One of the things that people often think is that if a management norm has been here for a long time, it must be working for a reason.

And I'm basically saying, listen, just because it exists does not mean it's persuasive, right?

It's just persistent.

That's Nillifer Merchant.

She's the founder of Intangible Labs and has spent over 25 years leading technology companies like Apple.

Nellifer has been ranked among the top 50 influential management thinkers in the world and is the author of

four books. Today, we're sharing her latest, Our Best Work, How to Break Free from the 24

Invisible Norms That Limit Us. So you'll learn one, striking examples of how hidden norms limit us.

Two, while you owe it to yourself to play office politics. And three, the mindset that creates

more win-win solutions. And if you want a quick

summary of your write up of the actionable takeaways that Nillifur shares, I recommend you sign up for

the free Gold Nugget email newsletter found at Awesome at Your Job.com. I'm Pete McItis. This is how

to be awesome at your job. And now, here's Nillifur.

Nillifur, welcome. Glad to be here, welcome.

Glad to be here, Pete.

Oh, I'm glad to be here as well.

I'm excited to talk about your book, Our Best Work.

And could you kick us off with a particularly surprising and fascinating discovery you've made about humans and work while putting this one together?

You know, I think right now we're in this AI age where we're thinking a lot about what is the role of technology in our work. And I think I've kind of come back to the basics, which is if we

don't understand how to actually create that connection between us humans, we're never going to be

able to take advantage of the technology.

And it was not so much a surprise, but sort of like this deepest reminder that it's all about people.

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