culture
12 posts
Stories For Good
Stories are our most persuasive technology. The stories we tell can be powerful catalysts for change. But the stories that silence us are the most potent of all. The stories we choose to believe and believe in are the making of us. We can use our voices to raise the voices of those whose stories…
Lessons From A Low-Touch World
Technology presents opportunities for efficiency and scale. And for the last century, conventional wisdom equated progress with efficiency—doing more with less friction. We’ve worked hard to build systems that scale. Frictionless innovations for a low-touch world. Now, we’re beginning to realise tha
The Bounds Of Possibility
Now that we are no longer bound by the constraints of probability, we must face the fact that we have a responsibility to own what’s possible. Opportunity abounds.
Thank You For Your Work
We can be more grateful customers and build the kind of organisations that create them on purpose.
On Culture
Culture is how we act, based on what we know about who we are. It isn’t about fitting in, it’s about understanding where we belong and why. Culture is a reminder that if we believe this, then we do or don’t do, that. It’s about saying this is who we are, then living up to…
Culture Creation
Our usual Friday morning workout instructor is on holiday for a month. The first sign that something has changed in his absence is a drop in the number of people who attend. The time slot is the same. The workout is identical. But fewer people are motivated to come. We’re not just getting up early…
The Measure Of Greatness
I will never forget the first assembly at my children’s school in Australia. Our family had newly migrated to Perth, Western Australia. We wanted to settle our boys as quickly as possible into their new life. So, much to our ten-year-old’s disgust, they were in new schools within two weeks of our ar
The Choice
We know how the trip will pan out even before we get on the tram. The driver is agitated. He uses his bell accordingly. He repeatedly ‘dings’ three times, announcing his tram’s presence on the road. His bell is warning system—reflecting his mood. Everything becomes an emergency. How the driver opera
We Are The Culture
Culture is all around us. Our shared values and beliefs are palpable in the places we visit and the people we meet. We absorb those values from the media we consume and the ideas we expose ourselves to. One of the best ways I know to witness how we can shape our culture is to…
In Praise Of Curiosity
Not so long ago conversations with strangers just happened anywhere and everywhere. This was especially true in Dublin where I grew up. It was not unusual for someone you’d never met to practically tell you their life story while you were standing waiting for the 16A bus into the city. Showing an in
What We Value And Reward Defines Us
Brian has a tough gig. He works at a call centre for an Internet service provider. You can probably imagine what his day looks like. When we spoke I could hear background noise that sounded like hundreds of other people in a tiny space doing exactly what Brian was trying to do—close the sale. Brian…
The Trouble With Positioning
Do you remember when President Obama came to office first time round and negotiated with the secret service to keep his BlackBerry—Bush and Clinton didn’t even use email. In 2004, three years before the launch of the first iPhone, BlackBerry, who pioneered the smartphone had a market share of 47%. F
