Author: BJ Bueno

27 Apr

Make a decision based on your understanding of yourself, your organization, the stakeholders, and the situation. Evaluate the effects of your actions and any new information. Repeat.

Last week, we wrote an in-depth guide to leading during a crisis—how they affect an organization and strategies to get through them. The advice also applies to any business situation involving a major change as, at their core, that’s what crises are: situations of significant change.

One of the keys to navigating a crisis—or a big change—is what organizational psychologist Edgar Schein calls adaptive moves. In Schein’s words:

By calling them “adaptive,” I am emphasizing that they are not solutions to “the problem” but actions intended to improve the situation and elicit more diagnostic data for the planning of the next move. By calling them “moves,” I am again emphasizing that they are small efforts to improve the situation, not grand plans or huge intervention.[1. Edgar H, Schein, Humble Consulting: How to Provide Real Help Faster, 2016.]

00:31 / Inspiration / Leadership / Personal Development
23 Mar

One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.‹Viktor Frankl

One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning

With the world battling against a pandemic, we're also fighting against fear and uncertainty. Under these circumstances, it can be hard to find inspiration and have clarity about how to act. And, that's understandable.

As bleak as the situation may currently seem, a crisis creates the opportunity fo become a better leader. And, that makes me optimistic for the future of business.

00:12 / Leadership
16 Mar

a vision isn’t just about building a productive organization. A vision is the first step in building brands with diehard loyalty.

A vision gives you clarity on what you should and shouldn’t do. It forces you to stand for something instead of being for everyone. And, it gives you the confidence to make those decisions: when you have a vision you believe in, you’ll have the emotional wherewithal to fight for what’s best for the organization over the long-term, not just today. 

Having a vision isn’t just about trying to achieve the vision. It’s about turning your company into the type of organization that has the potential to achieve the vision. 

00:50 / Creativity / Inspiration / Leadership / Marketing
06 Mar

What you do today determines the type of organization you can become tomorrow.

Every move a company makes sends a message to its customers and employees. A decision you make today may benefit your company right now. But, you also have to ask: is it the right move for the long-term goals of the company?

What you do today determines the type of organization you can become tomorrow.

Without a vision, it’s impossible to determine how today’s decisions will contribute to the future. The vision allows you to ask: Does this decision push the organization further towards that ultimate goal? Does it change nothing over the long-term? Does it only benefit the organization today, making it harder to get back on track to achieve the long-term goals?

17:22 / Inspiration / Leadership
14 Feb

Enabling employees to find meaning in their work isn’t the same as creating a utopian organization: there will still be complaints and frustrations. The goal is maximizing potential, not perfection.

I have often blamed you in my mind for treating this or that person differently and reacting to this or that situation differently from how I would have; and yet the outcome usually showed you were right. "If we just take people as they are," you once said, "we make them worse; but if we treat them not as they are but as they should be, we help them to become what they can become."Therese in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

The most recent edition of Gallup's “State of the American Workplace” report. Put simply, there’s need for drastic improvement: Only 33% of U.S. Employees feel engaged at work.[1. Gallup, “State of the American Workplace,” 2017.]

What’s more worrying than this lack of engagement is that it’s only improved by three percentage points in the five years since the previous edition. This minuscule increase should be surprising considering the prevalence of companies proclaiming to invest in and value their employees over the same time period.

Valuing employees has been more chest-thumping than action.

22:00 / Inspiration / Leadership / Personal Development
24 Jan

Being Great Requires Giving Up Being Great At Something Else

Piglet: If everybody were like everybody else, how boring it would be. The things that make me different are the things that make me, me!
Eeyore: Stand tall.
Piglet: You’re in a class by yourself.
Eeyore: Be proud.
Piglet: You’re not like anyone else. No doubt about it, you’re second to none ‘cause you’re the one and only one. Piglet and Eeyore, “You’re the One and Only One,” Winne the Pooh: Sing a Song with Pooh Bear

It often seems like companies are doing everything to try and get customers to do more. 

But, when a company tries to do everything, it excels at nothing. 

Since companies only have a limited number of resources, this usually involves trying to improve their category weaknesses, which inevitably draws focus away from their strengths. And, by improving their weaknesses to match the competition and focusing on winning share of mind for their improvements—and ignoring their strengths—they just end up looking a lot like the competition. 

13:00 / Inspiration / Leadership / Marketing
10 Jan

Cult brands stand against an evil force: they believe the world should be a certain way that stands in opposition to an ill they perceive in the world.

It’s common to talk about the customer journey: the important steps the customer takes when interacting with your company. But, many companies forget to pay attention to the journey their business is on. And, it’s through this journey that we can not only become heroes to our customers but also help them become the heroes in their own journeys.

20:00 / Leadership / Personal Development
14 Dec

Business as usual can only be usual for so long.

Few established organizations set aside time to come up with game-changing ideas. Most meetings are designed to produce incremental changes or strategic shifts.

Rarely do you find an established organization trying to create a future that is radically different than what exists as their current day-to-day reality.

This is why most organizations are blindsided by disruptive competition: they couldn’t see them coming because they didn’t come from the competition they were monitoring.

01:39 / Creativity
07 Dec

When collecting customer insights, every question should be connected to a potential action.

When we coach clients on their branding and marketing strategies, we like to marry best practices with customer data. Although some clients want us to use our research methods to do a deep dive into their customers, most companies want us to use their existing data—either collected by themselves or an outside company—as the source of customer knowledge. Over the years, I've noticed some common pitfalls in the ways customer insights are collected and used across companies of all types and sizes.

Here are five ways to avoid some of the most common ones.

06:23 / Marketing
30 Nov

"Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent 
 or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must kindle an extravagant hope." -- Eric Hoffer

When Aeschines spoke, they said,”How well he speaks.” But when Demosthene spoke, they said, “Let us march against Philip.”David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

“Damn, Daniel! Back at it again with the white Vans.”

Remember that meme? It took the internet by storm in February 2016. What started on February 15th as a video on Twitter of Josh Holtz commenting on his friend Daniel Lara’s clothing skyrocketed Josh and Daniel to recognition, landing them on Ellen DeGeneres and being crowned one of the 30 most influential people on the internet by Time Magazine.[1. Time Staff, “The 30 Most Influential People on the Internet,” Time.com, 2016.]

Seeing its popularity and its ability to break through the clutter, many brands started appropriating the meme: Clorox suggested to “get back at it with Clorox” and Axe attempted to link its popularity to their #findyourmagic hashtag.

As in the case with the Damn Daniel memes, companies often try to hijack memes in an effort to gain borrowed visibility. But, all too often they release their memes after popularity has peaked or they misunderstand the meme.[2. Adam Pierno, “How Brands Can Use Memes to Connect With Consumers in a New Way," AdWeek.com, 2018.] [3. RenĂ©e Millette, “15 Times Big Brands Did Memes and It Got Weird AF,” TheThings.com, 2017.]

05:57 / Marketing