At the heart of complexity lives simplicity. Aligning a business, company, or team requires a clear and constant focus, continuous effort, and all the skills necessary to be a great leader today and tomorrow. Members of organizations and teams must be more engaged and committed than ever before. For this, they need as much information…
Review the following list of twelve of the most influential businesspeople in recent history. Is there any name you’re not familiar with? Bill Gates Oprah Winfrey John D. Rockefeller Henry Ford Mark Zuckerberg Walt Disney Coco Chanel Thomas Edison Warren Bu!et Edward Bernays Steve Jobs J.P. Morgan The odds are fairly good that Edward Bernays…
The key strategic imperative of any business is alignment. Alignment has long been the greatest challenge of leadership. The importance of alignment in business, along with its effect on performance, has only increased over time. Today, to come close to competing and succeeding in the chaotic and rapidly shifting business environment, leaders must create aligned…
“Design thinking is a human-centered innovation process that emphasizes observation, collaboration, fast learning, visualization, and rough prototyping. The objective is to solve not only the stated problem at hand, but the real problems behind the obvious.” Thomas Lockwood So what is design thinking? There are many definitions of design thinking, but to be honest they…
What makes a brand extraordinary? What differentiates an extraordinary brand from its competitors? Why do we respond to powerful brands as we do? What is in the secret sauce of winners? Why do we want to associate with the best? What do extraordinary brands have that the others don’t? Again and again we ask these…
Transforming or designing culture requires changing individual and collective behavior. One of the greatest values to be gained from design thinking is the impact it can have on the culture of an organization and how it contributes to greater collaboration and innovation, regardless of its size. Designing Culture: The Example of GE In 2016, General…
In over twenty years working with and facilitating leaders and teams engaged in visioning and strategic planning, I have found that there are three key impediments to the alignment to brand intention. They appear at the highest levels of leadership and can be found throughout a company. In one form or another, they impede alignment…
We all want to feel that whomever we are buying from is treating us well. When we pay for a product or service, we expect to be treated with dignity and respect and to receive what the provider promised. Customers want to feel that they are cared for. Caring, attention and competency are the three motivators…
In addition to attention, one of the three motivators that we all share as customers is an expectation of brand competency. We expect providers of products or services to be competent both in creating and delivering whatever it is we’re buying. Beginning with the design and engineering that goes into a product and continuing with how it is…
One of the three motivators that we all share as customers is attention. Attention fulfills our need to feel important and supports our desire to know that we count. The opposite is to feel ignored, which customers interpret as they don’t matter and are not valued. This is a powerful force and, as with most…