In a past episode of his podcast Making Sense, Sam Harris talked to author and NY Times columnist David Brooks about his book The Road to Character. The episode was titled ‘On Becoming a Better Person’* and my ears perked up when it landed on promises. David commented, Self-improvement is part of being an...
Have you ever seen the term ‘values-based policies’? A company using it meant a policy that determined people’s behaviour, for example, a code of conduct. Yet, more broadly, all policies exist to shape and guide activity and decisions. Meaning if your values are genuine, they should form the foundation. Turning...
When you say someone has a reputation for something, what do you mean? Whether it's positive or negative, a reputation is generally when people share what they repeatedly hear or see and come to know about you from things you do. Either from personal experience or via others. They’re super...
Habits and rituals can look similar. They’re not, and I’ve focused on the habit side of things for too long. That changed when I read The Ritual Effect by Professor Michael Norton. Norton says, “One automates, the other animates”. Elaborating that “Habit is the what. It’s something we do. … We...
The famous 19th-century fable says a frog in boiling water will jump out. However, when put in tepid water that slowly increases in temperature, the frog will not notice the change and will die. Spoiler. It’s not true. A frog placed in boiling water will die immediately, and when cooler water...
Wading through Barbra Streisand’s exhaustive 900-plus page biography, My Name is Barbra, I didn’t expect to stumble upon a lesson in maturity that applies to organisations and how their brands store value. In chapter seven, Streisand recounts her audition for the movie Funny Girl. She was trying to convince the director that...
“The primary organising dynamic in life is identity. The first act of life is to define a self, whether a micro organism or a human being. How we humans define ourselves determines our perceptions, beliefs, behaviours and values."Margaret Wheatley 1 The word identity was first recorded in 1560–70 from late Latin identitās meaning...
It's time for a values reality check. Coming to work for you doesn't mean you get to tell me my values. I've had them long before I met you, and they'll still be around when I leave. Yet that's what too many organisations try to do. I've written countless words about values over...
Maybe Elon Musk is writing a script for a movie called ‘How To Make $44 Billion Disappear’. And in the latest scene, the bad guy takes a blow torch to a well-known and somewhat beloved name and logo. He’s giving his customers the bird in the form of an X. The new...
Buried in the PR about renaming French Connection (popularly known as FCUK) Australia, distribution group Brandbank CEO Peter Halkett says, “Now is the time to discontinue the Australian distribution deal”. But he stresses, “French Connection may continue in Australia through another distribution network”. Say what. So they are taking a shell, previously...