Based on millions of employee surveys with organizations around the world, Kevin and his co-author Rudy Karsen found that the three most important drivers of engagement are:

1. Growth: Team members need to feel they are growing in their careers and learning new things.
2. Recognition: Team members need to feel that their ideas and accomplishments are appreciated.
3. Trust: Team members need to trust senior leadership and feel confident about the future.

Here are highlights of our conversation: 

What attracted you to writing about engagement? Why does the world need this book, at this time?

Well as a business leader I always cared a lot about trying to create an empowering culture for employees, and I had won a Best Place to Work in PA award and things like that. But one night, during our annual holiday party, the wife of someone who worked for me came up and said she wanted to thank me for making her marriage better. I really had no idea what she was talking about. She went on to explain that her husband used to be so grumpy when he came home from work, but since he started working for me he went back to being the man she married.

That was pretty powerful. It was long before I understood how our emotions at work spill over to our personal lives and cross over to those around us. But that was when I got the idea that I really wanted to dig into “engagement” and figure out ways we could make it more accessible to everyday managers. As it turns out, job satisfaction is at a record low according to the Conference Board so I think the timing is really good for a book on the subject.

What are the qualities of employees who are especially engaged with their work? What makes them that way?

People who are engaged at work are highly satisfied with their jobs, but they also exhibit more pride and advocacy about the company they work for, and stay with the company longer. All this leads to higher levels of service and productivity, which of course drives higher levels of sales and profit.

In terms of what drives engagement, it’s of course situational. But based on Kenexa surveys of over 10 million workers in 150 countries and on my own experience as an entrepreneur, it usually comes down to three things. Employees want an environment that fosters growth, recognition and trust. Those are the three keys.

If you were on a board interviewing potential CEOs, what qualities would you look for — and why?

Funny you should ask! I am on the Board of a community bank and we just hired a new CEO. Whenever I’m hiring a leader for one of my businesses I always look for high energy–someone who talks and acts like they’re on a deadline, who is driven by growth. And they need to be able to succinctly state the challenge and action steps ahead. I’ve never had a business plan that was longer than one page. We don’t need to make things more complex than they are. All businesses have three constituents: investors, employees and customers. What must we do, right now, to improve metrics in each area. That’s it.

What questions should people ask during job interviews to assess whether the corporate culture is positive, collaborative and flourishing?

Well, it’s always best to talk to people on the inside. Like Kevin Bacon, everyone should be only a few degrees of separation from someone on the inside and having a healthy LinkedIn network is one way to do that. But in the interview itself you should ask what happened to the person who held the position before it was open. You should ask about which decisions are made as a team, which are made by a single individual. Make sure to get a tour of the office you’ll be working in so you can sense the vibe. Is it quiet like a library or mausoleum — or are people working together and making a buzz? Do people have a lot of fun personal effects in their cube — or just bare walls? Tall cube walls — or open space? There is no one right answer, but just make sure it fits your own work personality.

There’s so much written about employee engagement today. What are the three most important things for leaders to understand about this topic? Conversely, what do people obsess about when it comes to engagement that doesn’t matter all that much?

Engagement is all the rage both because it’s important to growth and profits, and it’s also really low in most organizations. Business leaders first need to realize that they need to care about it. Second they need to act like they care. I mean, they need to measure it, reward to it, make sure it’s not a fad. When Doug Conant took over Campbell Soup to turn it around he focused on two metrics: shareholder return against comparable companies, and the number of engaged versus disengaged employees.

The biggest misconception is that employee engagement takes a lot of time and money. It doesn’t. It means using your existing time differently. Managers meet with their direct reports all the time, but they need to make sure to spend some of that time talking about the career goals of team members. Managers have a hundred interactions with their team each day…but how many of them are to say “thanks” or “good job” in a sincere way. CEOs routinely hold “town hall” meetings or send company wide announcements, but how often are they repeating their big hairy audacious goal like a broken record. These are things that count.

What could the United States be if more citizens were engaged?

Let me answer this two ways. Our emotions at work impact all areas of our life. So if more of us were engaged at work, we all would be healthier, have stronger marriages, our kids would do better in schools and incidentally we’d gain about $350 billion in productivity according to Gallup. When it comes to engagement with our country, while I don’t know what our nation would “be”, I can tell you that the reason why we are so disengaged with government and our leaders in Washington is because we don’t feel like we’re growing or advancing and we absolutely don’t trust our leaders to take us to a better place.

