Warm, endearing stories and poems are often not part of an organizational culture. Business war stories of an individual or a team developing a hot product, working outrageous hours to please customers, or blazing new profitable markets are more often the stuff of corporate myths and legends. What’s different now is that organizations are paying …
Brand U teaming is taking over business. In more organizations, empowerment and teaming are evolving into workplace religions. You can’t escape empowerment, which may involve self-managed teams, work accountability, or group problem solving. Often, your ability to work as part of a group is a condition of employment. But, teaming can have a dark side. …
Successful Brand U organizations develop a shared vision that reflects stakeholder values. Every Brand U organization has a vision that’s distilled into a statement of where the organization, business unit, plant, department, team or even individual Brand U’s want to go. The vision statement presents a clear future with doable and probable outcomes. The vision …
Brand U people operate under a new set of priorities and protocols. If a customer or employer has dissimilar principles, then Brand U workers often bail. Employers once would guarantee lifetime employment for loyalty. Well, that’s pretty much gone. So the critical question facing all employers is how to establish a new psychological contract with …
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that happiness is all about flow. Happiness results when Brand U’s are totally absorbed in what we are doing. Brand U’s don’t achieve happiness directly by pursuing it. Happiness results when we forget time and are one with what we are doing. In athletics, this is called a peak experience or being …
Values, culture, principles and ethics are now organizational core competencies for success. In much the same way, our individual value is our core proficiencies of life long happiness and success. Core values may include respecting individual dignity, integrity, and honesty. Core values become ingrained in the way we act and think. Values and principles then …
A vision or mission statement may be short or can be all encompassing. I prefer short statements that distill the purpose of the organization such as Chrysler’s purpose is to ‘produce cars and trucks that people will want to buy, will enjoy driving, and will want to buy again’ or Microsoft’s to put ‘a computer …
The competitive argument goes something like this: time is of the essence. Time to market is getting shorter. Sometimes, products are obsolete by the time they’re developed. Customer requirements are increasing. What should a company do? Value visionaries say it’s more important to define yourself in terms of what you believe because where you now …
Why are values important? And if so, what is their relationship to work? Is there a function for God, honor, family, values, trust and honesty in the work place? Or, are these relics of a past when there was lifetime employment and trust that went down and up the organization? Studies indicate that values are …
A mantra for Brand U’s is: ‘do what you believe in and believe in what you do.’ More Brand U’s are gravitating towards their work callings. Calling is where our principles and practices are aligned. Two things are required for a calling. First, we must have the God given ability to do a job and …