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The principles in my book, What Great Brands Do:  The Seven Brand-Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest can be applied to employees, employee experience, and employee engagement. For example, in WGBD, I explain that Great Brands Avoid Selling Products.  Instead of simply focusing on selling products or services to customers, great brands […]

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In this, the last in my series of leadership lessons learned from popular TV shows, we learn from Yellowstone.  John Dutton and the cast of characters from the fictional Montana ranch show us that leading doesn’t always involve what we think it does. We learn that when it comes to motivating employees, it depends less […]

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Ted Lasso, the leading character in the popular Apple+ series by the same name, provides an excellent model of exceptional organizational leadership. The leadership lessons from Lasso are about coaching, changing, and character-building. My new Smartbrief on Leadership video explains how Lasso shows what great leaders do — take a look! related: Lesson from Succession: […]

leadership love

Love may seem out of place in a business context, but it’s actually a key leadership quality today. Employees want to feel their leaders know them, trust them, and care about them as whole persons. And, when they do, they’re more likely to be engaged and motivated to do great work. In my latest Smartbrief […]

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Now is the time to prepare your business for the recession.  In addition to the typical strategies of cost-cutting and cash flow management, add culture-building.  A healthy, effective, and resilient company culture can help you not just survive, but actually thrive during an economic downturn. In my new Smartbrief on Leadership video, I explain how […]

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I’m not a designer so I don’t have any expertise on this, but from the perspective of brand leadership. infusing your office design with your brand seems an effective way to turn your office into a magnet, inspiration, and guide for employees.  Plus, when I reached out to my go-to expert on all things office […]

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The age-old question – which is more important, customers OR employees – is a misguided, and potentially dangerous one.  As a business leader, you shouldn’t prioritize one group over another. Instead, you should link employees and customers. One way to connect employees and customers is to use cultural tenets that are relevant and important to […]

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently referred to Meta employees in a new way:  Metamates.  Is this a good idea?  Should you use a coined name to refer to your employees? The poll I fielded on LinkedIn yielded a definitive answer: It depends.  28% supported the practice of made-up names for employees; 32% voted against it; […]

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The problem at Amazon is not simply that its culture has gone awry; more importantly, it has become disconnected from the company’s brand. Amazon’s brand has always been grounded in its aspiration of becoming “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.”  And its leaders have used the organization’s core values, “Leadership Principles”, to guide the company in service […]

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Customer Experience (CX) maturity models are used by many companies to guide, measure, and improve their performance on CX.  You need a similar tool to empower Employee Experience (EX) excellence. I suggest an EX Maturity Model that incorporates the 10 key building blocks of EX: Strategic clarity – clear vision and strategy for EX EX:CX […]