“There are nine story themes that people like hearing about from companies,” I explained. “If you create content  based on those themes you’ll  be turning your messages into stories.”

I introduced these nine story themes four years ago when I published the book Beyond Buzz. This simple model is used around the world by companies and agencies of all sizes to get unstuck and come up with fresh ways to connect with customers, employees and analysts.   Guy Kawasaki included these themes in his new book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions,” writing,

“These story lines from Lois Kelly, author of Beyond Buzz, will help you craft a story that does your cause justice.”

Sean Moffit and Mike Dover also include them in their excellent new book “Wikibrands: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Economy,” saying:

“People love to tell stories. When repeated they reinforce a message; when told well they become viral. Lois Kelly suggests nine types of stories in her book Beyond Buzz that get talked about.”

The 9 themes

1. Great aspirations (Patagonia believing a company can grow big and sustain the environment in innovative ways)
2. David vs. Goliath (Southwest Airlines taking on the big, established players)
3. Personal stories (Fred Smith on why he started FedEx, and why investors funded the company after they met the janitor)
4. Contrarian/counterintuitive (BestBuy deciding to fire some of its customers. What? A company doesn’t fire customers?!)
5. Avalanche about to roll (Spotting, forecasting early trends before they’re big and in the mainstream)
6. Anxieties (Does your child have what it takes to get into a good college?)
7. How-to (How to do things related to your service/product to help customers)
8. Glitz and glam (What you can learn from Sara Jessica Parker about investing money)
9. Seasonal/event related (Financial and tax advice leading up to April 15; vacation deals just before he summer)

Download the eBook, check out Guy Kawasaki’s post

Not in the mood for reading books to learn more?  Click here to visit the Foghound resource center, and download a copy of the eBook, “Beyond Buzz: Let’s Talk About Something Interesting.” Or check out Guy Kawasaki’s post, “How to Change the World: The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing.”

The best example is Nike. While most of us know the company’s 20 year-old “Just Do It” motto, there’s much more to why Nike exists. Simon Sinek, author of the great book “Start with Why” shares this story about Nike founder Phil Knight over on his re:Focus blog:

Looking across the audience, Knight asked those who run to stand up.  And a good percentage of the room stood up.  Then he asked those who run three or more times a week to keep standing; everyone else was asked to sit down.Looking out at the people left standing, Knight said, “we are for you.”

“When you get up at 5 o’clock in the morning to go for a run,” he went on, “even if it’s cold and wet out, you go. And when you get to mile 4, we’re the one standing under the lamp post, out there in the cold and wet with you, cheering you on.  We’re the inner athlete.  We’re the inner champion.”

Without a single mention of their latest technologies or which athletes wear their products, Knight makes a vastly more compelling case for Why we want Nike in our lives. Nike may or may not be better, but we are drawn to them because they have a cause.

Nike doesn’t want to make products for everyone, they want to make products for champions.  Champions are not the ones who always win races, champions are the ones who get out there and try. And try harder the next time. And even harder the next time. Champion is a state of mind. They are devoted.  They compete to best themselves as much if not more than they compete to best others.  Champions are not just athletes.  Champions are entrepreneurs, politicians, nurses, soldiers, students and Hall of Famers.  Nike wants to make products for all champions.

Most companies have clever or meaningless tag lines (marketing) and bland, gobbledygook mission/vision statements (corporate communications). Few can express why they exist in a way that inspires.

Imagine what might happen if you could?  And you can.

A simple workshop exercise is to ask people, “If our company were a cause, what would our rallying cry be?”

Be prepared to be amazed at what your own people believe. And if they are stumped? Time for some corporate soul searching. If you don’t know why you exist — other than making money and improving shareholder value — you really can’t lead effectively. Manage, sure. Lead, no.

*************************************

“I think it’s going to be tonight. It’s my favorite night of the year. Do you think you’ll be able to stay awake for it,” I ask Bette, acting like a five-year-old trying to talk her mother into going to a drive-in movie.

This anual rite means so much to me and I’d never shared it with my mother. The first and last time would be tonight. I hope she likes it as much as I do.

After finishing dinner I brought our trays into the kitchen and cleaned up while Bette wrapped herself in a blanket close to the fire and turned on “Jeopardy.” Dark already.  I loaded up the dishwasher and took the garbage outside.  I stopped just outside the door.

