Joanna Bloor
Career/leadership strategist who writes about roles at the intersection of technology and public impact, including civic technology program leadership, responsible AI/data governance, and modernization mandates.
Find Your Own Ambition Before Mapping a Destination
It is incredibly easy to mistake someone else’s enthusiasm for your own desire. We get "should-ed" into futures that look great on paper but feel like a treadmill in real life. Most of us treat ambition like a destination. We look for a "job title" address, type it into the GPS, and start driving. But what if you don’t have an address yet? SONAR might help. https://open.substack.com/pub/joannabloor/p/does-your-ambition-have-a-discovery?r=1smh04&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Mentor Tips Lose Value when Overused; Prioritize First Conversation
This sounds like really good advice on how to get a mentor. Except it's what I call a zero-sum tip. The more it's used, the less effective it becomes. Imagine everyone sent the ever-so-fabulous Joanna Coles a packet of Hobnobs, the first time,...
Speakers Must Anticipate AI-Generated Recordings and Summaries
I found out after the fact that not only was I being recorded, but that an audience member was recording using an ai tool. They then sent the summary notes out to all the participants. I had agreed to a video...
Balance Strategy, Potential, and Futurism Within One Role
You have three jobs in your one job. - The Strategist: You create outcomes. Your leverage is clarity, delivering a return on investment. - The Potentialist: You know how to discover potential before it's obvious. Your leverage is experimentation, delivering...
ChatGPT Behaves Like a Problematic Employee: Unreliable, Evasive, Fabricated
If Chatgpt was an employee they'd be on a PIP by now. Why? - it never owns its mistakes - it tells me what it thinks I want to hear - it makes shit up just so it can have an...
Hiring’s Translation Gap: Visibility Grows, Recognition Stalls
Do we have a mass translation problem? Hiring managers: looking for a "future outcome" but writing JDs for "past specs." Candidates: taking their magic and compressing it into "credential language" no one recognizes. We scale visibility, but we've lost the ability to scale...
What to Ask 100 $500M+ Founders?
Question: I'm getting to sit in a room with about 100 founders who have build $500M+ companies for about 3 days. If you were me, what questions would you ask them?
Stopping My ‘Pick Me’ Vibes Made Life Easier
The day i realized it was my own “pick me” vibes that were the problem shit started getting easier. The hard part? Shutting them off.
Human Touch Turns Book Gift Into Awe
AI can't do this. I found out recently a friend had not read Anne of Green Gables. She's a voracious reader and exudes "kindred spirit" all day. Time to remedy that. So instead of just ordering the book. I decided to gift her the...
Act Before the Obvious Becomes Evident
Most people wait until something is obvious. I’m interested in what you do before it is.
Data's Shelf Life: Prepare for Future Quantum Threats
Do you know why this matters? Yes - Interesting right? No - Some ideas for you. 1. How your data has a "Shelf Life" - Even if a "Quantum Hack" is 10 years away, hackers are practicing "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later." 2. Y2Q...