2016
Whatever the age of your company, you should always be wondering what's next. Even if you are a 140-year old business, you still need to know your next act and sometimes you need to go back to your roots, while still looking towards the future. A company like GE that started with a man and a light bulb, is looking to merge their industrial beginnings with the digital future. Beth Comstock, Vice Chair of GE sat down with Jeffrey Hayzlett to talk about the current state of GE and how they are embracing this digital future. Comstock states, "A great brand has to be true, there has to be an authenticity, but it's also aspirational. It's okay that you are not there, yet in some ways you are declaring to the marketplace 'hey this is where we see the future going, we want to go there, come with us, help us make it a reality.'" Comstock also feels that companies and customers should figure this out together.
2016
Joe Hart is President and CEO of Dale Carnegie Training - a leader in professional development, performance improvement, leadership training, and employee engagement. Hart talked to Hayzlett about the biggest opportunity the company has to do - tell their story by doing transformative things with their brand, messaging, and other components like their global franchising network. Throughout a series of courses that aim to build a continuing connection to customers, Hart looks to tackle the "global leadership crisis" - defined as a fundamental crisis in confidence and breakdown in trust between employees and leadership. This is a crucial aspect for everyone, especially millennials - since they are conditioned in speaking up if they don't like what they see in a company or leadership and are even willing to walk away if leadership doesn't meet their expectations. Hart states that the fundamentals of millennials are the same as everyone else; however, the human interaction is different and the delivery of that interaction is done digitally. Hart also tackles the biggest factor for employee disengagement, inauthentic leadership. When someone isn't reliable, there's a breakdown in trust and trust is the foundation for any relationship.
2016
Faith Popcorn is often referred to as the "Nostradamus of marketing" for her ability to accurately predict future trends. As the Founder and CEO of BrainReserve, she's known as a "futurist" and is constantly looking for patterns and trends that will have a big impact on all of our lives. Popcorn says that one of the hardest things for companies to do is embrace the future and see it as more than just a fad. They need to be interested in the truth and stresses how smart companies "adapt to future trends." As an industry pioneer, she predicted back in 1981 how people would spend more time at home, doing things they would normally do outside, like dining or going to the movies. As someone always on the cutting edge, Popcorn tells Hayzlett that the next trend is already here: customization. People want things that are tailored to their needs and lifestyles and more companies are looking to cash in on this. The future will also include a combination of people and robots.
2016
Jay Samit defines disruption as a change where you never go back. Widely recognized as a leading expert on disruption and innovation, he feels in business today it is "so easy to come up with a change and you can have a global market very quickly and social is a cheaper way of marketing." Samit talks to Hayzlett on "how the rate of pace of change has never been this fast, but with the tools at your disposal, you only have to be right for a nanosecond to become a billionaire." He also discusses why it's so important in order to be successful to get over the fear of failure and why SoLoMo are the three main components that should be in everything you are doing.
2016
Matt Preschern is the Executive Vice President and CMO at HCL Technologies, a company with a $7 billion, mostly organic, growth. Preschern attributes that growth to a fundamental belief of putting employees first so they will deliver superior interactions. Their creed of "trust, transparency, and flexibility" is the foundation of everything else they will accomplish as a business. With over one hundred and five thousand employees worldwide, HCL Technologies has tapped into their own employees as a revenue source. In the last year, they have generated $500 million in revenue from employee ideas alone. They put great effort into tapping, not just employee ideas, but customer ideas as well with an yearly online forum in which ideas are submitted for consideration. At the end of the 3-month period, those ideas are used to shape different programs throughout the company, creating an environment, culture, and leadership style that empowers employees to go above and beyond.
2016
Host Jeffrey Hayzlett talks to Alan Fine, Founder and President InsideOut Development about his journey from athletic coach to business coach and how both industries share a core set of principles that make success possible. As a former tennis coach, Fine turned his coaching style from outside in, to inside out - which encourages athletes and entrepreneurs alike to remove the roadblocks that are focused on an internal dialogue. Fine tells Hayzlett that tuning out the noise is "simple, but not that easy" to do. He says that people tend to choose what they listen to, which is why high performers can easily tune out the noise. Fine also lists the fundamental principles of the inside-out approach: knowledge, faith, fire, and focus and adds that focus is the most important of all the principles because, "If you want to change a belief, you need to start on something different." Everything starts with our choice of focus.