When organisations think about capital, two dominate. Financial and human. Both are crucial, and abusing them will collapse value and drive you out of business. Yet, you accumulate value across more than those two. But don't necessarily consider those things as capitals when making decisions. As a result, choices erode rather...
You have a culture if your organisation is over a few days old. It’s made of how you do things and is rooted in values. It’s also in flux. Every person you hire and fire, office you open and close, market you enter or exit shapes activity and know-how. I’ve previously written...
It’s 1990, and a Stanford University graduate student in psychology named Elizabeth Newton is using a game to test how people communicate. She’s assigned students roles of ‘tappers’ and ‘listeners’ and asked the tappers to pick a well-known song and tap the song on a table. Next, the listeners have to...
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...
The term ‘unheroic work’ first landed in my language via a book by Jedediah Purdy1 about the commons of politics and community.The quote reads,“Yet a political achievement cannot be taken for granted. It is always either a continuing accomplishment or an eroding one. It requires the sustenance of unheroic work.”Despite...
After hundreds of articles and speeches and a couple of books about ‘brand as a result of the promises you keep’, I still get people retorting “oh, so you do marketing.”After I swallow my frustration, I take their assumption and use it as an opportunity to talk about what it...
When everything in the world around you is in flux, how to find the one thing your organisation is ‘great’ at can seem an insurmountable quest. However, without it, achieving a brand result people want to stick with is what’s impossible.Because knowing that one thing will help you make and...