Could it be?  I toss the garbage into the composting bin and walk to the west side of the yard, closer to the marsh a few streets over.

Yes!

I rush back in and help Bette push her swollen feet into her green garden shoes and get into her winter coat.

“I just knew it would be today,” I say. “It’s always the last week in March without fail.”

I wrap my arm in Mum’s and out we go to the deck, arm in arm. It is so dark. Few stars and no moon. No lights on in any of the neighbors’ houses. Today it reached 50 degrees but most people are still in Florida.

Missing this.

“Do you hear them,” I ask. Gingerly we walk through the backyard, closer to the marsh.

Peep, peep, peep sing the tree frog peepers in their song of spring joy. The Hallelujah chorus of spring. Their high-pitched little voices tell us that the harshness and dark of the New England winter are over. New beginnings and possibilities are coming. Rejoice. Be grateful.

Bette and I stand there listening. I know this will not be a joyful spring. The hospice nurse’s note this week said, “Declining rapidly.”

We walk back into the house and crank up the heat.

“It won’t be long now,” Bette says. I hope she means the spring.

1. What else could America be? When Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, authors of  excellent book The Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair, asked Toke Moller to give  them a question that  he would like Americans to be asked, he replied “what else could America be?”  If you apply this simple question to other situations, it opens up possibilities. What else could our organization be? What else could my position be? What else could our company be?

Which brings me to a second great question.

2.  What if we re-imagined what our entire industry could look like? What if we went beyond creating a vision for our own company and thought about how our entire industry could move into a new future, providing value for us and others?

This second question comes from the book The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Mad, Can Set Big Things in Motion, by John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison. The authors call this a “shaping view.”   A shaping view, they explain, provides a big-picture focus and defines direction, identifies where the opportunities lie, and describes the fundamental industry forces and the economic appeal of participating in the new view.

In thinking about game changing and innovative strategies, consider bringing your team together and asking this bigger question about how your entire industry might be able to move in a broad new direction. It generates much more interesting conversations and possibilities than the usual vision/ mission discussions.

The better your questions, the better your strategies.

Today’s Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

This year I made a little 126-page book, Be the Noodle: 50 Ways to Be a Courageous, Compassionate, Crazy-Good Caregiver, with stories and lessons on helping someone you love die.  I used the emails and blog posts I use to write at night while living with my mother during the last three months of her life. I use to write these to keep my family updated on my mother’s health.  Writing also helped me stay sane and calm.

I love the book cover, designed by the brilliant and generous Stress Limit Design up in Montreal.

What I am most grateful for are the emails from readers who have found comfort, courage and peace from connecting with another family’s story.

My favorite emails were from  a family down South. I first heard from the  college student whose father was dying, who read the book and gave it to her mother. Then I heard the mother’s story a few months later.

The young woman wrote:

“I read “Be the Noodle” and immediately started to feel better. It’s just such a unique book, because it is the only one I’ve come across that feels REAL It isn’t preachy or full of cheesy metaphors comparing tears to oceans or grief to stormy skies. It’s perfect. It actually is SO CLOSE to my mother’s care-giving experience that its creepy. Thank you so much for at least temporarily allowing me to get a little of my peace of mind back. I don’t doubt that ill have another wallowing slump, and another, and then another, and then I’ll be fine, and then I’ll wallow again, etc. but for today, I feel better.”

Then this email came from the young woman’s mother who told me the book helped her make her daughter part of the final weeks with  her father.

“Thank you for your book, it has been a wonderful blessing. I had no intention of sharing with my daughter or her brother those last 15 days, when my husband’s dying process had begun. My husband and I did not want those memories to be our children’s last memories of their father.

“But when my daughter read the book and told me about it, it allowed me to share with her the most agonizing, poignant, intimate, and life-changing experience of my life. Thanks to the book I could share that most intimate experience.

“I have been invited to the Oncology Dept. of our local hospital’s Patient Advocate Council’s next meeting. I plan to attend and hopefully be of some help to families as they ride the roller coaster and begin their journeys as caregivers. I plan to buy many copies of “Be the Noodle” and try to ‘pay it forward’ just as your family as done.

“Thank you for helping me remember my husband’s final days as his caregiver not as agony and heartbreak, but as “the most courageous, inspiring and rewarding job that I never wanted.”

