Strategy – Page 7 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

What Are We Missing???

September 29, 2025/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Employees need to know that what they do matters—how it matters, where it matters, how long it matters, for whom it matters, and why it matters.

Today’s guest post is by Wendy Lipton-Dibner, author of What MATTERS Matters Most.

They’d tried everything from bonuses to retreats, and while each intervention produced motivational boosts, the results were always short-lived.

In the meantime, disengagement was spreading throughout the organization, and their frustration was growing by the day.

“Nothing we do matters,” Brian sighed.

“Wait, that’s it!” Kathy exclaimed. “I bet that’s what everyone thinks!

“If our employees believe nothing they do matters, then why would they bother to step up?

“We need to give our entire team proof that what they do really matters.”

They called a lunch meeting for the following week and when they arrived, the auditorium was packed.

Kathy picked up the microphone. “Raise your hand if making an impact in people’s lives is important to you.”

Nearly every hand went up, so Kathy continued.

“Brian and I agree with you. Impact is important, and we think the work each of you do is likely creating a lot of impact.

“In fact, you could be enabling our products and services to deliver way more impact than we ever anticipated.

“It’s entirely possible that your work is creating ripple effects that bring ongoing impacts to multiple areas of our customers’ lives, and we intend to prove it!”

The attendees burst into applause as chants of, “Prove it! Prove it! Prove it!” reverberated throughout the auditorium.

Brian smiled broadly as Kathy instructed each department to make a quick list of the potential impacts their work produces.

The energy was electric as each team moved their chairs together to make a list of their impacts.

Next, Kathy told the group to discuss how they could purposefully infuse impact into existing and future products and services to increase customer engagement, loyalty and growth.

Finally, she invited each department to send a representative up to the stage to read their list.

Each presenter received applause that grew louder with every list that was shared.

“Let’s do a little research study,” Kathy challenged. “Starting today, we want every single one of you to prioritize impact-driven results in everything you do.

“We’ll do this for six months and see how this affects our metrics.

“Thank you for your enthusiasm today. We’ll keep you posted.”

Brian and Kathy stayed for more than an hour, shaking hands with leaders and employees as they expressed congratulations and asked about next steps.

The CMO and CFO stood watching. When everyone had left, they walked up to Brian and Kathy, shook their hands, and said, “Best. Meeting. Ever. What do you need from us?”

Over the next weeks and months, leaders reported increasing engagement among their employees, including increased productivity, initiative, collaboration, innovation, sales, and more.

Six months later, Kathy called the full team together again. This time, she celebrated their significantly increased metrics, spotlighting customer engagement, satisfaction, loyalty, and repeat and referral revenue.

At the close of the meeting, Kathy read a congratulatory email from one of their shareholders, and another from an inspired vendor offering a sponsorship.

Then Brian stepped up to the microphone. “I must confess, I never believed this initiative would work.

“I’m here to tell you guys, you proved me wrong. The impact you made on this organization, and on me personally, is something I will never forget. Thanks everyone!”

This story is just one of many that have shown what can happen when leaders prioritize impact in every area of their organization.

As a social scientist and decades-long organizational strategist, I’ve witnessed the damage employee disengagement inflicts on internal and external stakeholders.

I’ve also spoken with leaders who invested tens of thousands of dollars implementing respected solutions, only to rebound far worse than where they had started.

After serving more than 1,000 organizations in every industry from healthcare to hospitality, my research revealed a missing component that is critical to employee engagement.

The missing piece is also crucial for stakeholder loyalty and ongoing growth.

Bottom line, what leaders have been missing is proof of the ongoing, long-term, Real-World Impact of products and services.

Real-World Impact is the immediate, ongoing, and long-term changes, outcomes, differences, results, events, and experiences that occur after customers, patients, or beneficiaries receive the planned benefits of a product or service.

Employees need to know that the products and services they help research, innovate, develop, design, manufacture, market, sell, deliver, service, and support are creating an ongoing stream of desirable, meaningful, important, potentially life-changing impacts in multiple areas of customers’ lives over time.

Real-World Impact Metrics provide invaluable proof to employees that what they do matters—how it matters, where it matters, how long it matters, for whom it matters, and why it matters.

Real-World Impact Metrics also provide unprecedented proof to customers, patients, and beneficiaries, increasing the value they place on the products they use and the services they receive.

