Weekly Posts and Insights
Stop Talking about Generations and Start Talking About Better People-Skills!
My punch line at the end of most of my talks is, “we don’t have a Millennial problem, or even a generation problem, we have a people to people problem.” As the generation guy, I’m saying we need to stop talking about generations and start talking about empowering our workers (Boomers, Xers, Yers, all) to better handle people!
The Leaderverse
Welcome to 2019! I’m excited to boot up the blog again and hope to be pushing out more content this year with a focus on leadership.
Growing Millennial Leadership is a passion project for me and like many things, it needs to evolve. This year many of my topics will be around real practical leadership skills, as well as the innovation, grit and resilience that is needed to not just be a good employee, entrepreneur or leader, but also to lead a healthier life.
At The Heart of True Innovation are Trust and Vulnerability
Innovation, or the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market, has a lot to do with the tasks, processes, and smart people! However, true innovation relies more on the ability to trust and be vulnerable in the incubator stage of an idea or innovation.
False innovation can be defined, if we borrow some language from vulnerability author Brené Brown as, “the absence of honest conversation about the hard work that takes us from lying facedown in the arena to rising strong has led to two dangerous outcomes: the propensity to gold-plate grit and a badassery deficit.”
White Paper: Millennials, Brands and Trust - FREE DOWNLOAD
Based on a presentation given at NYC Relate Live Conference, this 10-page white paper digs down into the concept of the Beloved Brand Triangle that author Matt Harrington created and showcased at the conference. Learn how Millennials, trust are all intertwined and walk away with key questions to ask your organization and customers to build a more beloved, Millennial-friendly company.
Part 3: How "Narrative Belonging" Should Define Today’s Brands for Millennials
Let’s build out the Beloved Brand Triangle with thesis #3. The final point on our triangle is narrative belonging. Narrative Belonging is the ongoing effort by a brand to tell the story continually of how a customer that uses the brand will have a sense of belonging to the product and service that will greatly enhance the customer’s existence and experience.
Why Millennials Need Authentic Trust in Their Products
The challenge for many companies is that the Millennial generation will hold you to your sales pitch. The days of the “snake oil” salesman are dead. For many companies, who are not entirely truthful, who lack competency and character in their business practices and product, they will rue the day that 93 million Millennials find out that they are in fact not telling the truth. This generation, who has a rigorous demand for excellence, will hop on their social platforms and announce to the world that you are now deemed untrustworthy.
Millennials and Their Rigorous Demand for Excellence in Brands
Millennials. Brands. Trust. Three things that seemingly go together, yet each one has its own origin story. Exploring each one is the task at hand for the next month and a half as we prepare for the Relate Live New York City conference on October 22-23. How we fit these massive topics all into a 45 minute presentation, giving each one its own stage time, while connecting the dots, threading the narrative through all of them to come away with useful insights and nuggets of knowledge for conference goers will be our challenge.
Harrington To Speak at Relate Live New York Conference on Millennials and Brand Trust
Matt Harrington, author, speaker and trainer on workplace generations will be a featured speaker at Zendesk's Relate Live NYC conference on October 23-24, 2017. The conference will be held at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. Harrington will speak on how the best brands build trust and credibility with the Millennial generation (1980-2001).
Tasks, Processes and Relationships
There are always three things going on in any transaction or more importantly group/team/department/company: tasks, processes, and relationships. You can imagine that most of us focus a majority of our time on tasks (60%), A good organization focuses some of their energy on good processes (30%). This leaves about 10% just to focus on relationships which is actually the hardest and perhaps the most important thing to focus on as companies can always make a new machine, a new process, more tasks, but it's culture and people make up the differential factor between a good company and a great company.
Dissecting the 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey
We took a look at the annual Deloitte Millennial Survey (2016) and here were some of the key highlights...