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"It is nearly impossible to make it through a typical day without exchanging ideas. Whether deciding on something as simple as a restaurant for a long overdue night out, or as complicated as the design of an entirely new product, we are forever involved in sculpting and selling our creative thought. Conventional wisdom says that to be successful, an idea must be concrete, complete, and certain. But what if that's wrong? What if the most elegant, most imaginative, most engaging ideas are none of those things?"
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For the first time in history, the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world are tethered securely to one big honkin' global economic engine. But, do we really want a life strapped to a high octane go-fast engine? Or is it something else entirely that we're after? "The Corporate Guy" takes an honest look at his life in the corporate world and finds 7 Secrets to Success and Happiness.
"There was this young Corporate Guy,
And all of him was neatly pressed.
All except his Walking Hat,
Which was very old, soft and wrinkled.
He loved his Walking Hat,
But he didn't wear this hat very often anymore.
These days, he wears mighty fine, high gloss, spit shine,
On his black wing-tip shoes, like Executives wear."
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"Can recognition be analyzed under a microscope?
Categorized here as a business manifesto, you might assume that recognition ROI—what we call the return on 'Carrots'—would be the first order of conversation. In other words, how purpose-based recognition can boost your bottom line, motivate employees to achieve, and create high-performance teams. And, because most readers here are searching for quick, easy to execute applications, you may even assume that a prescriptive "how-to" focus should warrant an initial discussion. Or, maybe even more to the point, scientific research should be presented to qualify the case for the most effective human performance accelerant in existence—recognition. The ROI is astounding. The application is easily trainable. And, now there's global research proving that recognition accelerates human performance to a level beyond comparison in every culture studied—the impact has no boundaries, and the way humans respond to recognition reveals an outstanding driver of performance. All that said, the most revealing analysis under the microscope must begin within ourselves—the results of which we can all qualify, quantify, and measure."
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"I might feel good about myself as I sip on a mouthful of 'green' this or that, but this sanctimoniousness should be seen as more than an innocuous behavioral tic. The diversion of attention into a me-brand-good pseudo experience, the holy grail of brand building, is actually part of the problem.
When green brands manage to nurture egocentric self-cherishing among its users through packaging and advertising, a fundamental, environmental disjoin has taken place."
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"It is easy to wallow in the magnitude of the current catastrophe. But to prevent the next catastrophe, we must examine how and why the fall occurred. After all, the best solution is not to pad the ground, but to prevent the slip—more accurately, to prevent the many slips that culminate in the final slip before the fall. Corporate leaders have slipped, repeatedly. And finally—inevitably—they fell, hard. On us. After so many slips and slides, they should have seen the fall was coming, and done something about it.
But they didn't, and so here we are. So, what's next? How do leaders prevent the next slip? That is, what can leaders do to defuse the current anger and lessen its likelihood in the future? The answer is to treat people fairly, and when that fails, rebuild the trust.
Sounds too simple? It's not, but it is basic. This is why when the cynics and critics say that that is warmed-over recommendations from the past, we reply: Go back to basics; we know what works. In fact, what got us in this mess were leaders ignoring those tried-and-true basics."
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