Our weekly newsletters feature a ton of useful, interesting and often fun content, and that’s not just our opinion. Readers tell us our newsletters offer great ideas and positive motivation. One of the most popular sections in each issue highlights the cool content shared on our Bureau Slack - articles, videos, podcasts, books, resources, you name it. Here’s some of what we featured in our May newsletters.  

Leadership Advice 

Leadership is something our members spend a lot of time thinking about, judging by Slack activity. If you’re ready to hit the fast track, check out the article from Samantha Davies. In “8 Reasons (Within Your Control) You’re Not Being Promoted into Leadership,” she offers tips for moving up the ladder. Instead of complaining, waiting for recognition, and being picky about assignments, step up. Be constructive, go the extra mile, and speak candidly to your manager about achievements and goals that will help you advance. And if you’re wondering how to track achievements, check out Erik Reagan’s advice in “Saving Your Greatest Hits.” 

You can also jump-start your career by working with people who are different from you. An article in Harvard Business Review explains how a diverse team can challenge your brain to overcome its stale ways of thinking, sharpen your performance and fuel innovation. Talk about win-win-win!

Here are links to these and other pieces that caught fire on Slack:

Must-See Videos

Our community is loving this multimedia, energizing talk. Boyuan Gao and Jahan Mantin introduce the key principles of Design for Diversity (D4D). This platform can help you uncover blind spots around cultural and racial biases within your team’s workflows, decision-making and design processes - before they’re embedded into the end product or service. Want opportunities for greater business and social impact? Watch this.

This video hits on another hot topic you can probably relate to: The complex relationship between designers and product managers. Somehow we keep bumping heads even though we’re all trying to create excellent products for users. Vivian Sarratt explores ways to make this prickly relationship work more smoothly, whether you’re in-house or at a shop. Hint: the three Cs — common goals, communication and co-designing — can make all the difference.

Talk about motivation! Meghan McInerny gives project managers a major attaboy in this video, demonstrating the many ways PMs are truly leaders and telling you how to capitalize on that. For starters, recognize your strengths and teach people how to treat you and your team. This one is a must-watch for PMs.

What’s it really like to be a design leader? Trust me, perception isn’t reality in this case. Alastair Simpson shares a few things nobody told him (but he wished they had) about design leadership. In the end, he says, it’s all about partnering with people and teams to solve design and business problems. Get the juicy details in this video.

Tools & Resources 

We’re all for big thinking, but somebody’s got to take care of the nuts and bolts of business. When you have to crunch numbers, sift through mountains of data or churn out reports, you’ll be grateful for tools that can make you smarter and more efficient. 

One add-on tool that really got our community excited is API Connector for Google Sheets. It lets you pull APIs from multiple data sources directly into a Google Sheet without code! You can save time, automate weekly reporting, and easily view and manage data — perfect for users who often deal with CSV exports from many platforms. Find out more about that and other resources below:

This is just a sample of what you’ll find in our newsletter every week: the latest insights, updates, tools and tactics from the Bureau community. It’s easy to sign up — and you can unsubscribe at any time. You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Hope to visit your inbox next week!

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