Unlike my professional writing where I write from my head. I wrote this book from my heart. It’s the thing I’m most proud of having made in 2010.

PS:  The Noodle is a metaphor for those styrafoam swimming noodles; we caregivers were my mother’s noodle that she had to hang onto, even though as a swimmer she hated swimming noodles.

PPS: more stories from readers can be found here.

It was one of those 15-minute talks that felt  important, especially the 2009 Shift Index research that found  only 20 percent of people feel passionate about their work, and self-employed people are twice as likely to be passionate about their work than people who work for institutions.  What does this say about big businesses, hospitals and government agencies?!

To learn more, I read John’s new book, The Power of Pull, which puts swirling ideas around open collaboration, passion, social business, innovation and organizational culture into one compelling context. The book also gives a giant, well-researched kick in the ass to those who are clinging to “business and leadership as usual.”

John and his co-authors John Seely Brown and Lang Davison believe that businesses must change in order to more quickly and continuously pull new ideas into a company from passionate people inside and outside the company.

In the traditional push business model we forecast demand and push resources to the right place at the right time.  Profits come from controlling intellectual property, getting bigger to achieve economies of scale, and creating processes and specialized jobs to ensure those processes are executed as efficiently as possible.

But with today’s greater access to resources, people and capital, that model is starting to break down.  There’s more competition from around the globe. Shorter product life cycles.  Price wars due to over supply and commoditization.  The push model with its focus on control and incremental improvement is breaking down. People are miserable at work, and leaders manage in fear, not having the competencies for this new unpredictable, changing world.

Three concepts: passion, collaboration, vision

This book explores several big concepts, each deserving a book of its own and certainly deserving much more discussion than this post. But here are three that were especially compelling to me. (Note: the bold highlights are mine.)

1. Passion: When we tap into the work we were meant to do – our passion – work becomes meaningful. It’s not easy to uncover our individual passions, and it’s even more challenging for organizations to change their mindset and internal systems to harness passion in a way that attracts talent and puts it to work in  new collaborative ways.  The book puts passion into a business context that is rarely articulated in the business world.

• “When we pursue our passions we tend to exhibit questing dispositions. We are constantly scanning the horizon for new challenges to pursue and seek out problems to solve as a way to deepen our skills in our area of passion. In contrast when we are simply putting in time for a paycheck, we tend to fall back on a more defensive disposition, regarding any unexpected developments as unwelcome and avoiding risk wherever possible.”

• “As passions become our professions, we begin to see how social networks can provide us with an unparalleled opportunity to achieve our potential by allowing us to access resources and attract people who can help us while we help them.” Of course, it’s hard to decide what course of action to take it you haven’t first identified your passion, what fascinates you and that you feel compelled to explore.

• “When institutional leaders celebrate the most passionate workers and their contributions, employee attitudes and dispositions will begin to evolve, with more and more individuals embracing change and seeking out new challenges to test and expand their performance horizons.”

• “Institutional leaders should be aware that it’s not enough for passionate people to simply be able to identify and connect with other passionate people. All of them must also being interacting around some difficult problem within the institution…talent thrives when there are new challenges and opportunities to pursue. Institutions that are on the defensive with low-growth strategies simply cannot offer the same level of talent development to their participants.”

Collaboration — sharing “know how” not just “know what”

2. Get better faster, together. Creating new ways for people to work together and share tacit knowledge will help employees get better faster and improve overall performance of the organization. Tacit knowledge is the “know-how” kind of knowledge, but most company information we share is the “know what” kind.

To me this emphasis on tacit learning is big. I’ve been advising some major companies on how to get value from the community platforms they are investing in. I’m finding that employees do NOT want to use these platforms for simple “know what “ information; they can get that from the company Intranet or email.

What they do want is a way to work with team members across silos and geographies to get work done in better and faster ways. They want more meaningful, trusted relationships. They want to read and ask question of colleagues about how they’re doing things, and ask for help, offer help, and see new ways that things could be done altogether.  The opportunity to use new digital platforms to support this is significant, but it does mean providing goals for clear outcomes, and not creating so many rules and processes that it sucks the life out of the opportunity. More World of Warcraft, less Lotus Notes.

• “Tacit knowledge is held by individuals, so if firms want to enhance their participation in tacit knowledge flows, they must find a way to enrich the social networks of their employees, helping them to connect with other individuals on relevant edges (of the business.)”

