Brian Dordevic

Delivering profitable web design with SEO first approach. Official Google partner.

I started as a $4/hr offshore virtual assistant and became a USA citizen & business owner.

I help you generate more profit with your existing traffic efforts by optimizing conversion rates, improving your site speed & content strategy.

Chief Executive Officer

As the CEO of Alpha Efficiency, I steer the strategic direction of the company while managing an expanding team of 30+ professionals, spearheading growth initiatives, and driving operational efficiency.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & Achievements:

Team Leadership & Management: Championed a culture of performance and accountability that led to a 35% boost in operational efficiency. Regularly oversee talent acquisition and retention strategies to ensure our team is well-equipped for success.

SEO & Content Management: Supervised the creation and execution of our SEO strategy, which saw a remarkable 60% surge in organic website traffic within six months, augmenting our brand's digital visibility.

Paid Media Strategies: Pioneered the deployment of innovative paid media campaigns, resulting in a 50% increase in brand awareness and a 30% rise in customer acquisition, significantly expanding our market footprint.

Performance Benchmarking: Developed and implemented performance benchmarks to ensure constant progress. The systematic monitoring of these metrics brought about a 20% improvement in overall productivity.

Stakeholder Management: Successfully maintained robust relationships with key stakeholders, attaining a 90% satisfaction rate, testament to our commitment to delivering value and fostering transparency.

Financial Management: Maintained stringent control over fiscal operations, consistently delivering profitability and surpassing financial objectives by 15% in the previous year, solidifying our position in the market.

This multifaceted role requires a delicate balance of leadership, strategic thinking, and operational excellence. It's my mission to continue propelling Alpha Efficiency forward, driving sustainable growth, and adding value for our stakeholders.

"BREAKING: Claude can now do $10,000/month SEO for free."

After 16 years in SEO, I see 100% pure cope (here's how not to fall for SEO scams)

None of these guys share results.

None of them share case studies.

Because they don't exist.

It's grift wrapped in a thread.

I've been ranking sites since 2010.

• Real clients
• Real campaigns
• Real money moved ($13 mil VC funded exit secured)

And the recycled take never changes:

"Businesses quietly going all-in on AI + SEO will save a ton of money."
"This feels like buying Bitcoin at $100."

Nah.

Bitcoin didn't require you to understand search intent, site architecture, crawl budgets, or why Google just nuked your site overnight.

Same playbook every time:

List a stack of cheap tools.

Claude: $20/month. WordPress: cheap. Canva: free. GSC: free.

"Total cost: under $100/month." (You need 20x Max Claude, which costs $200. But they won't tell you that.)

Then: "people used to pay agencies $1k-$3k for this."

As if SEO is just hitting publish.

Same energy as people who pay for a gym membership and never workout.

The tool is not the skill.

It never was.

What AI actually cannot do:

• Tell you why your traffic dropped 40% after a core update.
• Read your GSC data and prioritize cannibalization fixes.
• Build a link strategy that doesn't get you torched.
• Audit your site architecture and know what to kill.

It cannot prioritize. It can only produce.
More content faster without strategy = a bigger mess, built quicker.
Can AI speed things up? Absolutely.

I use it every day.

Drafts. Outlines. Content workflows. Elite for that.

But it's a power tool. Not a tradesperson.

You still need someone who knows where to cut.

These posts get engagement because they sell a fantasy.

That expertise is dead.

That 16 years of pattern recognition gets replaced by a $20 sub.

It doesn't.

The people winning with AI right now aren't replacing skill.

They're stacking it on top of speed.

That's the edge.

Link under my profile for real ways to use AI in SEO (results, not slop).

I help you improve Local AI & SEO Mentions for your firm | Official Google & Hubspot Gold partner

Your web developer built you a beautiful site (and disappeared)…

All you are left with:

• Your WordPress login sits at /wp-admin
• Bots already found it
• They're running thousands of password combos right now.
• Your plugins haven't been updated in months.

Each one is a door.

And hackers have the keys to every outdated lock.

• No 2FA
• No WAF
• No monitoring
• No rate limiting

You won't know you've been hacked
Until your AI SEO rankings tank.
And your clients stop calling.

Here's what a real setup looks like:

• A law firm launches a new WordPress site.
• Within hours, automated bots hit /wp-admin.
• But this time it's different
• Rate limiting kills brute force

CAPTCHA blocks the scripts.

2FA stops stolen credentials.

Firewall filters the noise before it touches the server.

A plugin vulnerability drops next week.

Updates are staged, tested, deployed.

Something still slips through?

File monitoring catches it in minutes.

Clean backup restores in under 10.

Most devs build pages.

The ones clients keep on retainer?

They protect revenue.

Be that developer.

Corporate HATES remote work.

