When a brand's store of value overflows, there's usually an undercurrent of I care about what you care about going on between me and you. It …
Articles
Genuine engagement is found in activity
Forbes Magazine describes the idea of staff engagement as "the emotional commitment the employee has to the organisation and its goals". And …
A secret weapon for managing your values
The continuing effort to keep values in balance tempts many organisations to measure and manage them in people's performance and behaviours. …
Every choice is an opportunity to show your purpose
Turn in any direction these days, and you'll trip over people talking about their purpose. This is not a bad thing; it's essential to …
How good intentions become bad communications
It's 1990, and a Stanford University graduate student in psychology named Elizabeth Newton is using a game to test how people communicate. …
Stop ‘mis-placing’ your brand and put its value to work.
"And then we started the brand work", said the CEO while I listened to her talk about the behind-the-scenes effort to reimagine their …
Your values will benefit from some (productive) tension
Sticking with values, I want to expand on an element of Aristotle's golden mean from my last article. I call it productive tension. Look …
How Aristotle and Buddhism can help define your core values.
Too many conversations about values start by asking are they right or wrong. But for most organisations “How do we use them?” is a more …
A new tool for making promises you can keep
On the bottom shelf of my bookcase, I've got a small library of books and a stack of papers that explore promises and commitments. The …
Put play to work
When an organisation puts a 'fun place to work' in their values, they often mean a games room, funky furniture and kombucha on tap. Not how …