• “One key dimension of the “Big Shift” is the movement from a world where value is concentrated in transactions to one where it resides in large networks of long term relationships.”

• “The more people join a creation space and the more contributions they make once they’re there, the more successful the space becomes. To help the process along, start by keeping barriers to entry low. Next, give participants the real time feedback and clear performance measures they need to advance quickly within the community.”

• “As participants get to know each other and find that they share similar ways of looking at their endeavors, they start to trust one another, which prompts even deeper levels of collaboration (and tacit knowledge creation) around the difficult challenges they share.)”

• “Rather than trying to specify the activities in the processes in great detail, the orchestrators of the pull platform specify what they want to come out of the process, providing more space or individual participants to experiment, improvise and innovate.”

Defining the mission that will matter to many

3. A meaningful mission or shaping view: Having a clear, win-win mission is essential to attract and focus talent, resources and ideas – especially the most passionate, self-motivated people. The authors define a “shaping view” as a “galvanizing statement about the future of a market, an industry, or a broad social arena and how tomorrow will be different from today and how everybody will be better off” because of it.

This isn’t the first book to emphasize how critical a meaningful mission is to attract and motivate people.  Built to Last, Tribal Leadership, Firms of Endearment, Tribes and many others have found that people want to work for companies with a compelling mission and purpose beyond growth and profitability.  Yet few organizations have this articulation of where the industry is going and how you’re going to be part of that bigger movement.

• “Corporate visions tend to be both too narrow and broad. They are too narrow in the sense hat they focus on describing the direction of the company. In contrast shaping views start with a clear view of the direction of the relevant market or industry and then move to implications for all companies in terms of creating value.”

• “The creative act in a shaping view is to imagine what an industry or market could look like and to challenge conventional assumptions about what is required for success.”

• “Corporate visions also tend to be too broad in the sense that they describe the future in such vague terms that they can accommodate virtually any choice or action

Can companies catch up to what people want from work?

It will be fascinating to see whether big, push companies will evolve fast enough to retain the talents of those passionate people on a quest to do meaningful work within the confines of today’s corporate cultures, cultures that often value process and politics more than outcomes and new ideas. Or whether passionate people and the Gen Y generation will simply flee these organizations and create new types of organizations that fit how people love to work.

The book notes that there are more billionaires under 40 than any other time in our history. People who make history, whether it’s Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, don’t have the patience or time to wait for companies to catch up.

They value their passion more than organizational politics.

Maybe this is the year to uncover your passion and begin to let it guide you, as an individual contributor or as a leader.  In my next post I’ll share some books and workshops that might help on your quest.

As Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers in an interview: “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you…. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

Talk about pull.

So I’m behind on my business reading because of all these fascinating conversations with strangers this summer. But one book I just finished is a wow because it can help you solve problems, find new ideas, have that “aha” marketing or sales breakthrough. And its advice is simple and easy for anyone to do.

The book is “Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight and Content” by Mark Levy.  Mark’s view — which I can attest to — is that by slamming down your ideas on paper within a short time frame, say 12 minutes, you can find insights, get unstuck, and find ways to express your business or yourself that are genuine to who you are. (I believe that when this “realness”  happens, you begin to like doing marketing and sales because the message means something to you.)

Mark’s book explains the freewriting process and shows how to put it to use for practical business and professional purposes.  By writing out your thinking on paper really fast, you push aside that ego lizard brain and tap into deep seated ideas, which are often both startling and right on. The speed of the writing pushes away the conscious editor that usually filters those wacky, odd ideas and thoughts.

I’ve used freewriting for the last 18 months and it has opened up tremendous creative thinking and strategic ideas. (And brought more value to my clients.)  When there’s a gnawing big opportunity or potential obstacle in our work one of my executive clients now says, “Lois, why don’t you go off and do some of that narrative writing.”  (Note, though, that most freewriting isn’t to be shared publicly; it’s a way of privately figuring things out.)

This approach also helped me finish my book “Be the Noodle.” For four months the manuscript sat because I couldn’t figure out what wasn’t working with it. I used one of the techniques in Mark’s book and did a Q&A with myself, wrestling in writing about the creative standoff.  I speed wrote a question, and then wrote a reply. No thinking. Just slamming it down, keeping the pen moving and never leaving the page until the alarm rings. (Part of the trick is setting an alarm and writing fast before times up.) The answers led me to a new book title and format change and within two weeks the book was finished and a publishing deal was put to bed.

