Ash Ripley
ashripley.bsky.social
Ash Ripley
@ashripley.bsky.social
Writer. Creator of Roll for Insight. Hunting leadership theory for sport.
https://linktr.ee/totallyashripley
Servant Leadership: the radical idea that maybe you don’t throw the intern into the hallway that eats people.

New post’s up.

rollforinsight.net/blog/serve-f...

#ServantLeadership #RollForInsight
Serve First, or You're Just Feeding People to the Hallway
Servant Leadership works better than shoving your team into danger. Here’s why serving first leads to trust, better outcomes, and fewer metaphorical hallway casualties.
rollforinsight.net
December 8, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Wild how leadership relies on you to keep the whole operation from falling apart but can't manage a single sentence of feedback. It's like you're an urban legend someone made up to explain all these new drivers.

#BadBossEnergy #LeadershipFail #OperationsLife #FrontlineLeaders #RollForInsight
December 4, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Turns out you can’t motivate humans with Skittles alone. Learning this in real time.
December 3, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Every workplace has that one guy who does something catastrophically stupid and then wants a reward for ‘being bold.’ Probably not the incentive system you want.

New post on Transactional Leadership is here: rollforinsight.net/blog/transac...

#LeadershipLessons #WorkplaceWisdom #RollForInsight
Transactional Leadership: A Leadership Style Built on Deals and Dice Rolls
A sharp, fun primer on Transactional Leadership—how clear rules, rewards, and consequences shape behavior, and why it works until it really doesn’t.
rollforinsight.net
December 1, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Nothing teaches you transformational leadership faster than watching five adults pledge loyalty to a sentient nightlight.

rollforinsight.net/blog/why-my-...
Why My Players Followed a Glowing Mushroom (and What It Teaches Us About Transformational Leadership)
A glowing mushroom accidentally demonstrates transformational leadership, revealing how real leaders inspire, empower, and avoid slipping into villain arcs.
rollforinsight.net
November 17, 2025 at 4:52 PM
6. Memoirs of the Swampwitch of Three Mouths
7. An Inquiry into Spontaneous Undeath Among Bureaucrats
8. Fungal Theology and the Spores of Divine Will
9. When Frogs Dream: The Amphibian Oracle
10. The Practical Almanac of Impossible Weather
November 14, 2025 at 4:02 PM
1. A Compendium of Mildly Inconvenient Hexes
2. The Bog's Memory: A Study of Recurrent Drownings
3. Culinary Transmutations, Vol. II: Turning Lead into Lunch
4. On the proper Containment of Whispering Bones
5. The Map That Hates Being Read
November 13, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Checked my blog stats this morning. The graph looks like a dying earthworm. So yeah, perfect time to write about burnout.

New post: “Turns Out You Can’t Intimidate Burnout.”
rollforinsight.net/blog/turns-o...

#Leadership #Burnout #RollForInsight
Turns Out You Can't Intimidate Burnout
You can’t outwork burnout. You have to change how you fight.
rollforinsight.net
November 10, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Playing Stardew with my wife @therapistapproved.bsky.social right now. I'm gonna marry Shane. I can fix him.
November 10, 2025 at 12:35 AM
Writing about burnout with Maslach and Leiter, but my brain keeps changing it to ‘Malsach.’ Classic Depersonalization, am I right?
November 8, 2025 at 7:14 PM
Happy N7 Day! BioWare says they’re ‘heads-down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect.’ Same. I’ve been heads-down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect since 2007. My family is concerned.

#N7Day #MassEffect #RollForInsight

blog.bioware.com/2025/11/07/n...
N7 DAY 2025
Happy N7 Day, everyone! You guessed it … I come to you with another blog! But each year that I write these, they are important moments of reflection for me. I get to pause and think about how truly…
blog.bioware.com
November 7, 2025 at 9:05 PM
I was just thinking about Psycho Goreman and how sometimes the line between a horror movie and a family movie is just how sincerely someone says "You're welcome."
November 4, 2025 at 9:25 PM
The druid called it “restoring balance.”
I called it the moment I realized focused leadership matters.

Check out the new post and see what happens when Harry P. Shelley meets Dungeons & Dragons.

rollforinsight.net/blog/how-to-...

#RollForInsight #TabletopWisdom
How to Stop Your Party from Burning Down the Town (and Other Lessons in Focused Leadership)
Harry P. Shelley’s 1960 study meets D&D: when the GM stops leading, the town burns. Focused leadership keeps the rhythm that turns chaos into story.
rollforinsight.net
November 3, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Boss dressed as Gru and everyone else came as minions today, which feels less like a costume and more like a confession.
October 31, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Been playing Stardew Valley with my wife and just realized it’s secretly a leadership simulator.

Success isn’t about efficiency—it’s remembering birthdays, showing up with the right gift, and knowing who hates mayo.

No wonder I have more friends in Pelican Town than in real life.
October 30, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Ever wonder what happens when you combine Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive with Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect?

Turns out, it explains what happens to your team when nobody's behind the wheel.

Read it here: rollforinsight.net/blog/when-th...

#Leadership #RollForInsight
October 27, 2025 at 1:53 PM
I was reading a leadership paper and realized it was describing "Batman Forever."

This shouldn't be my niche, and yet here we are.

New post: "Authentic Leadership, as Illustrated by a Billionaire in a Rubber Suit"

rollforinsight.net/blog/authent...
Authentic Leadership, as Illustrated by a Billionaire in a Rubber Suit
What Batman Forever accidentally teaches about authentic leadership, identity crises, and the dangers of branding your trauma in neon.
rollforinsight.net
October 21, 2025 at 1:47 AM
I watched the first episode of Season 8 of Rick and Morty and somehow ended up writing 1,700 words about leadership.

"The Summer of All Fears" turned out to be a goldmine of lessons--from startup cults to bad mentorship.

Full post: rollforinsight.net/blog/what-ri...
What Rick and Morty's 'Summer of All Fears' Teaches us About Leadership
Rick and Morty’s ‘The Summer of All Fears’ turns leadership lessons into chaos as Summer builds a startup cult and Rick weaponizes mentorship
rollforinsight.net
October 16, 2025 at 6:33 PM