The start of April might feel like an opportunity too good to pass up. When better to roll out some levity than with permission from the calendar and marketing gods. Please, don’t. I get it. Geopolitical aggression is on the march. We’re still making our way across pandemic land, and any proportional...
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 under the covers of successful organisations, and you will find tension at work. No, I’m not talking about “this place sucks” hostility.You can most commonly find my kind of...
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 worthy and useful question.I’ll go further. It’s the only question that truly matters. And I’m not talking about laundry lists of behaviours for doing this...
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 authors ramble at length about the moral foundations and legal consequences of making, keeping and breaking promises. Yet, beyond the examples they use, none provide tools...
"Walk your talk" is attributed as a simpler way of saying, "if you're going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk". In this case, simpler isn't better, and when I saw a recent tweet using the shorter saying, my immediate response was, "that's backwards". Dangerously backwards. Feeding into...
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 they carry out the unheroic work living beneath the trappings.The Play Ethic author Pat Kane says play “Helps release thoughts that are locked in...
News last week that Meridian Energy has inked a deal to sell green energy company Powershop sent people heading for the exits. It seems the acquisition by global energy behemoth Shell and its investment partner Infrastructure Capital Group struck customers and environmental groups as a betrayal of the promises they signed up...
Taking measured action over and over is decidedly unsexy. Especially given it runs counter to the more common ‘splashy launch’ mindset.Yet, when I encountered the idea laid out a decade apart by two authors, it seemed like both an antidote and a helpful way to think about achieving a brand...
Analogies to Google Inc becoming Alphabet abound amid recent speculation that Facebook Inc. is planning to change its name — not the ubiquitous ‘app’, but the corporate wrapper it shares with Instagram, Snapchat, Oculus and others. A better choice might be Phillip Morris, which, beset by bad press and yearning to cleanse itself...
Experience without expectations is unthinkable — literally. What I believe will happen plays a prominent part in how I feel about what does happen.Even when it’s part of a subconscious story I didn’t know I was telling myself.So, why should organisations even try to shape people’s experience?Because even a modicum...