgently need to save the "leaders", especially the people who are not yet tainted by the doctrines of leadership

Our brain gets used (too much and too quickly) to what it already knows, so any necessary change may, at certain times, seem impossible to make, a Herculean effort, like the myth of Sisyphus.

To understand each other better and to make ourselves understood, it is not only important to be able to be objective but also to put the different subjectivities "in conversation", hoping that differences do not cancel each other out and that they build novelty.

What happens to you when someone tells you that you need to "think outside the box"? And when you are told, in the same sequence, that you need to "get out of your comfort zone"? If you are like me, when I hear either of those two expressions, that I get a kind of metaphysical hives, the least will be something close to rolling your eyes. I believe there are good reasons for an adverse reaction.

The need to get answers has left some of us with the presumption of knowing them all, for ourselves and, worse, for others.

Imagine a child, at the age of four, handling some kind of toy. Suddenly, one of the pieces of that toy separates from what was until then a whole. There is no possible arrangement, no "u-h-u" or "super three" to save the situation. What does the child say?

2020 was a year of losses and gains. Not everything that was lost was bad. Not everything that was gained was good. Much, or almost everything, was called into question. As we are no exception, we decided on an exercise of self-observation, of analysis of our small universe and the wider world around us.

The obsession with the search for ultimate meaning, if everything one does is aligned with a predefined or desired purpose where will the space and time for experimentation reside? And for novelty? And the space for not knowing what the outcome will be?

Isn't the time for questions precious? And the questions themselves? So precious that it should be a serious offence and we should lose points for every time we ask a question without knowing why we are asking it.