This proof is the missing piece that enables leaders to build and sustain impassioned engagement, unrivaled loyalty, and boundless growth among all stakeholders.

Can it really be that simple? Yes.

Wendy Lipton-Dibner is internationally recognized as the leading authority on Organizational Impact Strategy. President and CEO of Professional Impact, Inc., Wendy is the inventor of the Real-World Impact Metrics // Journey of Impact technology [ProveYourImpact.com], and author of What MATTERS Matters Most^™. [WhatMattersMattersMost.com]

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Overallocating to Meet Your Goals

September 24, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Overallocating is a strategy that can help you meet your goals by aiming higher than you need to.

When you’re breaking department goals down and allocating portions of that goal to different teams, you can take an approach that’s known as overallocating the goal. This means, when you add up all the subteam goals, they amount to more than the overall department goal. This approach can improve your chances of hitting your high-level department goal, but this approach can also put unnecessary pressure on your teams to deliver more than they have to.

I saw one division that had a $200 million revenue goal. They had five regions. Each region was given a goal of $42 million of revenue. When you add that up, that $210 million. Within those regions, they overallocated too. Each branch in the region got goals that totaled up across the division to $215 million. Then, in the branches, they actually overallocated to their salespeople. The individual sales reps’ goals were added up, and that came to $220 million, so they were 10% over what their commit goal of $200 million was.

The behavior that resulted was some sales reps exceeded their individual goals. Some met their goals. Some fell short. The primary goal of hitting that $200 million of revenue was hit. Everyone was focused on sales, and the division achieved that goal because of this overallocating process. If they hadn’t overallocated, those sales reps who fell short would have cratered the overall division’s goal.

Now be careful about overallocating too much. When you do so, you might be breaking the rule of making a goal achievable. This can also lead to behavior of sandbagging. And if everyone knows you’re going to overallocate, they’re going to take on this sandbagging behavior during the budgeting and goal-setting process. That’s not productive.

Assess whether or not overallocating is appropriate for your organization. If you do it, make sure, when you overallocate, you don’t create that dysfunctional behavior of putting too much pressure on the team. But if you do the overallocation well, it increases the likelihood that you’re going to hit your goals.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Holding Your Teams Accountable for Missing Goals

September 17, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

There need to be consequences when a team doesn’t meet their goals. Hold people accountable so they know their goals mean something to the organization.

People are going to miss their goals. Things happen. But when it happens, there need to be consequences for missing that number. Unless there are mitigating events, follow your incentive plan’s implications.

I know one business unit that missed its top-level revenue goal and its bottom-line profit. Even though there were explanations and excuses, the bottom line is, the business unit didn’t adjust quickly enough. They didn’t plan well enough to be able to still hit their goals, even with these market changes. That year, their incentive payout was zero. The organization held them accountable. The impact of that was the next year, they planned a lot better. They acted more quickly when they saw issues come up. They did a better job of linking their goals to activities. That year they hit their stretch and they got a big payout.

If missing the goal was beyond the team’s control, assess how much that miss was attributable to them and how much responsibility lies elsewhere. Hold people accountable accordingly.

I know a retail business unit that had a revenue and customer satisfaction goal. There were several major IT outages over the course of the year. Those happened because of a new system implementation. This retail business unit lost out on web sales. There were service issues because their customer service reps couldn’t handle customer calls well. Their goals were adjusted downward because IT was out of this organization’s control. And by the way, IT was held accountable for poor implementation of the system and it showed up in their goals.

When teams miss goals, make the tough call out of fairness to everyone. Pain is a great teacher and you have to remember that if one team misses their goal and another hits their goals, that team that hit their goals and worked really hard will be pretty frustrated when they see the other team get an incentive they don’t deserve. Be fair about it, hold people accountable accordingly, so they know their goals mean something to the organization.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Do You Need to Revise Your Business Unit’s Goals?

September 10, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

When the environment changes, revisit your goals and see if they need to change.

Markets can change quickly. Those changes can alter priorities. They can render some of your goals irrelevant. When that happens, change the goal. Do so quickly so the team can change its focus to higher priority objectives. It’s foolish to continue pursuing an irrelevant goal. Be willing to change it and set new goals that are more appropriate for that new environment.

I know one startup that had an original goal of site traffic. They were concerned mostly with how many people are coming to their website. The initial funding they received was based on those initial goals. Follow on funding was based on them hitting those traffic numbers. Their business model changed. They learned more about the customer. They figured out it was much more important for them to focus on how much time a user was spending on their site instead of just overall traffic.