This is how I started a 100% remote agency.

My "Overdelivery Stack" that scaled our clients to 8-figure exits:

• Nitro Cold Brew
• MacBook (or an iPad)
• Great Internet connection
• Stellar client results (recent client got acquired for $13,000,000)

I've scaled our clients from places like Ibiza and Paris.

And my team?

They're doing the same, working from places that inspire them.

✅ No long commutes
✅ No office distractions
✅ No pointless water cooler conversations

Want to swipe my SOPs that allow me to run this company from the comfort of my iPhone?

Sign up for my Substack for exclusive in-depth guides on how to grow a 100% remote company.

Link under my profile.

SEOs are DEAD.

I dared our AI to outperform our best SEO analyst.

Gave them both the same 20 sites. Same criteria. Same deadline.

The AI went first.

Lightning fast, no eye fatigue, 100% grind mode.

259 SEO errors were flagged in under 10 minutes.

Then our human analyst went in, line by line, analyzing structure, intent, UX, and context.

It found 83 issues.

Fewer, yes, but half of what the human eye caught, AI was blind to.

So... was AI actually better? 

No.

This experiment confirmed something bigger than numbers could show.

There’s no more betting on one tool or one method anymore.

The AI caught what was technically broken.

The human caught what was strategically wrong.

Choosing between AI and human expertise is like choosing between your left and right eye.

You can function with one. But depth perception requires both.

That mix is why our clients are still growing while others complain about “SEO being dead.”

If you want to see what this combo could do for your site, let’s go for it.

Book an audit with us.

Worst case, you walk away knowing exactly what’s blocking your growth.

No alternative text description for this image

I'm 39, Serbian Turned American and run a 100% remote web development agency and a 20-people team.

December 2025, our client secured $13,000,000 VC-funded exit.

But it wasn't always like this.

I started from the bottom…

• Came with $3,000 to my name
• To infamous South Side Chicago
• Picked up a job at the grocery store for minimum wage

Fast forward to today, and here's exactly what we sell (steal this if you want):

• Local SEO packages: $2,000/mo+
• Content marketing and SEO writing
• Meta ads management: retainer + performance
• Website complete builds and optimization: $20,000-$84,000

And here's how we keep the pipeline full:

• Referrals
• YouTube Videos
• Post on X/Twitter daily
• Post on LinkedIn 5x/week
• Publish on Substack weekly
• Warm outbound via HubSpot intent data
• DM prospects who comment on competitor's posts

All run on this stack:

• Meta Ads Manager
• CallRail (call tracking)
• Claude + ChatGPT (AI)
• HubSpot (CRM and pipeline)
• Notion (operations and SOPs)
• Google Drive (Our workspace & reports)

The result?

Complete location freedom, 100% of work done from my iPhone while enjoying 
Versailles, Ibiza, and visiting family in Belgrade.

Build the right systems, nail the right offers, and you can scale past $500K with a lean team while driving 7-figure results for your clients.

I break it all down in my newsletter.

Weekly drops on (sign up via the link under my profile name):

• AI
• SEO
• Sales
• Marketing

63 minutes ago someone called to tell me I was dead.

Not metaphorically.

They had already filed an official Google support case claiming I had passed away, and they wanted everything:

• My Google Workspace account
• My entire digital presence
• My business domain
• My emails

The caller introduced himself as David Odza from Google Support.

Professional voice. Palo Alto phone number. A legitimate Google confirmation email sitting right in my inbox.

Everything checked out.

Except one thing.

I knew it was a scam.

Here's where it gets interesting.

He kept asking about my email address. Fishing. Guessing. Circling back to it repeatedly, trying to confirm which account was actually mine.

Then he landed on an old Gmail address.

He asked me directly, "Is this your email?"

I said yes.

What he didn't know was that he'd just found my honeypot.

A honeypot is a fake account that looks real, set up specifically to attract attackers. No real data. No connections to anything important. No value whatsoever.

A trap dressed up as a target.

I keep one precisely for moments like this — an old Gmail address I've never used for anything real, sitting there waiting for exactly this kind of situation.

He thought he'd struck gold.

I let him think that.

Because I had a reason.

I needed his IP address for the fraud report.

He initiated account recovery. Walked me through approving it on the phone — a classic social engineering move where they get you to authorize your own account takeover in real time.

I played along.

Then I watched it unfold in real time:

• He logged in from Massachusetts
• Changed the password trying to lock me out permanently
• I changed it back first
• Kicked him off a Windows machine he had no business being on

And walked away with his IP addresses, phone number, and fake identities

They spent hours planning a sophisticated deceased account takeover.

They got into an empty trap.

Got absolutely nothing.

Now everything, the IPs, the phone number, the fake identities "David Odza" and "Timothy Casper", is sitting in a fraud report heading straight to Google's security team.

