Read Our Blog On Culture Change

From a Marketing perspective, there’s no doubt that AI and all its variants are revolutionising branding. There are many positive aspects around this. First, AI has enabled personalisation. Secondly, inspiring customer insights can be gained through AI. Thirdly, AI can help to create branded content that’s precisely tailored to the target audience. From a customer perspective, this is all good news.

Over time, many business areas have found Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs useful in understanding human motivation. Maslow’s framework is no less valuable when considering what kind of culture you’d like to create in your organisation. Physiological needs are at the foundation of Maslow's hierarchy. The next level focuses on security. But you really begin to define a positive culture when you address the need for belonging.

Uber is a brand built on the belief that transportation should flow like water. People should be able to step in and out of the flow and reach their destination with the minimum inconvenience. Now, inside the car or the company, the experience can be very different. In short, if you are a passenger in this kind of car - or an employee of this kind of boss - the journey may turn out to be uncomfortable and unpredictable.

Business leaders are not politicians, chasing the popularity of the soundbite. They tend to be held to account by boards of directors. Increasingly, in the modern interconnected world, their actions are the subject of a more public debate fuelled by customers and even employees. Whether you like it or not, this is drawing the worlds of politics and business closer together in terms of what is expected of leaders.

The origin of the phrase ‘Hire for attitude. Develop skills’ has been attributed to Sherry Phelps of Southwest Airlines. It’s been used repeatedly by many others since. And it certainly led to Southwest’s well-documented success story, due in large part to their employees having a ‘Warrior Spirit’. So their leaders and other employees all had to have the resilience to constantly fight the industry battles.

There are few jobs in the modern workplace that are not defined by Key Performance Indicators. Few business processes not defined by a Key Business Requirement. Or similar ways of setting performance expectations and the metrics. In the culture of modern management, these are seen as positive, and so they are. Without them, there would be no norms, no predictability in the business, and nothing for managers to manage.