The company was about to have a big meeting with possible partners and a new funding source, but to have that meeting they needed money to fly the executive team out to California to meet with this new partner. When they went to the original investors and asked for money, they original investors said no. They refused to change the original goal. They said they wouldn’t provide any additional funding until the organization hit that metric, but the metric was no longer relevant. The company went under, and it was pretty sad that they did. Even though this is an example of a company versus a business unit, the lesson remains the same.

When the environment changes, revisit your goals and see if they need to change. Review your current goals. Ask, are any of them no longer relevant? Has the market changed? If they’re not relevant, revise the goal. Focus the team on something more meaningful. Change your priorities accordingly. If you’re inflexible and say, “Well, we set this goal at the beginning of the year, and, you know what, we’re going to stick with it even though the market has changed,” you’re going to get results that follow that metric.

Be willing to shift. That’s a sign of maturity in your organization that you’re willing to assess the market environment and change your priorities accordingly.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Build The Business Wall: Crush The Busyness Noise

September 9, 2025/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Business, not busyness: the Wall fuels brutal focus to win big. Build yours to slash egos and chaos, and drive victories in growth and results.

Today’s guest post is by Jonathan Escobar Marin, author of LEAD TO BEAT: The Leadership Rhythm That Shapes Tomorrow.

The meeting room was a pressure cooker, the kind where careers are forged or shattered. The CEO, a wiry woman with a gaze that could cut steel, stood at the head of the table. Her team, a mix of seasoned executives and hungry upstarts, shifted uneasily. The company was bleeding—market share slipping, competitors circling like vultures. She didn’t mince words. “We’re not here to play defense,” she said, voice low but electric. “We’re here to win. And winning starts with focus—brutal, unrelenting focus.”

The CEO had seen this before: a company drowning in its own ambition, chasing a hundred priorities and catching none. Two years ago, she’d taken the helm of a tech firm teetering on irrelevance. The boardroom was a circus of egos, each department head clutching their pet projects like life rafts. Sales wanted flashy campaigns. Engineering demanded endless R&D. Operations begged for supply chain tweaks. The result? A bloated mess of initiatives, none moving the needle. Customers were defecting, and the stock price was a slow-motion car crash.

She introduced a simple way of working backboned in “The Wall”—a simple, ruthless tool to force clarity. Picture a massive board, visible to every employee, where only the most critical missions lived. Not tasks, not busywork—missions. Each had a clear owner, a measurable outcome, and a deadline that loomed like a guillotine. The Wall wasn’t a suggestion; it was the company’s drumbeat. Every week, every team synced in ten-minute huddles, no fluff, just truth: progress, blockers, next steps. Anything not on The Wall was dead to them. “If it’s not mission-critical,” she’d say, “it’s noise. Kill it.”

The first month was brutal. Marketing’s darling ad campaign? Slashed. Engineering’s shiny prototype? Shelved. The CFO, a numbers wizard with a penchant for micromanaging, fought to keep his pet cost-cutting initiative. The CEO stared at him: “Show me how it doubles our market share in six months, or it’s gone.” It didn’t make the cut. The Wall demanded sacrifices, and the CEO was its high priest. She wasn’t cruel, just clear: winning meant saying no to the good to chase the great.

By quarter’s end, the shift was palpable. The company rallied around a few missions guided by three simple north star metrics: one to dominate a key market segment, a second one to streamline delivery to cut costs without gutting quality and service, and a third one looking to the future to become market makers in a new laser-focused segment. The Wall forced alignment. Sales and engineering, once at war, collaborated on customer-driven features. Operations trimmed fat, not muscle. Weekly syncs kept everyone honest—no one could hide behind vague updates or PowerPoint fluff. The C-suite walked the floor, not to micromanage but to show respect for the work that was done, ask questions to provoke reflection, and keep the ambition high and rhythm tight. People were valued, felt valued, and got value from the top leaders.

Three quarters later, the numbers told the story: sales up 11%, customer retention spiking, stock price climbing, costs consistently reduced with service and quality at highest levels, and seamless execution to make a new market where no one had been brave and ambitious enough to get. The Wall had rewired the company’s DNA. Teams weren’t just working; they were working to win. The CEO didn’t talk to people with speeches and promises in TownHalls. With all the learnings, she and the whole leadership team learned to throw away trophies and start over again, sharpening the Wall after a clear Keep, Improve, Start, Stop reflection. “We don’t rest on wins,” she told her team. “We build on them.”

