leadership Archives

Bursting Bubbles: Frugality, No-Buy, and Societal Trends

Bursting Bubbles: Frugality, No-Buy, and Societal Trends Issue 163, June 6, 2024 We recently wrote about a few socioeconomic bubbles we suggested were about to burst. As fate would have it, one of our predictions about customer backlash against price hikes, inflation, asymmetrical stock market performance, and missteps by brands manifested into a renaissance of the no-buy day which was transformed into no-buy July to the no-buy year and then the no-buy challenge. Holding Back As observers of consumer behavior…

Kevin Novak

June 5, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

Looking Ahead: 2024 Runway

Looking Ahead: 2024 Runway Issue 162, May 30, 2024 We know that the second half of 2024 starts in a month, but we want to get a jump on what to pay attention to for the rest of this tumultuous year. As we move into summer mindsets to rest and restore, it’s a good time to process and plan for when fall arrives. Being mindful of what lies ahead ensures an ability to adapt our approaches and solutions, recognizing so…

Kevin Novak

May 29, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

It’s Really the Journey that Matters

It’s Really the Journey that Matters Issue 161, May 23, 2024 In our never-ending quest to understand human behavior in the context of organizational culture, we study a lot of nontraditional, surprising, and often seemingly unrelated, strange material. There is plenty written about pop psychology and behavior, but every once in a while, we discover a paradigm-shifting visionary. Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s book Behave, written in 2017 is still relevant and a seminal thought-shifting proposition. We introduced our admiration of Sapolsky…

Kevin Novak

May 22, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

The Trouble with Making Assumptions and Over-Generalizations

The Trouble with Making Assumptions and Over-Generalizations Issue 160, May 16, 2024 We’ve noticed a disturbing trend over the past three years. To put it bluntly, organizations including governments, are making many assumptions about their stakeholders and constituents. The assumptions stem from over-generalizations, past knowledge, or due to wearing blinders. In each instance, we will discuss how you, the consumer, will bear the cost and impact of these behaviors. Failing to See the Total System Let’s take a US political…

Kevin Novak

May 16, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

The Misfortunes of Uninformed Urgency

The Misfortunes of Uninformed Urgency Issue 159, May 9, 2024 We write often and passionately about the sense of urgency organizations should feel as they manage disruptive marketplaces, unpredictable consumer trends, and geopolitical instability. Coupled with urgency are our mantras about market orientation, shared purpose, and critical thinking. We could stop right there but we’re not going to! We don’t want our advocation about modern leadership and organizational strategies to become platitudes and buzzwords. In that spirit, we’re taking a…

Kevin Novak

May 9, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

Why Strategic Re-Think Is Today’s Prerequisite Strategy

Why Strategic Re-Think Is Today’s Prerequisite Strategy Issue 158, May 2, 2024 Although it seems counterintuitive in today’s dynamically changing marketplace, many organizations still live, breathe, and sometimes die by their static three- or five-year strategic plans. It takes so much work and time to develop these long-term plans, often structured more as a laundry list of aspirations, that they are hard to let go of. This multi-year term model is often disconnected from the actual capability or capacity of…

Kevin Novak

May 2, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

The Importance of Language in Organizational Transformation

The Importance of Language in Organizational Transformation Issue 157, April 25, 2024 Think about this for a moment. The English language we speak is referred to as Modern English dating back to 1450. It‘s related to the emergence of the printing press and was adopted through the expanded volume of printed materials including Shakespeare in the late 1500s and the King James Bible in 1611 (study.com). That was over 570 years ago. If you’re following us here, it might dawn…

Kevin Novak

April 24, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

Where Has Our Optimism Gone?

Where Has Our Optimism Gone? Issue 156, April 18, 2024 If you were asked to describe the personality of America you might use the adjectives resilient, optimistic, can-do, problem-solving. Our history has been built on these principles and they are still very much embedded in what drives our economy. However, what’s driving our culture seems to be shifting from these positive “optimistic, can-do” characteristics and turning to a darker, more fractious side – if you believe what you see, hear,…

Kevin Novak

April 18, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

The Value of Reflective Decision-Making

The Value of Reflective Decision-Making Issue 155, April 11, 2024 Admit it, most of us are stressed out and often filled with anxiety. We are time-pressed. Overbooked. Distracted. Confused. Dumbfounded. Surprised. And potentially even trending to pessimism. We are trying to make sense of events we can’t control that are hurtling toward us daily through our news feeds. A Moment in Time We’re also grappling with the speed of change in the digital economy and our connected society. The news…

Kevin Novak

April 10, 2024

Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

What We Know About You: Welcome to the Surveillance State

What We Know About You: Welcome to the Surveillance State Issue 152, March 21, 2024 We recently read a report in The Wall Street Journal that got our attention. Commercial data brokers are selling their third-party data to the government. If you’re an optimist, you would think this could be a good thing. Our intelligence agencies and the defense department may be able to identify patterns that could predict and prevent an unfortunate event – terrorism, for example. But honestly,…

Kevin Novak

March 20, 2024

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