The lesson?

These attacks are becoming more sophisticated every day. They use:

• Real confirmation emails
• Real Google infrastructure
• Real support case numbers

Set up a honeypot. Trust your instincts. And if someone calls to tell you that you're dead, maybe don't take their word for it.

This month I'll be running a workshop on how to use AI to protect yourself and your business from phishing attacks.

Sign up to the newsletter (link under my name) to learn when it goes live.

I typed twitter . com into my browser today.

Or so I thought. My screen went black. Then full screen. My keyboard stopped responding. Every key I pressed did nothing...

For about three seconds, I felt that cold drop in my stomach. The one that says: *you've been hacked.*

My mind raced. Passwords. Bank accounts. Client data. Fifteen people depend on systems I manage.

Then I did the only thing I could think of.

Cmd + Option + Escape. Force quit Chrome.

It worked. I was out.

My next hour was spent researching what happened. Scanning for malware. Checking extensions. Reviewing DNS settings. Preparing for the worst.

The diagnosis?

I missed one letter.

I typed `.cm` instead of `.com`. That's it. One missing "o."

Turns out `.cm` is Cameroon's country code. And someone bought `http://twitter . cm` (DO NOT TYPE IT INTO YOUR COMPUTER) years ago for one reason: to catch people who type too fast.

That domain redirected me through an ad-tracking network. The full-screen lockout was just JavaScript on a webpage. Not malware. Not a hack. A scare tactic designed to make you panic and do something stupid.

Like calling a fake tech support number. Or clicking a button that *actually* installs malware.

Here's what stuck with me.

I run a digital agency. I live in browsers all day. I know better. And I still almost fell for it.

Now imagine someone on your team who doesn't know what force quit is.

That's the real danger. Not the scam itself. It's that it only needs to work once on the wrong person.

Three things worth doing today:

1. Show your team how to force quit a frozen browser (Cmd+Option+Escape on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+Escape on Windows)
2. Tell them to never call a number displayed on a "your computer is infected" screen
3. Remind them that the scariest-looking attacks are often the least dangerous, and the quiet ones are what actually get you

One missing letter almost ruined my afternoon.

Don't let it ruin yours.

Landed in USA 13 years ago (photo from THE Chicago South Side)

Cracked laptop...
Rented room
Zero safety

As if that wasn't hard enough:

No investors
No agency mastermind
Just wifi and the decision to figure it out

Fast forward.
Last quarter my agency helped clients lock in 8 figure exits.

Concrete wins, not theory:

• Around $2,000,000 in revenue for a disability law firm
• Over $4,000,000 in revenue for a home improvement company
• Enterprise grade web development shipped for a major non profit

None of that happened by accident.

Here is the operating system behind it:

Pick a painful problem

• I focused on local service providers
• When their leads stop, payroll hurts hard
• Solve that consistently and they remember your name and birthday

Sell the real wins

Not a massive “done for you everything” promise.
Just one clear outcome: Website + Local SEO sprint.

Easy yes.

Once they see it working, bigger checks make sense.

Create proof in public

• Hundreds of positive reviews on Upwork
• Daily posts on X and LinkedIn
• Documenting what works

The content brings people in already half sold.

Let systems do the follow up

HubSpot workflows, intent data, and simple pipelines.
No “just checking in” energy.

Prospects move through a process whether I am online or not.

Stack rare skills

• AI, technical SEO, CRO, local search
• Enough depth to solve hard problems
• Enough range to connect the whole funnel

Treat cash like oxygen

• Profit targets
• Weekly money reviews
• I built for boring predictability instead of viral spikes

Borrow other people’s trust

• Partner with vendors who already serve attorneys.
• They send us their clients.
• We send them better performing websites.

Everyone wins.

If you are in a new city, with no network and nothing but a laptop, you do not need permission.

Steal one of these.
Stack all seven.

Then let the internet do what it does best:

Turn specific skills into an agency that quietly prints results.

You want to get more details how I've done it? Sign up for my newsletter by clicking the link under my profile.

Your pal, Brian

P.S. I'm getting that hairline BACK.

I analyzed 3,000 websites across ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity over 90 days.

What I found should terrify every marketer sleeping on backlinks.

Here's Sam Atlman’s dirty secret:

Google spent 25 years building a spam filter. These AI platforms are trying to do it in 25 months.

And they're losing. Badly.

ChatGPT and Perplexity were built on top of Bing's index. 

Bing has always been the bouncer who lets everyone into the club. 

• No ID check
• No dress code
• Just vibes

So now you've got AI tools confidently citing websites with fake authors, 100K random product pages, and thousands of AI-generated articles about nothing.

It's like building a library and filling it with phonebooks.