The lesson here is stark: focus is your sharpest weapon, but it demands discipline most leaders lack. Stop chasing every shiny idea. Build your own Wall—physical or digital—and put only your most critical missions on it. Assign clear owners, measurable outcomes, and unambiguous deadlines. Review progress weekly, in short, brutal syncs that expose truth, not egos. By doing less, you achieve more. Eliminate the 80 percent that dilutes the vital 20 percent. This isn’t about busyness; it’s about winning today and building tomorrow.

The CEO’s story isn’t unique. Leaders who win don’t just set goals—they enforce a rhythm of brutal focus and distributed ownership with a mindset obsessed with impact, not activity. They know the world doesn’t reward effort; it rewards results. In a landscape of chaos—fragmented markets, disruptive tech, relentless competition—your ability to zero in on what matters most isn’t just a strategy. It’s survival. So, build your Wall. Strip away the noise. Lead with clarity, hunger, and rhythm. And don’t just play the game—beat it.

Jonathan Escobar Marin, author of LEAD TO BEAT: The Leadership Rhythm That Shapes Tomorrow, has been bridging the nuanced gap between strategy and execution – and between executives and their associates – for the world’s leading corporations for over two decades. His distinguished efforts have resulted in an exceptional track record, marked by over 320 successful transformations across more than thirty-two countries. For more information, please visit https://www.JonathanEscobarMarin.com/

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4 Pitfalls to Avoid When Setting Goals

September 3, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Keep these four mistakes in mind when setting goals for your business unit.

Even if you set great goals, you might not get the behaviors you want if you fall in some common pitfalls. There are several major common departmental goal-setting pitfalls that you can avoid.

Setting conflicting goals

The first is not looking at an integrated view of all your goals. You may miss dependencies across departments. You might not see conflicting goals. To fix this, do a goal review for all your business units and business partners across departments. Look for places where one is dependent upon another. Look for goals that are in conflict with one another, and spend time revising the goals accordingly.

Not aligning incentives

Another pitfall is not aligning incentives. The behaviors you want and the behaviors you’re paying for might not match up. To fix this, understand the drivers of behavior. Monitor behavior and ensure it matches what you’re asking for. Before you roll out an incentive plan, try to break that incentive plan. Think about the bad behaviors people might demonstrate, and change the plan before you roll it out.

Setting overly aggressive goals

Another common pitfall is setting your goals too aggressively. Halfway through the year, people see they’re so far behind and they just give up. The way to fix this is to set a stretch or commit goal. Be willing to revise your goals as the market changes.

Not tying goals to strategy

The last pitfall is not communicating how goals tie to the broader strategy. People don’t see where their activities fit in. The fix is to tie the strategic plan communication to the goal rollout communication. Making the links between strategy and goals explicit. If the team is left confused about what the goals are and why they’re being pursued or they see the goals as unrealistic, you won’t have their commitment to achieving them.

Spending time reviewing your goals, thinking through the strategic context, and making sure you have a good set of integrated goals is going to drive the behaviors you want and help you hit the numbers at the top of your strategic plan.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Are You Giving Your Teams the Resources They Need?

August 27, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

If you don’t give your teams the resources they need, they’re not going to hit their goals.

Once your goals are set, you have a responsibility to provide the team the resources it needs to achieve those goals. These resources should be identified during the goal setting process. Include those resources in budgets and project plans. Failure to conduct resource planning and allocation is going to frustrate your teams. They won’t have what they need to achieve their goals.

At the business unit level of goal setting, resource allocation can be easier in some respects, and more difficult in others. The ways it can be easier are first, you have more control over your business unit’s resources. You can shift those resources more easily. There are also known processes like budgeting that can be linked to your goal-setting process. This ensures that the resources are available for the goals you’ve set.

Now it can be more difficult, too. Getting additional resources outside your business unit can be a challenge. Those resources have to come from higher levels, or you have to negotiate with other business units to get resources allocated to you. It’s not often they’ll give those resources up. If you don’t allocate resources during the budgeting process you either have to either wait to shift resources, or reprioritize all your other efforts due to this new goal.

