Creating Authenticity

Heaping Scorn & Criticism on Feminist Advocates at Newsweek

March 24, 2010

This week’s story about feminists at Newsweek who have publicly challenged that magazine for failing to make progress against gender discrimination encouraged me, as I’m sure it encouraged many others. To see someone, anyone, make a prominent critique of a prominent organization, and then to have that organization make this criticism public, should have inspired [...]

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Will Newsweek Respond to Claims of Sexism?

March 23, 2010

I would love to have been in the room when three journalists at Newsweek proposed that Newsweek publish their article criticizing Newsweek for gender discrimination. Why? You know you’re getting close(r) to authenticity when you can have a recursive sentence like that one written about changing things that are wrong at your organization. Here we [...]

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That Special Starbucks: Does the place help the people be authentic?

March 4, 2010

First it was the Siren. Then it was the Christmas cards. For a while, it’s been the original artwork by their very own baristas displayed on the walls.. And now, my favorite Starbucks is getting bouquets of flowers. On a recent visit, there were two big vases of flowers on the counter by the espresso [...]

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Authentic Student Entrepreneurs: Embedding Personal, Product and Organizational Brand

February 17, 2010

What do fledgling entrepreneurs need to know about creating authenticity? And what, if anything, does this have to do with cupcakes? I had a chance to try to boil it all down to a few key ideas when I taught two classes of an undergraduate Entrepreneurship course at NYU’s Stern School of Business. My colleague, [...]

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Does the iPad Signal a Change in Apple’s Core Brand & Identity?

February 2, 2010

If products reflect an organization’s values and an organization’s identity, does Apple’s new iPad tell us something about where Apple as a company is headed? And, if that’s where Apple is going, do we all want to go there too? Here’s a proposition: Apple as an organization is changing, from an organization that’s “about” creativity [...]

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Work-Life Initiatives Are the Foundation of Authentic Organizations

January 29, 2010

Earlier this week I met with a group of organizational change advocates, each of whom is dedicated to reshaping the relationship between work and life. Work-Life issues per se aren’t really my gig, although I’ve had a fair amount of work-life conflict in my day as an employee and as a manager. However, I invited [...]

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What’s going on at my favorite Starbucks?

January 13, 2010

There’s something going on at my favorite Starbucks. I’m not quite sure what it is. But there is new evidence today that this Starbucks is somehow special/better than the other 3 in my town. Before I tell you about that, I should probably explain that there are 4 Starbucks within a 2 mile radius of [...]

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The Happiness Project for Organizations

January 5, 2010

Like many fans of Gretchen Rubin’s blog, The Happiness Project, I spent a lot of time last week checking my front porch for a heavy box from Amazon (pay phrase: “biblio hyperemptor”).  Once my 9 my pre-purchased copies of her new book arrived, and after I gifted away 8 copies, I was able finally to settle [...]

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Organizational Change Using Authentic Attributes

December 14, 2009

My friend Charles just took a new job ‘making rain’ for a creative services agency. The agency is well-known in its industry for producing top-quality product, but its business isn’t growing. Why has their business stopped growing? Charles thinks that the problem with the agency is that it is “Too German”. What does it mean [...]

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How Job Crafting Can Get You Closer to Authentic Work

December 8, 2009

One of my favorite “authenticity tools”,  Job Crafting, has been featured in a Time Magazine article. I’m excited to see some popular discussion of Job Crafting, because it is one of the easiest and most direct ways of making your work fit who you are. Job crafting is the practice of (re-)shaping the job that you are expected to do [...]

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