Insights

If you want to deepen your understanding of people experience, these are the books we most often recommend to managers and executives. 👉 View the full list here: People Experience Reading List

People don’t leave hard jobs. They leave miserable ones. Patrick Lencioni’s The Truth About Employee Engagement points to three quiet forces behind disengagement: feeling unseen, believing your work doesn’t matter, and not knowing if you’re succeeding. These same forces still surface in engagement surveys today. They rarely appear as “anonymity,” “irrelevance,” or “ immeasurability.” Instead,…

𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 rarely collapses all at once. It 𝐟𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥, 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐞𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬. It fades when feedback is postponed until review time. When one-on-ones turn into status updates instead of conversations. When effort goes unrecognized because “they know I appreciate them.” 𝐍𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞. People just stop trying as hard when it feels…

Most companies talk about engagement as if it’s something HR owns. In reality, engagement is an equation. Organization × Manager × People Each side carries influence, but the weight isn’t equal. Managers have the most direct impact because they translate company culture into daily experience. The best systems and benefits mean little if the people–manager…

Free lunches. Wellness apps. Casual Fridays. They all sound like good things, until they become substitutes for what people actually need. Many organizations still rely on surface-level perks to signal that they care. But caring is not a campaign. It is a daily practice, reflected in how work gets done, how people are treated, and…

When times get tough, most people wait for things to get better before taking action. The problem is, 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 never starts with waiting. It 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠. In challenging environments, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 don’t push for perfection. They 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: small, human actions that keep people connected and moving forward. Mahatma Gandhi…

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐬, 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐝𝐚𝐩𝐭. 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧. Every organization experiences moments when priorities shift, roles evolve, or uncertainty takes hold. In those moments, productivity dips not because people stop caring but because their basic needs are no longer met. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described this pattern more than 80 years ago in his…