Review goals that are falling short in your organization. Make sure they’ve got the right resources. If they don’t, shift them appropriately. Ensure your goal setting, budgeting, talent management, and staffing processes have explicit links to one another. If you don’t give your teams the resources they need, they’re not going to hit their goals.

Conversely, if you really think through the goals you’re trying to hit and make sure they’re appropriately resourced, your teams are going to drive the success that you expect.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

The Importance of Communicating Your Goals

August 20, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

People in your department need to understand how their own goals, as well as the goals of their colleagues, tie to the broader organization goals.

Once you’ve built some great goals, you need to communicate them to the organization. People in your department need to understand how their own goals, as well as the goals of their colleagues, tie to the broader organization goals. Operating in silos leads to missed opportunities. Sometimes you’ll find people are working at cross purposes. When communicating goals, provide broader strategic context for why goals were chosen and how they tie to the broader organization success.

I worked with one client that was really focused on changing their business performance. They wanted to improve their gross margins. So they got everybody together and made sure they understood how everybody’s goals tied to this higher-level gross margin goal. The supply chain team was given goals around making their top products more profitable. The marketing team was given a goal of emphasizing the most profitable products in the portfolio. Product teams were given SKU rationalization goals to thin the portfolio and remove less profitable products. The sales team was given the goal of selling the more profitable products.

Everyone in the division knew what everybody else was doing. It prevented arguments, like sales reps demanding low margin products or sales reps yelling at product teams for removing a SKU. All goals were communicated by the business unit president at an all-hands meeting. They all heard the same message at the same time.

For your organization, get your business unit and partner organizations together. Compare goals. Figure out how you’ll communicate it to your entire organization at the same time, so everyone knows and understands the context. Having this clarity at the highest level and making sure that all the goals are aligned is going to reduce conflict in the organization and improve the likelihood that you hit your numbers.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

Evolving from Commodity Business to Differentiated Brand

August 18, 2025/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Communications, Customer Service, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Understanding how people want to feel, and delivering on those emotional benefits, can be your greatest competitive advantage.

Today’s guest post is by Kevin Perlmutter, author of BRAND DESIRE: Spark Customer Interest Using Emotional Insights.

Do you often wonder how to differentiate your business from the competition?

When many competitive brands are offering very similar products or services, sometimes it’s challenging for a brand to stand apart. Maybe you’ve tried adding new things to your core offering. Maybe you’ve tried increasing your advertising budget to increase awareness of your offering. You may have even thought about or tried lowering your prices, which is unfortunately a race to the bottom.

What I’ve discovered, guiding the evolution of brands of all sizes with leaders who face the same challenge, is that the reasons why people choose a brand’s product or service are not always what the business or brand leaders think.

While there’s a tendency to want to emphasize product and service offering details, we know that people’s decision-making is greatly informed by their emotions, their desires, and their interest in having their needs met.

How do people want to feel?

Maya Angelou famously said, “People won’t remember what you said. People won’t remember what you did. But people will always remember how you made them feel.” This incredible insight is consistently backed up by research. Forrester has reported year over year, for well over a decade, that “emotion is the largest driver of loyalty” for brands – meaning, how a brand experience makes us feel has the most impact on our desire to have that brand experience again.

Think about brand experience in your life. How about the last time you bought a car? Would you enthusiastically go back to that dealership to buy your next car, or will you actively avoid going back? How about working with your accountant or financial advisor? Do they seem ambivalent to your business? Or do they make you feel “valued, appreciated, and respected” – the three most influential positive emotions that lead to loyalty, according to Forrester.

For you and your business, this means that no matter how similar your offering is to that of your competition, you can create meaningful differentiation by addressing how people want to feel through your brand experience. You can also attract people to your brand by letting them know it’s where they can find emotionally compelling benefits.

Differentiating on brand experience

ServiceByte is an example of a brand I’ve worked with where we discovered that brand experience is what sets their work apart, and it is now the anchor for how the brand attracts new customers. ServiceByte is a small business in the New York City area, specializing in managed services IT support for other companies. They provide computer and email help desk support, and, overall, help companies monitor and maintain their IT infrastructure. They have many competitors who do the exact same thing.

When beginning the work with founder Kish Melwani, he told me that he founded ServiceByte with a concierge-style service ethic that prioritizes the customer experience. He did so after recognizing that most IT support teams leave people feeling annoyed or frustrated, fueled by a lack of empathy for the disruption to their business.

