When I started iopsychmarketer, I had a simple mission: translate “academic jargon into business language to help eliminate organizational friction and build tech-powered, deeply human workplaces."
Somewhere along the way, writing about it stopped being enough.
Every piece on burnout, layoffs, AI anxiety, or leaders promoted past their competence reminded me that I wanted to do more than write about these problems. I wanted to put the research to work in the real world and drive real change, one company at a time.
So I joined forces with a classmate who shared my view of the workplace and was tired of watching from the sidelines. Danielle Kaufman and I recently co-founded The Antidotes, a people strategy firm that diagnoses and treats the root causes keeping organizations from reaching their goals. We’re being incubated at the Harvard Innovation Labs, and we’re both seasoned operators who’ve owned P&Ls and led teams of our own.
We’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and how much gets lost in between. We know what it’s like to bang our heads against the wall when leadership won’t listen. And we know what it’s like when they do follow through, and the change actually sticks: teams get energized and performance follows.
Which brings me to this newsletter.
Starting today, iopsychmarketer becomes Second Opinion and now lives within The Antidotes’ family as insights.antidotes.io. Here’s what that means for you.
What’s staying the same
Me. Same research-first approach, same bad jokes, same occasional sailing yarns.
Your subscription. You don’t need to do anything.
The topics: AI and the workplace, leadership blind spots, org design, motivation and burnout, creativity and innovation, and how people actually learn.
What’s new
Occasional guest perspectives from Danielle and others who’ve been in the room when culture breaks (and when it gets fixed).
More focus on interventions that work, plus early access to the tools we’re building. First up: our free Culture Self-Checkup, which is grounded in validated psychometric instrumentation. If you want to see how your own organization is doing click here to get started.
A new look. Our brand takes a clinical approach to building healthy organizations, and our colors come from the purples and greens you find in nature. (Design nerds, here’s the image that inspired the palette).
Why “Second Opinion”?
Second Opinion captures our goal of taking a systematic, scientific approach to understanding what’s really going on. Many leaders think they already know what’s wrong: low engagement, change fatigue, a “talent problem.” But those are symptoms, not a diagnosis. My goal with this Substack is to help you look again, research in hand, to find the root causes behind those symptoms and the treatments that actually work.
Thanks for reading this far, and for being here from the start. If you know someone who’d find this useful, I’d be grateful if you passed it along. I’m excited about what comes next, and I hope you are too.
Julie
Julie Legrand is co-founder of The Antidotes. Learn more at antidotes.io.
This is going to be huge. Congrats!🎊 Also, loving the metaphor.
You and Danielle teaming up! I love this!