"How's work?" started out as how's work?—a question I asked at happy hour, and over coffee, and when catching up with friends on the phone.

Never a throwaway question, often more of a greeting, and intended as a transitional topic as we moved to more interesting conversation.

But something interesting happened along the way. That question, the answers, the back and forth from there, the vulnerability, the reflection, some guidance ... would often became the entire conversation.

So much so that it became a thing, my thing: creating the space for people to work through what was happening at work. People started calling me with the intention of having a "How's work?" conversation. They started insisting on picking up the happy hour tab. The coffee klatch became a thing.

It's no surprise, really, because working for organizations captured by industrialized management makes it challenging to do the work our jobs require.

Challenging is a collective euphemism for a whole range of adjectives that people use to describe just how bad work often makes them feel.

So I took that, and the 1:1 "How's work?" question and expanded it—it's still an effective conversation question, and it's also a question I find necessary to ask yourself to figure out how to work in a system that treats you like a part in a machine.