Meanwhile, Reddit became the golden child of Google's algorithm. Why? 

Because Reddit has something these AI crawlers don't: an army of angry moderators with zero spam tolerance.

Reddit is basically a self-cleaning oven. Post garbage, get downvoted into oblivion in 11 minutes.

But here's where it gets interesting for you.

These AI platforms are STARVING for quality signals. They need a way to separate real brands from digital ghosts.

And the #1 signal they're borrowing from Google's playbook?

Backlinks.

Backlinks are the passport into ChatGPT. The entry ticket into Claude. The skeleton key to Grok.

Every legit site linking to you is a vote of confidence these AI models actually understand.

While everyone is obsessing over prompt engineering and AI wrappers, the real power move is dead simple: get other websites to point at yours.

Same game. New arena.

The brands building backlink moats right now will own AI search for the next decade.

The ones ignoring it will wonder why ChatGPT recommends their competitor every single time.

The window is wide open. These platforms haven't figured out spam filtering yet. That's why our clients pay us big money to help them break into AI citations.

Which means right now, quality stands out like a lighthouse in a sea of fog.

• Build links
• Earn citations
• Own the answer

My backlink playbook on how to earn authoritative links is coming up on my newsletter. Link under my name. Sign up before I hit send.

You can be the one learning how to use the AI, or you can be the one influencing people who believe in it like gospel.

Which one are you?

The World is on fire. Your attention doesn't have to be.

News cycle hijacked your mind while AI is unbothered & keeps marching forward.

This is the most expensive time in history to drift.

In this bloody conflict the biggest casualty is your focus. 

And its consequences will reach you whether you pay attention or not.

• Oil prices will climb
• The economy will slow
• AI is already reshaping every industry

Stack a war on top of all that, and suddenly it feels like the ground is shifting under your feet.

You feel it as anxiety. That low hum in the background. The compulsive news checking. The sense that you should be doing something but you're not sure what.

Here's what I want to tell you: that anxiety is not a signal to panic. It's a signal to focus.

I've been here before...

I grew up with bombs over my head. I know what real chaos sounds like.

And I know that the people who came out the other side weren't the ones who froze or spiraled. They were the ones who got quiet, got clear, and moved.

This morning I woke up grateful.

• I have food in my fridge
• I have a roof over my head
• My internet connection is strong

That's more than enough. And whatever the world brings, I will meet it. 

With focus

Focus is the antidote to anxiety

Anxiety thrives on scattered attention. It feeds on doom scrolling, reactive decisions, and an endless loop of "what if."

Focus kills all of that. 

When you sit down with one clear task and give it everything, the noise disappears. The war doesn't stop. The economy doesn't magically recover. But you stop suffering from it, because you're building instead of drifting.

The last time I activated this level of focus was during COVID. 

Everything felt uncertain. I locked in anyway. 

It changed the trajectory of my business. Then I cleared $250,000 in 2020.

Just because the world is on fire, you shouldn't start feeling apologetic for building great things.

This moment feels the same. 

The next 12 to 18 months will be mission critical.

But this time we have two forces reshaping everything: war and AI.

One of them will work for you, if you play your cards right.

The playbook: focus in 3 moves

- Shrink your inputs.

Stop consuming news like it's your job. Set one 15-minute window per day. Outside that window, your attention belongs to your work and the people you love. Anxiety drops the moment your information diet gets intentional.

- Automate what drains you.

Every repetitive task you still do manually is stealing focus from the work that matters. Tools are evolving fast. 

• My Mac Mini runs localized agents
• My Notion is becoming an AI automation engine 
• Things that used to take hundreds of hours are now handled by machine

You don't need a massive budget. You need the willingness to experiment.

- Build one thing every day.

Not ten things. One. A paragraph. A system. A conversation that moves a project forward.

When the world gets chaotic, most people become reactive.

That's your advantage

"Overdelivering" may sound hard. Until you realize how small customer expectations in fact are...

And then you realize that 95% of your competitors can't deliver on basic promises they make. Let alone extras...

That is the mindset of customer service.

Things that are easy to you, and client loves, that's the middle ground you're looking for.

That's what drives positive reviews.

That's what increases your LTV.

And it is your job as an entrepreneur to figure out what that is.

Pinyerd Disability Law clients need a website that makes law information easy to find and navigate.

Our design emphasizes:

Accessibility for all users.
Intuitive navigation.
Clean, consistent layout.
Fast performance.

The results? 

Higher Google rankings, dramatically faster load times, lower cost per acquisition, and more relevant visitors.

Experience it.

I don't post Alpha Efficiency work often enough.

Client had an exceptional multiple 7 figure year.

Good design is great return on investment.

Your AI-created site is a lot like a template.

