The Bubble Chart: A Practical Tool For Balancing The Needs of Your Company and the Needs of Employees | Shalini Verma and Dart Lindsley

Too often business leaders are forced to choose between the needs of their company and the needs of their employees. It’s a lose/lose scenario leaving managers burned out and workers seeking other opportunities.

At Work for Humans, we believe work can be designed differently.

When managers are given the tools they need to design work their teams love, work becomes irresistible, employees passionately buy into their roles every day, and your company takes measurable strides towards your vision.

The Bubble Chart is one of those tools.

The Bubble Chart is a practical tool managers can use to curate work their teams love, while also ensuring the work being done is highly aligned with the mission of the company.

In this episode, Dart and Shalini go deep on the Bubble Chart. They discuss how leaders can use the bubble chart to analyze what projects their teams are working on and how much value each project is adding to the company.

They also discuss how using the Bubble Chart can help individuals lead up and down the chain of command, align priorities between teams and departments, promote team member growth, and much more.

Topics Include:
- The problem with viewing employees as an input to production
- The management philosophy behind the Bubble Chart
- How Shalini used the Bubble Chart to improve outcomes for her teams at Google
- Finding and fixing pain points in your organization
- How the Bubble Chart improves the self-awareness of employees and managers
- Determining how to allocate the limited resources of any team
- How the Bubble Chart can help managers win the trust of their team
- And other topics…

Shalini Verma is the Director of Technical Program Management at Google, helping to improve all of Google’s products through global developer tools and frameworks. Named to Crain Magazine’s Tech 50 – Top Technology talent, her career has transitioned from roles in process, to product, to leadership development. She is an MIT and Harvard Business School graduate.

Resources Mentioned:
Creating Organizational Change with Trauma-Informed Management, Work For Humans: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2AaBKLITtuvWix7XNK5vFu?si=1d3532ca06924fd1
Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollen: https://www.amazon.com/The-Omnivores-Dilemma-audiobook/dp/B000FDJ3FU/
The Extended Mind, by Annie Murphy Paul: https://www.amazon.com/Extended-Mind-Power-Thinking-Outside/dp/B0B1QXQT18/
Stealing Fire, by Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal: https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Fire-audiobook/dp/B01N2HREQU/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.