Blog

How Blending Brand And Culture Can Impact The Customer Experience

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags:
Customer experience

Customer experience is a memory. An impression that can stick in the mind for a minute or a lifetime. A positive experience can result in lasting loyalty, endorsement, and evangelism. A poor experience, on the other hand, can almost instantly mean the end of a brand relationship.

PwC reports that 79% of customers rate customer experience as the most important component of the purchasing decision after product quality and price. According to this research, 59% of consumers who love a brand are prepared to forsake it after having a series of poor experiences. The firm also claims that 17% will walk away after only one bad experience. Needless to say, this is concerning for any business.

In order to create amazing customer experiences, companies need to ensure that they have the appropriate bedrock in place to enable brand and culture to be successfully integrated. In this article, we will discuss the three primary foundations – purpose, promise, and values.

Read More…

Assume Capability Not Intent

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
Assume Capability

“Assume capability, not intent,” is part of a military maxim used in intelligence.  While somewhat more arcane when employed in intelligence, its shortened form can serve as an effective and simple reminder of how to approach those with whom we interact in the business world.

Have you ever sat in a meeting and watched the people around the table and started writing your own narrative about them? Your thoughts range from:

“He doesn’t care,” you say about one person.

“She has an agenda she’s trying to push,” you smugly say to yourself about another.

And then there is the inevitable, “He’s lazy and doesn’t want to get the job done.”

What’s the common denominator of such narratives?  They are all judgment based and blindly come to conclusions about the intent of each individual, based on nothing more than opinion and feelings.  As such they do nothing to enhance our personal and professional relationships and thus materially contribute to distrust, making them detrimental to how a team operates.

Read More…

Chris Cancialosi on Imparting Knowledge to Younger Workers

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
Tony Lee and Chris Cancialosi discuss imparting knowledge to younger workers, viewing knowledge as intellectual capital, the variables to consider when preparing for a transition in a company, pre-emptive knowledge transfers and what Chris’ deployment to Iraq taught him about the process of transferring knowledge. Listen to the podcast below and read the article here: How to Prepare for Leaders Leaving

Working With Difficult People

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog, Recommended Tags:
Working With Difficult People Podcast

In every organization, there will be people that you find to be “difficult”. The question is how to navigate these people in a productive way and that doesn’t cause excess stress for you or your team. What can you do? What you do say? What do you ignore? gothamCulture’s Chris Cancialosi discusses this topic with Wanda Wallace on VoiceAmerica Business Channel. Click here to listen!

7 Ways to Reduce Loneliness in the Workplace

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
Lonely Worker

Workplace Loneliness and the Importance of Community

A huge factor in the prevalence of loneliness at work is the lack of a nurtured and authentic community. As humans, we are organically communal. When the ability to form connections is absent it’s natural for us to feel isolated.

In the workplace, community and culture are influenced by company values. Often those values aren’t overly difficult to identify. The hard part is bringing them to life. Whereas values are defined, community is forever moving. It’s not a process. It’s an organic ecosystem that in many ways constantly evaluates the meaning of business values at a single point in time rather than adhering to them ongoing in an unwavering manner. In short, communal interactions are stress tests in cultural authenticity. They determine which values matter the most and challenge those that may not be overly robust or that employees can’t live by. A positive values-driven community breaks down silos. It laterally cuts across organizations taking politics and difficult divergent views out of the picture. It has the power to bond by removing obstacles through shared goals, interests and commitments. It galvanizes and helps individuals and the company as a whole to grow, and through all of this, it’s one of the most significant ways to prevent or reduce loneliness. Community through culture must, therefore, be fostered for the good of everyone.

7 Ways to Reduce Isolation In The Workplace

All is not lost. There are many approaches worth considering to manage the problem of loneliness in the workplace. Not every one is right for every company, but here are seven to consider.

Read More…

Workplace Loneliness in the Age of Connectivity

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
lonely worker

According to Psychology Today 40% of people will experience the pain of loneliness during their lifetime. Despite its prevalence, the feeling of being alone or isolated is an often-misunderstood condition. Here are some facts.

  • Loneliness increases the likelihood of serious illness by repressing our immune systems. Depression, heart disease, strokes, panic attacks, low energy, and mental paralysis can all occur
  • Admission of loneliness is contagious. When a person opens up about their sense of negative isolation, 52% of his or her friends are more likely to subsequently admit they have the same challenge
  • It’s no longer a condition solely associated with the elderly. The average age of those suffering is declining fast
  • It poses a greater health risk than obesity
  • It’s worse for our health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day
  • Acute loneliness increases the likelihood of early death by 14%

Read More…

15 Ways To Influence Your Brand Culture

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags:
Workplace Culture

You’ve mapped out your rebrand. The vision, purpose, values, personality and principles are in the bag. The logo and tagline are nailed. The style guide is finished. The creative department is excited and the media and communications teams are ready to roll. You’ve presented your PowerPoint to the company. They seemed to like it but few questions were asked. After all, to them, this is the domain of only the marketing department. Isn’t it?

Read More…

Navigating Change In Deeply Rooted Organizations

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
Deeply rooted organization

Anyone who has ever attempted to lead change in an organization, regardless of its size and complexity, will attest that it’s not for the faint of heart. One simple attestation to this is the countless number of books and articles written on the topic.

While organizational change can be difficult, regardless of the circumstances, it can be particularly challenging to create change in organizations that have long-standing histories and deeply embedded cultural norms, beliefs, and assumptions. Organizations that are solidly grounded in legacy and that place significant value on an enviable history oftentimes have the most difficulty creating change. This is especially true when these organizations are attempting to create transformative change (completely disruptive) as opposed to evolutionary change (small slices of change over time).

Read More…

Knowledge Transfer: The Key to Organizational Resilience and Agility

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , , ,
ATD

Chris Cancialosi’s article was just published in July’s issue of TD at Work.

How do organizations not only survive, but thrive in today’s new operating environment? By developing resilience and agility. Knowledge transfer is critical to this, and talent development practitioners are positioned to help companies prepare. In “Knowledge Transfer: The Key to Organizational Resilience and Agility,” Chris Cancialosi details:

  • what knowledge transfer is and why it is critical to organizations’ resilience and agility
  • the role of effective knowledge transfer in the future of work
  • ways to develop and strengthen an organization’s ability to effectively transfer and manage knowledge.

Coaching by Leading from Beside

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
Coaching by leading from beside

Coaching is good for you.

Think back to the people in your life who you’ve advised, whose potential you’ve recognized, and whose talents you’ve used to help you discover and shape your own.

Didn’t that process feel good?

According to research, coaching others has positive psychophysiological effects that restore the body’s natural healing processes and improve stamina. “When we care enough to invest time in developing others, we become less preoccupied with ourselves, which balances the toxic effects of stress and burnout.”

Great leaders are part coach, part communicator, part motivator and always in service of the team they lead. It’s never about them, but rather about the people they serve. Read More…