It loads in 4.23 seconds. Our clients' sites load in 0.8.

That gap matters more than you think.

Because a split second, literally, decides whether you're #1 or #2 on Google.

And #1 gets roughly 50% more traffic than #2.

• Not 5%
• Not 10%
• FIFTY

Do you know how fast your site actually loads?

Not "pretty fast." Not "it seems fine on my laptop."

The actual number.

Here's the thing about AI-generated code:

It's trained to write code that works. Not code that performs.

And those are two very different things.

Your site can function perfectly and still load in 4.2 seconds while your competitor loads in 0.8.

Google doesn't care who wrote the code. It doesn't care if it was Cursor, 

Claude, or a junior dev in a basement.

It cares about one thing: how fast that page reaches the user.

That's the part that should keep you up at night.

Not that you're losing money. That you can't tell you're losing money.

There's no invoice for the leads that never arrived. No alert for the customers who bounced at 3.1 seconds. No dashboard showing what your competitor
captured because their site was 400 milliseconds faster.

It's an invisible bleed.

And AI made it easier to bleed without noticing, because the code looks clean, ships fast, and passes every automated test.

But automated tests don't measure what Google measures.

We've built over 500 sites. The ones that rank aren't only the prettiest. They're the fastest.

And the fastest sites aren't built with the newest tools.

They're built by people who know what to strip away.

Right now your site has a load time.

You either know the number, or someone else ranks #1.

WordPress vs. Webflow for SEO:

One is proprietary.
Other one is open source.

One makes you pay $60,000 per year when you reach the limits...
The other one has no limits.

One dominates 42% of the web.
Other one doesn't let you create robotsLLM.txt file without making you pay more.

Choose wisely.

I help organizations turn people data into meaningful action.

With 12+ years of experience leading People & Culture strategy, I focus on aligning employee experience with business growth. My work spans startups, agencies, and enterprise teams. I partner closely with revenue and client-facing leaders to build systems that support engagement, communication, and performance.

Through Quokka Hub, I use tools like Quarterly Pulse Checks, DISC assessments, and tailored leadership workshops to surface insights on culture, engagement, and team dynamics. 

But data alone isn’t the solution... It’s what you do with it. 

That’s why I partner with leaders to translate results into clear strategies:
⇢ Designing performance & feedback systems that drive accountability
⇢ Supporting leaders of growth and delivery teams through org design and scale
⇢ Building cultures where people stay, grow, and contribute at their best

Whether inside an organization as Head of People or through short-term consulting, my approach is consistent: combine insight, strategy, and execution to create measurable impact.

Michael Franco

Your culture is creating workaholics

Not on purpose
But it is

Nobody scheduled a meeting about it
Nobody wrote a policy that said 
"work until you break"

It just became what dedication looks like here

Staying late became a sign
Always available became the expectation
Logging off became a risk

And people learned
Without being told

Monster Hiring asked 800 workers why they overwork

The top answer?

Company culture 

The environment told them to

Leaders forget this
Culture doesn't announce itself
It just becomes the standard

And when overwork is the standard
Rest feels like underperformance
Boundaries feel like a lack of commitment

You didn't build a high-performance culture
You built a fear-based one

Those aren't the same thing

As an individual
⇢Notice what your environment rewards

As a leader
⇢The behavior you tolerate becomes the culture

As a company
⇢Sustainable performance requires visible boundaries and support


❓ What's the difference between a workaholic and a passionate worker?

–
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#CompanyCulture #Leadership

Head of People | Global HR & People Operations | Multi-Region Execution (US, Europe, LATAM, APAC)

Illustration of five laptops in a row showing time passing during the evening: 7:00 PM (screen bright), 9:00 PM, 11:00 PM, 1:00 AM, and finally a laptop with a nearly empty battery icon. Above the laptops the text reads, “Work rarely collapses suddenly.” Below them it says, “Burnout usually falls one hour at a time,” with “one hour at a time” highlighted in green.

Companies are investing less in people
And people are investing less in companies

And both sides think the other one started it

I’ve seen this a lot recently

Leaders afraid to commit to development 
Because they don't know what the org looks like in 12 months

Employees afraid to go all in 
Because they don't know if they'll be there in 6 months

So everyone just... maintains

Does the work 
Avoids the risk 
Waits for someone else to move first

But waiting costs you

The company loses the institutional knowledge 
That only builds when people feel safe enough to grow

The employee misses the growth window 
That requires both initiative and investment

Both sides lose
And neither side meant for it to go this way

Someone has to move first 
And it's usually the leader who has to

This is the only way to break the cycle

As an individual 
⇢Show up like you're staying even when it's uncertain

As a leader 
⇢Invest in your people before you need them to perform

As a company 
⇢Fund development even in unstable quarters


❓What was your favorite development program you took part in?

