I’m still re-devouring William Gibson novels. At some point during the lockdowns, I realized we were living in his universe: corporate monopolies, pandemics, communities-in-cyberspace, alienation-via-technology … things he covered 30 years ago. (Not David Howell Evans) Here’s one item that, I hope, he got at least a little bit wrong: the Edge. In his short story “New Rose Hotel,” Fox, …
Podcast 101: Start with the why
Our second statement on building a culture that honors results and relationship: Start with the why. Tune in to find out what this has to do with tattoos on your rear end. (Sexy sax music provided by Sexy Sax Man.) We would love your questions and comments for future episodes: Email Mike and Mark. Listen here … subscribe on Spotify, …
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Better Version of Me
I post this on St. Patrick’s, but most won’t receive it until after. So the only thing really Celtic in any sense here is Fiona Apple’s name. And the fact that her dad is from Tennessee, where everybody is Irish or Scotch Irish, including my mom. (Wikipedia tells me Miss Apple has Melungeon ancestry through her dad–who’s a thunk it!) …
Why they aren’t the Newport Bengals: Slavery is never good for business
“Now, who is your momma?” As a proud Kentuckian, I’ve always smiled at Neil Rackham’s classic “SPIN Selling” describing the differences of doing business in the North vs. the South: I remember once watching a southern banker in Kentucky selling trust services to a customer who looked like Colonel Sanders’s twin brother. In this case the Preliminaries took up almost …
Content creation: employee engagement needed
Automotive News posted this 5-minute video about Audi Milwaukee’s successful efforts on TikTok. Millions of views, two actual sales and a longterm customer base. While I refuse to join TikTok because I don’t want President Xi to know where I am at all times, I’m posting the video here for two reasons: It’s a great example of the content creation …
Work is not your god, but God wants you to work.
“Your Work Is Not Your God: Welcome to the Age of the Burnout Epidemic.” That’s the title of an essay by scholar and ex-professor Jonathan Malesic. He wrote a book about the subject. The essay is definitely worth a read if you can pardon the F Word toward the end. The title of Malesic’s essay implies that we have made …
Podcast 100: Culture trickles downhill–3 degrees of difficulty
Last time Mike and Mark discussed the tension to manage in your organization’s culture: relationship vs. results, treating people well vs. performing well. This episode unpacks the first of four statements to help you manage that tension. There are three ways you should trickle culture downhill … each with a different degree of difficulty. We would love your questions and …
Horn Sections Make Rock Better: Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here’s another song by The Pogues. Sometimes, Shane MacGowan gives us the alcoholic love poetry of lines like “you’re the measure of my dreams.” A few years after that, he gave us this single, with lines like “I love your lips, I love your eyes / I love your breasts, I love your thighs …
Luxury vs. mass-market: no difference?
Last year, the American Customer Satisfaction Index shared an interesting finding: The difference between luxury and mass-market automobiles is disappearing. ACSI has surveyed U.S. consumers across a variety of industries for decades. Now, it appears, in the eyes of consumers, most cars are safe. Reliable. Drivable. And higher-end features–the latest technology–might just debut in the mass-market vehicles instead of their …
Podcast 99: Do you have a culture … or a cult-?
There is tension in your organization’s culture. And it is most definitely a tension to manage, not a problem to solve. We would love your questions and comments for future episodes: Email Mike and Mark. Listen here … subscribe on Spotify, Amazon or Apple … or view below.