This started as a different article about the elements that make up an experience. But after rumbling them and examining what organisations do and don’t control, I realised the details are less important than how they turn into value. Which led me back to promises. In the hands of organisations, experience is...
No board can make the right decision if they aren't considering how it adds or erodes value in the organisation's brand. A lesson trumpeted as the front page news this week, with the Board of OpenAI firing and now reinstating CEO Sam Altman.I won't go into chapter and verse of what feels...
You know the power of compounding. When you reinvest the interest on your investment, your return grows over time. Atomic Habits author James Clear discussed compound return of 1% habits at his Growth Faculty event in Melbourne this week. Describing how a daily 1% improvement in a habit will compound to...
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, is on her way to jail. Sam Bankman Fried lives back at mum and dad’s with an ankle monitor for company while he waits for his trial. And more than a smattering of others are under indictment, headed to jail or kicked out...
Hands up if you have a ‘to-do’ list. I suspect nearly everyone does. Now hands up if you have a ‘done’ list. Fewer if any, hands in the air. Me among you. I stumbled upon the idea last week from Oliver Burkeman, a favourite thinker about how to use our...
The warning tells me I’ve got 10 minutes before my Zoom call ends. I’m on a free plan, and once upon a time, talking to one friend had no time limit. Things have changed. The call ends mid-sentence. So we both click the meeting link again and pick up our...
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 shows up in both the promises made and agreed upon.Within those same promises is a contract called ‘what we owe each other’. In his...
A night spent on a cold, hard terminal floor in Dallas wasn’t a part of the trip to Sydney that 300 Qantas passengers expected. Frustrated, they tweeted: “There was a mechanical fault with the plane which of course needs to be addressed (!!) but there is apparently *no other plane* and *no...
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...
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...