–
♻️ Repost if this sparked something
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#PeopleAndCulture #LeadershipDevelopment

Black-and-white sketch illustration of a company and an employee standing on opposite sides of a cracked bridge, each holding a green sign labeled “Investment.” The word “Waiting” appears above them. Beneath the broken bridge are the phrases “Lost Knowledge,” “Lost Growth,” and “Lost Trust,” symbolizing the cost of mutual hesitation to invest in each other. The handle /michaelfranco appears in the bottom corner.

57% of employees felt worse after a culture initiative launched

Not better 
Worse

Because they recognized it for what it was 
A response to a problem 
That didn't address the problem

The free lunch didn't fix the unclear expectations
The new policy didn’t fix the inconsistent standards
The wellness app didn't fix the manager who never listened 

And when nothing changes 
People stop expecting it to

What makes the biggest difference?

When leaders changed their behavior

No rollout
No program 
No announcement

Just different behavior 
Trust scores rose 26%

That's it

Culture doesn't just improve through initiatives
It requires aligned behaviors 

In the meeting 
In the feedback conversation 
When the easier thing would be to say nothing

People notice what leaders do 
Even in the moments that don't feel significant

As an individual 
⇢Model the change you want to see before you ask for it

As a leader 
⇢The behavior you change this week creates a culture initiative

As a company 
⇢Initiatives work when behavior is aligned and supportive


❓What's the most meaningful culture change you've seen that didn't come with an announcement?

–
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Illustration of a deep black crack splitting a white surface, covered by a small beige bandage that only masks the fracture rather than repairing it, symbolizing superficial culture initiatives that fail to address underlying leadership behavior issues.

Gartner says HR leaders must now manage 
A blend of human and virtual co-workers

This isn’t really the future of work 
That's this year
It’s now

My personal workflows have changed dramatically over the past month

But with smarter workflows
Smaller team sizes
Comes a hidden complexity

Communication

If only 2 people manage 2 key workflows
They better communicate super effectively

On top of that
Teams need

-Clear ownership of decisions
-Documented workflows
-Defined expectations

The companies getting value from AI 
Rebuilt their people infrastructure first

As an individual 
⇢Learn to manage outcomes, not just tasks

As a leader 
⇢Clarify ownership before introducing automation

As a company 
⇢AI readiness is a people systems problem, not a tech one


❓ What part of your work has changed the most in the past year?


–
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#PeopleAndCulture #OrganizationalDesign

Minimal sketch of two humans overseeing AI agents, connected by a green “Communication” line above a shared workflow diagram. Text reads “Automation Multiplies. Communication Aligns.”

HR departments are sitting on some of the most sensitive data in the company

And the headlines keep proving how risky that's become

Resumes 
Government IDs 
Medical records
Compensation details 

Keeping this information safe
Is key to keeping trust

I've had to manually redact so much information over the years 
It's time-consuming but important

I came across Redactable® and loved that it was built specifically for this
SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliant

It has saved me so much time

Permanent redaction, not just a visual layer
AI detects and removes PII automatically 
Strips hidden metadata most tools miss

HR needs safeguards to remain trustworthy


❓How does your team handle sensitive docs before sharing?


–
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#PeopleAndCulture #DataProtection

It’s company retreat season
And it is one of my favorite times of year
Not because it’s usually a great location

It is because I see great teams
Get even better

My favorite question I get is
“What activities should we plan?”

Which is awesome to hear
Because leadership wants the team to have a good time

But a better question:
“What has been impossible to figure out while everyone is heads down?”

These retreats are an interruption
A space for everyone to zoom out together

I’ve seen teams unblock decisions that were stuck for months
Not because of a brilliant workshop
Not because of an amazing guest speaker

But because teams had time
For those unplanned conversations
The moments between the schedule

These kinds of conversations

Don't happen in a Zoom meeting
Don't happen in the office
Don't happen in a 1:1

It's from the intentional pause
That lasts long enough for people to be honest

Retreats aren’t rewards
They’re a refocus

As an individual 
⇢Give clarity & take perspective

As a leader 
⇢Create time for context-sharing 

As a company 
⇢Build in moments to rethink, reflect, and connect


❓What was your best experience at a company retreat?

–
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#TeamAlignment #CompanyRetreat

Black-and-white illustration of three colleagues in conversation during an outdoor retreat. Two are standing with coffee cups, one seated in a wooden chair, engaged in a discussion. Behind them is a board covered in sticky notes with highlighted themes reading “Ownership,” “What’s Stuck?” and “Decision.” At the bottom, green text reads: “Retreats Are A Refocus.”

Layoffs make people question stability
AI makes people question relevance

Both trigger the same thought

“Where do I stand?”