Years later, ServiceByte has many loyal customers and a slew of 5-star reviews. However, Kish was still eager to attract more customers and didn’t know how. Up to that point, marketing prioritized the service offering. Kish agreed, it was time to prioritize the emotional benefits of the brand experience.

To understand more about what sets ServiceByte apart, I suggested that, as part of the Insights Discovery phase of my Limbic Sparks^® Brand Strategy approach, I interview ServiceByte customers to hear more about the brand experience from their perspective, in addition to other investigations.

Here are some soundbites of what I heard:

“Kish sets a tone, culture, and personality that comes through in the team.”

“Working with ServiceByte reminds me of how I like to do business.”

“We can get our work done knowing the engine runs well.”

Overall, we learned that the most important thing that both ServiceByte and its customers care about is being “Always On.” For ServiceByte that means always monitoring and always enthusiastically providing a good experience. For customers, “Always On” means they care most about their business being up and running – with no downtime.

“Always On” is what I call the Shared Emotional Motivation – what both the brand and its customers are trying to achieve, individually and with each other. As a core input to brand strategy, it led us to the Brand Idea and customer-facing Tagline:

“We Do Our Thing So You Can Keep Doing Yours”

This Brand Idea, by definition, using this emotion-centric brand strategy approach, is a compelling brand benefit and invitation (not an “about us” statement). It lets potential customers know that ServiceByte is where they can get the benefits that we’ve discovered they crave – in this case, business continuity from people who they know have their backs.

It now sets the tone for all brand messaging – in sales materials, on the company website, and in customer support communications. It also ensures that the ServiceByte support technicians are always focused on delivering on the brand promise.

How can you differentiate on brand experience?

The thing to remember is that people are emotionally driven, and understanding the emotional motivations of your customers is the place to start.

Whether you’re ready for a big brand evolution, or you just want to fine-tune your current sales and marketing approach with more relevant and compelling brand messaging, here’s what you can do.

You can embrace what I call a Limbic Sparks Mindset. It involves three questions you can always ask to guide your approach:

What are people’s frustrations, unmet needs, and motivations?
How do people want to feel?
What should your brand say and do to make people’s lives better?

Understanding how people want to feel, and delivering on those emotional benefits, can be your greatest competitive advantage. It can spark interest in your brand and sustain ongoing brand loyalty.

Kevin Perlmutter, author of BRAND DESIRE: Spark Customer Interest Using Emotional Insights, is Chief Strategist and Founder of Limbic Brand Evolution, a brand strategy and neuromarketing consultancy which puts emotional insight at the center of how brands attract and retain customers. Based near New York City, he works with business and brand leaders to create stronger connections between their brand and the people they want to reach.

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How to Troubleshoot Your Business Unit’s Goals

August 13, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Troubleshooting your incentive plans can help you avoid undesired behaviors.

Goal setting processes can sometimes lead to unintended behaviors or undesired behaviors. If you don’t understand how compensation and incentives relate to how your team members work, they may do the wrong thing. Troubleshooting your goals requires you to look at the irrational behaviors that can arise from the goals you set. When you find those situations, you’ll need to either revise the goal or change the incentives.

I worked at a credit card company at one point and I ran part of the collections division. We were trying to get delinquent customers to pay us money back and get their accounts back to current status. If they didn’t pay us back, they were charged off as bad debt and we lost that money. We looked at our call center and we said, “How do we want to change their behavior? How do we get more of our money back?” We changed their goals and their incentives to move from being focused on curing accounts to just dollars collected. We thought if we collect more money, we’ll perform better.

What this led to was a behavior we didn’t expect. Our call center associates started getting smaller payments. They made the telephone calls shorter so they could collect more dollars. This led to more customers charging off down the road because our associates weren’t helping them pay down their balance and get their account back to current status. We said, “Well, that’s not what we want to happen. We need to change the plan.”

So, we changed the plan and we said, “No, it’s not dollars collected anymore. Now it’s the number of accounts that you cure back to current status.” Well, the associates said, “How can we make the most money doing this?” What this led them to do was focus on really small accounts and they let those big accounts go because they were too hard to work. We said, “Well, that’s a problem. Now we have a lot of bad debt charging off. How do we change the plan?” We stopped and we thought and we said, “What behaviors do we want out of our associates?” And we changed the incentive to focus on the cured dollars, how many dollars are you moving back to current status. This finally got us the behavior we wanted.

