Marketing in a crisis
In extraordinary times, extraordinary measures force a change in the rules of the game. We saw the “three pillars” of society — the state, markets, and communities — work together to tackle the coronavirus, and it made me wonder how much more they could tackle if they worked together more often.
Work as religious experience
Many organizations aim to make the world a better place, to motivate employees, to create purpose. In many ways, these are spiritual questions, theological inquiries that business leaders struggle to define. What is purpose? What motivates people, and why? What is the “better place” for which we’re striving? They don’t teach you that in business school.
Automating our jobs away
Well, contrary to my own estimates, robots are in fact pretty good with language. Unfortunately for me, an artificial intelligence program at JPMorgan Chase has created marketing copy that outperformed human copywriters.
Resting: The new productivity
In the shadow of work is rest. While we were created to work, we were also created to rest. The problem is that American culture isn’t very good at it. That’s because, as The Atlantic pointed out a few years ago, being busy is a status symbol.
Qualify, not just quantify
One of the things I love most about business is how tangible the world becomes. “What’s your budget for the project? What’s the timeline? What are our next steps?” Breaking down your tasks into the simplest components, quantifying the next steps, and creating clear paths forward — that’s the way to make the world a better place.
Research roundup on major themes
A few years ago we collected as many sources as we could find on important themes affecting Work Tech. Having found this recently in our internal library, I thought I’d share it with you all, as many of the themes are still present today. These themes and trends make it difficult for many leaders to understand how to communicate in a fractionalized, polarized world. We offer a few tips at the bottom.
Three trends shaping the employee experience
When all hell broke loose in March 2020, the world of work — and many other worlds — were forever changed. And those worlds we knew were over. Three major shifts occurred during that time that continue to plague us today.
Plato and the user experience
The wise teacher wrote in Ecclesiastes that there’s nothing new under the sun. Today, a popular topic of conversation involves the term experience—user experience (UX), customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), and, regrettably, human experience (HX).