When the environment changes
Titles become a lot more fluid

But skills don’t

In volatile environments
Steady isnt fitting a job description

Steadiness is durable capability

-Clarity
-Judgment
-Systems thinking
-Decision ownership

These are skills that get amplified
And help automation

If AI can produce faster output
The value becomes knowing
What’s worth producing

When teams are leaner
Value becomes knowing
What matters

Volatility exposes one thing:
Were you building a position?
 Or capability?

As an individual
 ⇢Upgrade the skills that travel with you

As a leader
 ⇢Develop judgment in your team

As a company
 ⇢Add systems thinking to your quarterly performance review


❓What skill feels most durable in your world right now?


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#FutureOfWork #OrganizationalDesign

Minimal sketch-style illustration contrasting “Position” and “Capability.” On the left, a tilted business card labeled “Title, Company, Role” represents position. On the right, a solid stack of blocks labeled “Clarity, Judgment, Systems Thinking, Decision Ownership” represents capability. The headline reads “Build Capability,” emphasizing durable skills over job titles in changing environments.

Block just cut nearly half its workforce 
Over 4,000 people

Jack Dorsey's message
"Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company"

The stock went up 17%

I'm not here to debate the decision
It wasn’t mine to make
I'm here to talk about what it means for the rest of us

Because Dorsey also said: 
"I'd rather get there honestly and on our own terms than be forced into it reactively"

And he predicted your company is next

Whether that's true or not 
This has been a trend

AI fluency has become a baseline expectation

The professionals who will be most resilient 
Aren't waiting to be told what to learn 
They're already building

They're not afraid of the tool 
They're curious about it 
They're asking

⇢What part of my job could this do? 
⇢What part of my job requires me specifically? 
⇢What would I need to learn to stay irreplaceable?

Just an honest self-assessment

As an individual 
⇢Get ahead of this. Audit your skills, plan to add new ones

As a leader 
⇢Help your people, teach them, guide them

As a company 
⇢ Transparency is a best practice when in a state of change


❓ What part of your work do you think AI will never replace?

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#FutureOfWork #Leadership

Illustration of a professional standing at a drafting table designing a workflow diagram. AI elements like a robotic arm and digital network nodes appear faintly in the background. Text reads “Architect > Operator,” emphasizing strategic skill development over task execution.

Entry-level work didn't disappear 
It became automated

Nearly two-thirds of employers use skills-based hiring
What's left is less task execution 

And much more judgment
People who can think, adapt, and learn continuously
Are ahead

When I recruit 
I search for skills 

Boolean searches for what people have learned 
What they've picked up in the last five years 
What shows they're still growing

The candidate who picked up three new platforms in two years 
Can tell me more than the degree from ten years ago

Organizations moving to skills-based hiring are finding 
That they have access to a broader talent pool 
More diverse backgrounds 
More adaptable people

The person who can do the job 
Just didn't take the traditional route 
So old systems never saw them

As an individual 
⇢Show what you’ve learned and keep learning

As a leader 
⇢Look for the person with the right skills, both soft and technical

As a company 
⇢Your talent pipeline will need to be prepared for how the work will change


❓ Have you learned a skill that helped more than your degree? 

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#TalentStrategy #PeopleOperations

Illustration titled “Keep Stacking Skills.” Five silhouetted figures stand on progressively taller stacks of green blocks labeled 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026. Each year’s stack increases in height, with an upward “Value” arrow on the left, symbolizing continuous skill development leading to increased professional value over time.

Layoffs
AI anxiety
Corporate caution

All symptoms of something deeper:
The collapse of mutual investment between companies and employees

This week’s newsletter dives into it

#WorkplaceCulture

It’s the story nobody is telling clearly because it’s easier to blame "the economy" or "the AI tool." But if you look beneath the surface of the lates

Open article: The Trust Collapse: Is Everyone "White-Knuckling" It? by Michael Franco • 3 min read

The Trust Collapse: Is Everyone "White-Knuckling" It?

We implemented the tool 
Why isn't anything changing?

New platforms 
New workflows 
New expectations

The assumption is that access equals adoption
That if you give people the tool 
They'll figure out how to use it well

That's not how it works

There is always a gap between 
What was implemented
And how people use it

Some are using it well 
Some are using it as a shortcut 
Some aren't using it at all 

This is a change management problem

Rolling out a platform without redesigning the workflow
Is like handing someone a better hammer 
And hoping the house is built differently

Companies getting value from these investments 
Are the ones asking 

⇢What does good output look like with this tool? 
⇢Who needs support and what kind? 
⇢How does this change the work?

Technology doesn't transform organizations 
The people using it do

As an individual 
⇢Use the tool to enhance your thinking, not replace it

As a leader 
⇢Adoption without guidance creates inconsistency

As a company 
⇢Investment in how people use the tool is where the value is


❓What's your new favorite tool or platform? 

