All about Authenticity

Authentic From the Start-Up: 4 Tips from Cindy Gallop and IfWeRanTheWorld

October 21, 2010

If you were building an organization from the ground up, how would you “build authenticity in” from the very start? I had the chance to ask this question of Cindy Gallop, an entrepreneur and marketing/advertising/branding guru, who is the CEO of a start-up called IfWeRanTheWorld. IfWeRanTheWorld and Cindy have both been recommended to me by [...]

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The Day “The Patrick” Disappeared: A story of lost identity

October 20, 2010

This is a story about a quirky little cafe that disappeared. While I lived in town, and for a few years after we moved, this cafe was a touchstone, a demonstration, of one of the experiences that made our small town so interesting. When the cafe changed just one little thing, it lost what made [...]

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5 Tips About Realigning Organizations I Learned by Falling Off A Horse

September 20, 2010

(No, it was not “Get right back on.” Everybody knows that.) Sustaining organizational authenticity requires continually realigning organizational identity, purpose and action. But realigning can be harder to do than you’d think. I learned recently, after falling off a horse, that getting back into action was only the start of a longer, harder realignment process. [...]

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MAC’s Apology for Juarez Makeup Line: Effective and Authentic

August 5, 2010

It’s not often that I get to follow up a post about an organization’s disappointing actions with a post celebrating that very organization’s next step. Given how easy it is to pay attention to and be outraged by the bad actions, it is all the more important to devote some energy to positive resolutions– so [...]

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The Best PR that $1.6 Million Can’t Buy: Authenticity in Action at Zappos

May 25, 2010

Gotta love those folks at Zappos. They screw up, they explain, they apologize, and they fix it. And we applaud. Why? Because Zappos’ actions support the company’s stated purpose, and Zappos’ actions support its claims about who they are as a company. It’s Authenticity in Action. The Zappos’ Mistake Story in a Nutshell An online [...]

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Is Authenticity the key to being “Meaningfully Different”?

May 20, 2010

If organizations are going to be successful at attracting good members and good clients or customers, they have go beyond showing how they are different from other, similar organizations. They have to take that extra step, and demonstrate why these differences are meaningful. “Meaningful difference” “Meaningful difference” is an important concept in both organizational theory [...]

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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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