If you want to fix your goals and make sure these bad behaviors don’t happen, pretend you’re the person on the incentive plan. Set aside doing the right thing and think about what would benefit me the most if I was on this incentive plan. Be willing to go into the gray area where you’re not breaking the rules, but you’re not exactly following the spirit of the incentive. This is how you’re going to find those places where behaviors won’t match the actions that you want your people taking.

At one point, I used to do this regularly with one of my associates. Before we rolled out a new compensation or incentive plan, JC and I would sit down and say, “How do we break this plan? What are all the things that we can do to put the most money in our own pocket?” And we would break that plan. We would figure out all the behaviors that were not desirable but they put a lot of money in the associate’s pocket. What was important then was we changed the plan until we found a plan where we couldn’t break it and we were getting the right behaviors.

Spend that time troubleshooting your incentive plan. Think through from the incentive to the behavior. Think about what could go wrong and make sure you don’t roll out that incentive plan until you have the right behaviors identified. This extra time you spend in the troubleshooting process will prevent your associates from doing things that you don’t want them to do and it’ll get them to focus on the right behaviors that drive your overall goals.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Give Your Goals a Reality Check

August 6, 2025/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Goals can make sense in isolation, but when you add them all up, you may be asking for unrealistic results from your team. Watch out for conflicting goals.

It’s important to reality check your goals. Goals can make sense in isolation, but when you add them all up, you may be asking for unrealistic results from your team. You’ll need to evaluate how department goals impact one another. If you set a goal for revenue growth, and another goal for cost cutting, you may have created an impossible situation for the team. They can’t spend money to drive revenue because they’re so focused on cost cutting. It’s this kind of reality checking that leads to more reasonable and achievable results.

What I’d suggest is get all your organization’s goals together on a whiteboard. Start with the high-level corporate goals, then lay out your business unit’s or department’s goals. Lay out adjacent business units or functions. Look for dependencies. Look for supporting goals and look for conflicting goals. Go through the same exercise for the teams in your organization.

For supporting goals, make sure there’s no overlap. You don’t want people working on redundant things or getting double credit for going after the same work. For places where there are dependencies of goals, make sure the first goal is properly resourced so the follow-on goal can be met. Also lay out for that second goal the risk in hitting it if the first one isn’t achieved.

In situations where you have conflicting goals, try to get them aligned. You can eliminate one of the goals or carve out the impact of one goal on another. For example, if you have a cost-reduction goal, lower the revenue goal since you can’t market as much since you’ve decided you’re not going to spend. It’s this kind of reality checking, where you take a step back and look at the overall goals and the behaviors that are driven, that’s going to increase the likelihood you hit your most important goals and don’t cause frustration for your team.

This reality check is something that I see people miss all the time. They lay out their goals, their goals are smart, they’re focused, and they understand the behaviors they need to drive, but they never take that extra minute to say, “How do these goals impact one another?” If you do that kind of integrative thinking and look across all your goals, you’re going to spot the trouble spots and understand what you need to change before you launch your team out on its work.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Beyond The Bounce Back: 5 Tips For Evolving Through Adversity

July 30, 2025/0 Comments/in Books, Career, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Resilience is a teachable, measurable and scalable capability. Leaders can implement these practices today to navigate complexity and lead with clarity and courage.

Today’s post is by Maureen Metcalf, thougthtLEADERS principal and CEO of Innovative Leadership Institute.

This article was originally published in Forbes Coaches Council on July 22, 2025. by Forbes. You can read the original article here.

As an executive advisor and leadership coach, I find that leaders who previously successfully managed the level of stress and complexity of their roles are now struggling more often. We need these leaders to thrive, and anti-fragile resilience practices can help.

I define resilience as the ability to bounce back from change and the capacity to evolve through challenge. The resilience-building framework I use with clients is grounded in five key practices: prioritizing self-care, managing and shifting thinking, leading from the heart, enhancing relationships and becoming anti-fragile.

Leaders can implement these practices today to navigate complexity and lead with clarity and courage.

1. Prioritize Self-Care: The Foundation Of Sustainable Leadership

Resilience begins with the body. Leaders often think sacrificing sleep, nutrition and rest is a badge of honor. It’s a fast track to burnout. My research and client work consistently show that leaders prioritizing physical well-being—adequate sleep, regular exercise, mindful nutrition—are better equipped to handle stress and make sound decisions.