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#PeopleAndCulture #ChangeManagement

Hand-drawn style illustration of a green block labeled “New Tool” sitting on one platform and a messy diagram labeled “How It’s Actually Used” on another platform. The two platforms are separated by a visible crack in the foundation labeled “Confusion,” “Workarounds,” and “Inconsistency.” At the bottom, bold green text reads “Implementation ≠ Adoption.” The visual highlights the gap between launching a tool and achieving real adoption.

Remote workers earn more than in-office colleagues

That's what the Federal Reserve found
And everyone's sharing it like a remote work win

But the data is more interesting

The pay gap isn't because they work from home
It's because the people who already had leverage
Were the ones who got flexibility

Senior employees
Higher earners
People who could negotiate

Remote work didn't create their advantage
They used their advantage to get remote work

Which reveals something important

If flexibility mainly exists at the top of your org
You haven’t built a flexible company

You’ve built a two-tier system
Where options are a perk of power
Not a baseline of trust

And people will eventually notice

They may not say it directly
But they see who has options
And who doesn’t

And over time that determines how people think about

Trust 
Culture
And opportunity


❓ What patterns have you seen around flexibility?


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#RemoteWork #PeopleAndCulture

Illustration of a multi-story office building where several employees sit inside cubicles working at desktop computers while a manager stands outside looking up. On the rooftop, two people relax on lounge chairs with laptops and drinks, suggesting remote or flexible work happening above a traditional office structure.

Changes are happening fast

Changes in tools
Changes in policy
Changes in programs
Changes in all of your forecasting

It feels chaotic 
Because it is

Orgs are patching problems
But not solving them

There's urgency to fix each people challenge 
And each one gets treated like it's separate

But they're not

They're all connected

Your new hire won’t succeed if ownership isn’t defined 
Your leaders can't make decisions if the system isn't clear
Your initiatives won’t stick if they conflict with existing workflows
Your talent strategy won't matter if people don't know where they fit

These aren't separate problems 
They're symptoms of the same thing

You need systems that work together 
Not more programs

You need systems that work together
It’s a web

Systems with frameworks 
Initiatives with programs 
Tools that integrate all of it

As an individual 
⇢Let your leaders know where you feel disconnects

As a leader 
⇢Zoom out to see how problems relate to each other

As a company 
⇢Every implantation is a LEGO block that strengthens the structure

❓ What have you seen streamlined to make the biggest impact? 


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#OrganizationalDesign #PeopleStrategy

Before and after diagram: Top shows disconnected people systems (AI, Hiring, Culture, Policy, Tools, Engagement, Forecasting) with conflicting initiatives and workflows. Bottom shows the same elements integrated around a central Integrated Framework with clean connections.

This week we talked about:

4,000 people laid off
AI reworking workflows
What skills are durable
Trust thinning on both sides

All of it points to one question:

Do you actually know how your people are feeling?

Not guessing
Not assuming
Knowing

Layoffs create fear
AI creates uncertainty
Change creates silence

And silence is the most expensive thing in your org

When people don’t feel safe
They don’t say what’s happening

They cope
They comply
They disengage 

Engagement surveys fail when people don't trust them

If people are wondering:
“Is this anonymous?”
“Will my manager see this?”
“Will this come back to me?"

You won’t get honesty
You’ll get edited answers

And edited data doesn’t help anyone

The value of engagement data
Isn’t the dashboard
It’s the truth

Truth about:
 ⇢Where fear is rising
 ⇢Where AI feels overwhelming
 ⇢Where workload shifted after layoffs

And when you track it quarter over quarter
You stop reacting emotionally
You respond strategically

As an individual
 ⇢Your experience is data someone needs to hear

As a leader
 ⇢Share what you heard and what you’re changing

As a company
 ⇢Treat engagement as operational data

You can’t manage what you don’t measure
And you can’t measure what people won’t say


❓What makes you trust a feedback system?

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#EmployeeEngagement #Leadership

A hand-drawn illustration of a person sitting at a laptop completing an employee survey. Two thought bubbles above their head show conflicting responses. One bubble contains honest thoughts such as “I’m overwhelmed,” “I don’t trust this,” and “My manager never listens.” The other bubble shows what they might actually submit: “Things are going well” and “No major concerns.” Multiple arrows and a question mark between the bubbles show the person debating what feels safe to say. On the laptop screen, a survey with checkboxes is visible and the cursor hovers over an option while the green submit button sits below.

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Brian Dordevic

Michael Franco

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taplio

The Battle

Brian Dordevic

Michael Franco

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Brian Dordevic's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreBrian Dordevic's LinkedIn Performance