What’s The OffBeat about?

The way we work is broken*. 

Burnout is the norm. The gender wage gap persists. Personal politics run roughshod over empathy. Childcare infrastructure is in crisis and parental leave is a disgrace. Meetings are a waste of time, emails and Slack notifications and WhatsApp messages flood in 24/7, and taking actual time off is too frequently considered a faux pas. 

It’s exhausting.

But once in a while, there’s a glimmer of inspiration from a compelling presentation or a team sync that reinvigorates you; there’s an empathic conversation with a colleague that lowers your blood pressure or a smart white paper that quickens your flow of ideas. What those things have in common, what’s enabled each of them: exceptional leadership.

Leading people—not just the act of it, but actually caring about how it’s going and diligently reflecting on and improving the craft of it—takes no less (in fact, more) attention and care as delivering whatever your work product is. It’s a great privilege to manage a team. You have an outsized impact on those people’s experience of work, which profoundly affects their life.

But how do you take care of your team AND your family? How can you "have it all" post-Girlboss-era?

Over the last two decades, while building and leading marketing teams at brands like Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, BarkBox, and Stella Artois, and experiencing a reckoning around how to find personal/professional balance as a mom of two and a hard-charging executive, I’ve discovered a wealth of interoperability between music and corporate leadership.

I want to make work a source of creativity, connection, and character-building again.

For too many people—especially those who came up in the corporate world of the 2000s and 2010s—work became transactional. Creativity got buried under decks and deliverables. Connection gave way to calendar invites. Character-building got repackaged as “grind culture,” where resilience meant enduring poor leadership and celebrating burnout.

But work should be a place that stretches us in *meaningful* ways. Not through chronic stress or unclear expectations, but through opportunities that challenge how we think, how we lead, and how we relate to others. Work should expand our capacity for curiosity and sharpen our sense of self. It should offer chances to create, collaborate, and grow into more thoughtful, principled versions of ourselves.

There was a time when work DID offer more room to experiment, not just execute. When mentorship happened in real time, not in canned quarterly offsites. When relationships weren’t just “stakeholders” and “collaborators,” but actual people you knew and trusted.

Even in old-school, imperfect ways, work was once a place where you learned by doing, made mistakes out loud, and grew a sense of who you were—not just as a professional, but as a person. It built character not by breaking you, but by stretching you.

But somewhere along the line—starting in the 2000s and speeding up with digital transformation—we stopped designing work to be human. Creativity got compressed into campaigns. Connection got siloed into Slack channels. And character? That became code for “just push through.”

It doesn’t have to stay that way.

While the tides are starting to shift—toward values-driven leadership, deeper focus on employee well-being, and rethinking the role of work in our lives—we’re still in the early stages.

So let’s build something better. Not nostalgic, but restorative. Let’s bring back the parts of work that made us more curious, connected, and courageous, and redesign the rest.

Three true things:

1) I lead like a drummer, because I was one.

I’ve played jazz drums since elementary school. And, like how the job of the drummer is to keep the beat for the band from the physical back of the space, my leadership approach is to lead from behind—to provide clear and consistent vision, guardrails, and expectations, then let people crush it out in front.

2) Music is rich metaphorical ground for modern leadership.

There’s so much to learn from the way music is made and the way it makes us feel, both to inspire more enlightened leadership and to live more sane lives as modern executives. I look to music not just in how I lead my team but in how I show up as a leader; in how I practice personal/professional balance, or managing and integrating my work and personal life in a way that aligns with my values, priorities, and wellbeing. It’s not necessarily about a perfect 50/50 split but about feeling present, fulfilled, and in control across both areas.

3) The most impactful part of the drumbeat is the offbeat.

It’s the in-between notes that make the rhythm more unexpected and the groove better. The usual isn’t working; we need to change it up.

So: The OffBeat mines unexpected inspiration from music to address your leadership challenges. Whether you lead people directly, are leading people on a project, or show up as a leader in an individual contributor capacity, I believe it’s on you (us!)—leadership—to mend what’s broken in the workplace. And we can do that by examining the offbeat: bucking the trend, respectfully questioning the status quo, seeking out the unexpected metaphor. 

As Thelonious Monk put it, “I say, play your own way.”

It also doesn’t have to be a drag. Using music as a lens makes this leadership development stuff a little unexpected and even fun, providing you inspiration & information with minimal mental load.

*I’m specifically experienced in and qualified to speak about corporate, aka “knowledge,” work, so that’s my focus here—but I am in no way discounting the brokenness of work outside that sphere. Our society also needs policy updates and fundamental sea changes across many of the ways we conduct our day-to-day life with respect to one another; but that’s for another space.

OK, what’s the TLDR on what The OffBeat is about?

The way we work is broken, it’s on leaders to solve that, and the “usual” isn’t working so we need to mine for inspiration from the unexpected; for me, that’s music. Each weekly send is easy-on-the-inbox (short, digestible, low cognitive load) because WE’RE ALL SO TIRED.

How often do you publish? 

Every Sunday morning.

• The first and third edition of the month is a roundup of links, recs, and reflections called the Lead Sheet. Like a lead sheet in music (just the essentials: melody, harmony, lyrics), it always has something to read, something to think about, and something else—all within the themes of leadership cues from music, cultural curiosity, and personal/professional balance.

• The second and fourth edition of the month is a think piece structured like a jam session in jazz (naming the tune—a punchy idea; soloing—exploring different takes on a central theme; outro—a thought-provoking closer).

Is The OffBeat relevant to me?

Do these questions ever cross your mind?

• How do I develop my own leadership approach?

• How do I manage people effectively when I’m burnt out and experiencing a reckoning around ambition?

• How do I juggle a high-powered role + caretaking responsibilities?

• How can I "have it all" post-Girlboss-era? How do I even define “all”?

• How do I learn about leadership without getting bored?

• How do I obtain fresh, original leadership insights I actually haven’t heard before and without having to go to a conference or attend a seminar?

• How do I improve my leadership skills quickly, with minimal resource outlay?

• How can I be a respected, inclusive leader in the workplace while maintaining a healthy personal/professional balance and supporting that same ethos for my team?

If any of those questions resonate, The OffBeat’s relevant for you.

Who’s Allison Stadd?

I’m a Philly-based (NYC expat) brand marketer and former jazz drummer. I’m currently the SVP of Brand, Culture & Media at Shipt, a subsidiary of Target, where I spearhead brand, transformational creativity, and full-funnel media. I have almost two decades of experience in high-stakes, fast-paced marketing leadership roles at consumer-obsessed brands, including Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, BarkBox, Stella Artois, and Target (Shipt). I’ve built, restructured, and tuned teams as small as 5 and as large as 50.

I cut my teeth in the 2000s on unpaid internships; shitty, untrained bosses; and the concept of "paying your dues.” I slowly burned out, then recovered from burnout, then slowly re-crispened, back and forth for, like, a decade. I’ve finally found my way to a personal/professional balance but part of that is ensuring that I can find meaning in my work and that my work is true to my values.

I’m also a mom of two little kids (and an awesome wheelchair dog named Franklin).

And I’m honored to have been a member of the inaugural U.S. class of 30 of The Marketing Academy, a 9-month fellowship targeting the fastest rising stars in U.S. marketing, and I was selected as one of Ad Age’s “40 Under 40” and Brand Innovators’ “40 Under 40” in 2019.

I bring all of that to bear here in The OffBeat: low-cognitive-load, music-inspired ideas for jazzing up workplace leadership without sacrificing personal/professional balance.

The way we work is broken, but the way we lead doesn’t have to be.

allisonstadd.com | @AllisonStadd | bookshop.org