Jamie Notter Blog
The REAL Meaning of Employee Engagement
When we set out last year to write The Non-Obvious Guide to Employee Engagement (which launches today!), our first task was to see what others were writing about the topic. And according to just about every article and blog post out there, engagement is "hard to...
The #1 Reason Why Management Retreats Fail
I was talking with a colleague the other day who said that in her experience, management retreats usually ended up at one of two extremes: either they were stellar and everyone loved them, or they were a disaster and people ended up quitting at the end. That may be a...
The 3 Things Every CEO Should Know About Culture
One of my mantras is that workplace culture isn’t as complicated, difficult, vague, etc. as we make it out to be. I’m not saying it’s super simple and easy, but it’s definitely something we all can handle. And since we push it away as “too complex,” we lack a tangible...
Find+Fix Your Culture Patterns
Since today is the last day of the year, I’m going to boil everything down for you. If I had to give ONE piece of advice to leaders who want to: get the most out of their organizations attract and retain the best talent beat the competition, or even make them...
Solving the Employee Engagement Equation
Maddie and I are BEYOND excited to announce the release of our next book, The Non-Obvious Guide to Employee Engagement (for Millennials, Boomers, and Everyone Else!). It’s part of a series of Non-Obvious Guides that our publisher (IdeaPress, led by the super-smart...
Strategy Innovation
For a project I’m working on, I dug out my old copy of Blue Ocean Strategy. It’s a classic (and excellent) business book from way back in 2005, and the premise is simple: if you take the time to analyze your market, you have the opportunity to choose a different...
How Core Values Can Actually Erode Trust
Here’s a typical scenario. You want to create a stronger culture, so you ask your people to articulate some kind of ideal culture. They tell you all the aspects they wish were present in your culture, and probably complain about some of the problems they now face, and...
Even Small Staffs Get Value from Culture Data
When we were creating the Workplace Genome culture assessment, I had an assumption that organizations with really small staff would tend not use it. I used to joke: Hey, if you’re only 19 employees, then instead of the culture survey, why don’t you just sit around the...
More Evidence for NOT Copying a Culture
So I gave myself the rare gift of time last week and read two business books: Ray Dalio’s Principles and Patty McCord’s Powerful. Dalio’s book is a #1 bestseller, and in full disclosure I didn’t read the whole thing (it’s pretty big)—I skipped the “life principles”...