Here are some of the things that I’ve highlighted in “Accidental Genius”:

• Prompt your thinking: prompts are helpful way to jump start your thinking and writing. Mark includes an extensive, helpful list of short, open-ended prompts like: “I’m scared by….This sounds insane, but my organization would be 500 percent more productive if….I’d like to tell you a story about…”
• Be open to what shows up: “When you freewrite the page is alive. The ideas that appear on it will change radically, if you let them. You must be open to the truth of the material as it shows up.”
• Marathons: “Each time you formulate a starter thought, demand that it sends you in a new direction…Force yourself into uncharted waters, even if doing so seems artificial or uncomfortable. Pursue novelty and uncertainty; head toward anxiety.
• The fascination method: Mark asks people he works with to make an inventory of everything that has fascinated them at any point in their lives — any ideas that have energy for them, whether or not they “fit” with the person’s business or book concept.  The fun starts by putting the ideas together and seeing patterns and insights. “From these places of energy,” he writes, ” we find the book’s premise and much of its supporting material. This material comes from an honest place within the client. It comes from the spot in their brain where they keep things they can’t forget.”

There’s so much more in the book. I hope you find it as valuable as I have.  When in doubt, write it out.

This isn’t traditional market research, but anthropological research for business, noticing and assessing ideas, trends, emotions that make up the life of customers and employees — and determining what these cultural shifts mean to a company. This applies not just to marketing, but to leadership, HR and workplace communications.

This understanding and empathy, Grant notes, is often viewed as a “soft competency” by executives and business schools.

“To refuse empathy is a kind of managerial malpractice. It costs us essential knowledge of our colleagues and our customers…In fact empathy is frequently the blade that finds the right insight, extracts from it the real strategic and tactical opportunity, and crafts it into a final, compelling form. Is this really a ‘soft’ skill?

Value of a Chief Culture Officer

• Better informed C-suite decisions based on opportunities and risk that come from culture, both strategic and tactical decisions.

• Serve as internal entrepreneur, an innovation agent

What a CCO does

• Finds patterns among chaos of cultural trends and conjure what they mean to a company
• Insinuates cultural knowledge into the CEO

How the chief culture officer does her or his job

• Talks to anyone who will talk with you.
• Figures out the thing that makes a person interesting.  Find what they know best and what this means to them, how it looks to them, how it feels to them
• Is open and guileless, never, ever “hipper than thous”
• Treats everyone as more knowledgeable than him or herself
• Is a fearless “noticer” or observer — “spotting things that defy expectation, that don’t compute.” Pays special attention to things that puzzle. Pays attention to any failure in attention.
• Develops empathy, the ability to feel how another person feels, and find insights from those feelings.
• Admits ignorance and asks naive questions.

Beware: what culture strategy is not cool hunting

Today’s Fast culture is a huge challenge for businesses: miss a trend or misread customers and your brand can quickly become irrelevant. Similarly, slow culture also  presents opportunities and risks and is perhaps more overlooked as the “cool hunters” have no interest here at all.  Grant warns us to beware of the “cool” people; they tend to be into themselves and what’s hip, not real listening, observing and empathy needed to uncover insights.

Quotes I liked

• “We should think of our CEO as a Soviet-era Moscow audience and the CCO as Radio Free Europe. The CCO is trying to penetrate an air space constantly being “jammed” by other things.”
• “Knowledge can stand in the way of innovation.”
• “Without emotional sonar, there are many things an executive cannot know. This person in a sense is trapped in himself.”
• “There is no code to “crack” culture. Just good listening.”
• “We are not seeking perfection. We are seeking to construct and idea just robust enough to get us from confusion to clarity.”

This is a motivating, highly-readable book, chock full of insights, things that make you wonder, and motivation to make you  want to wander more in order to notice more. It’s also so refreshing in its pragmatic approach, reminding us that culture strategy is a form of anthropological science and not about what the cool people think.

Five stars for this book.

More about the book can be found here. I’m just filled with so much gratitude about the response to the book. Clearly people have been looking for a book where “inspire, wisdom, and humor” are linked with end of life and dying. A big outpouring of thanks goes to Justin Evans, partner of the Montreal design firm Stress Limit Design, who created an extraordinary cover. And of course, my remarkable family. Together we can do so much, except for the singing thing.