One executive client, facing a high-stakes merger, began integrating 30-minute walks into their daily routine and committed to a “digital sunset” an hour before bed. The result? Improved focus, better emotional regulation and a renewed presence in critical conversations. Self-care isn’t indulgent—it’s strategic.

Are you investing in your physical well-being consistently as a strategic priority?

2. Shift Thinking: Cultivate Positivity And Growth-Oriented Mindset

The stories we tell ourselves shape our reality. Resilient leaders actively manage their inner dialogue, reframing setbacks as opportunities for learning. According to Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, a leading researcher in positive psychology, individuals flourish when they experience at least three positive emotions for every negative one. This cognitive flexibility, positivity and growth mindset are essential in a world where yesterday’s solutions no longer solve today’s problems.

I encourage leaders to engage in reflective journaling, mindfulness practices and assumption-checking exercises. One of my clients, a senior leader in a research organization, used these tools to reframe a failed research project not as a defeat, but as a data-rich experiment. This shift in thinking enabled her team to pivot quickly and launch a more successful iteration. She talked about how disproving a hypothesis is as essential as proving it, because we can accelerate our impact the quicker we learn.

Do you have regular practices to shift your thinking and reframe negative situations into opportunities?

3. Lead From The Heart: Emotional Intelligence As A Strategic Asset

Resilience is not just about grit—it’s about grace. Leaders who are attuned to their emotions and those of others build trust, foster psychological safety and inspire loyalty. Emotional intelligence allows leaders to respond rather than react, especially under pressure.

I recommend leaders practice soft skills, including emotional labeling, empathy mapping and values alignment. One client shared how a simple practice of pausing to name their emotion before responding in a tense board meeting helped de-escalate conflict and steer the conversation toward collaboration.

Are you leading with emotional intelligence and authenticity?

4. Enhance Relationships: Build A Resilient Ecosystem

No leader is resilient alone. Strong, supportive relationships act as “shock absorbers” during turbulent times. Leaders must invest in authentic connections with their peers, teams, bosses, mentors and other key stakeholders. They also need strong relationships with people outside of the organization. Both sets of relationships are essential. Business relationships offer professional insight and support, while personal relationships offer support separate from work and can provide confidential care.

I recommend regular check-ins with a peer advisory group such as YPO or a similar group. This can be a professionally facilitated group or an informal set of trusted colleagues committed to providing honest feedback and support. I run a cross-industry CEO advisory group that offers monthly confidential conversations and periodic learning-focused presentations. Members also support one another through their ongoing business challenges outside of the group. I’ve seen this network become a long-term major asset for many, offering tactical advice and emotional support.

Have you built a professional and personal network that supports and challenges you?

5. Become Anti-Fragile: Grow Stronger Through Adversity

The goal of resilience is not just recovery—it’s personal elevation. Inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “antifragility” concept, my team helps leaders design systems and mindsets that improve under stress. This means embracing experimentation, encouraging dissent and viewing volatility as a personal and professional growth catalyst.

Many of my clients have embraced the “mind of the scientist,” knowing that the ability to use experiments as a foundation of innovation accelerates the ability to meet their goals. This language of experiments changes the conversation from “fail fast” to “experiment and learn fast.” The change in language and mindset frees them to build their agility and capacity during challenging times. Rather than fearing disruption, they now see it as a competitive advantage.

Are you leveraging challenges and setbacks to grow stronger through adversity?

Why This Matters Now

The challenges leaders face today are not episodic; they are systemic. Climate change, AI disruption, workforce transformation and geopolitical shifts demand new leadership. Resilient leaders are not just surviving—they are shaping the future.

Resilience is a teachable, measurable and scalable capability. It is the bridge between intention and impact, between vision and execution, and the key to leading with authenticity in an age of uncertainty. Resilience is not a destination—it is a discipline. And in this moment of profound change, it is the most essential leadership skill we can cultivate.

Maureen Metcalf is the CEO of Innovative Leadership Institute, bringing over 25 years of business experience to the table as she helps professionals grow well beyond their own expectations. Her work is focused on helping leaders innovate how they lead while transforming their organizations. She’s also a principal here at thoughtLEADERS. She teaches our programs on building personal resilience. Contact us if you’re interested in bringing the course into your organization.

Want to learn more about resilience? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to bounce back from disruption and thrive during uncertainty. The entire course is available here. As a taste, you can take our free online assessment to understand your current level of resilience and your gaps.

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