Jamie Notter Blog
A Better Definition of Employee Engagement
I’ve been searching the web for a good definition of employee engagement, and I have to say, I’m disappointed. There are a LOT out there, though I think that is fine. It doesn’t need to be oversimplified into a single definition. And given the amount of money we spend...
If You Want Change, You Have to DO Something
I’m working with several clients right now on the “Playbook” stage of our culture consulting work. This is the part where the rubber meets the road—where they have to develop a list of things they are going to propose to management that will move their culture in a...
Stop Chasing Employee Engagement
I know that many leaders are losing sleep about low levels of employee engagement. So you think it would make sense to actively pursue engagement, right? I mean, who would want any disengaged employees? Okay, I agree: it would be great to have all your employees going...
The Importance of an Innovation Strategy in your Culture
I led a great session in Wichita, Kansas this week with some really smart healthcare professionals who focused on corporate wellness. We had gathered some data prior to the meeting about the cultures inside their organizations, and then we got together to brainstorm...
The Top 3 Things Holding Your Workplace Culture Back
Awesome cultures seem to be the exception, not the rule. That means most of us are on the outside, looking in—wishing that we had an awesome culture like Zappos, Netflix, or the organization next door that keeps making the “best places to work” list. So when we can...
The Similarity Between Culture and Parenting
I always enjoyed the film Parenthood, from the late 1980s. Steve Martin played a guy who struggled with being the perfect parent (which is, of course, impossible). But there was a scene where Jason Robards, who played Martin’s father in the movie, gave a great speech...
What It Really Means to Begin Something
When organizations do work on their culture, they frequently want to rush to action. When we show them the results of our culture assessment, for example, it often leads immediately to a discussion about what should be done about it. Our Agility scores are more...
The CEO’s Role in Culture
Services from Fully-Verified are not all that takes in a startup. There are several questions to be answered. The answer to the question about the CEO’s role in culture has a bit of a paradox in it, so let me ask two more detailed questions to get to the point. First...
Does Middle Management Have a Future?
I’ve noticed an interesting pattern in some of the Workplace Genome data of some of my consulting clients lately: Middle managers experience culture as less futurist than BOTH the people above them in the hierarchy, and the people below them. Think about that....