From Top Down to Radically Collaborative: Deeper Funner Change interviews Tasty Catering

How does an unlikely organization go from top-down, traditional and struggling to grow to become an award-winning organization – recognized by Inc, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, among others – that works in a radically collaborative way? In mid-October 2017, we partnered with former CEO Tom Walter from Tasty Catering to tell his company’s story […]

Unleashing collaborative intelligence in your team

Collaborative intelligence

The first months of 2017 have been BUSY! Lots of people asked for our elevator pitch. (Even our families didn’t know exactly what we were up to.) So we got smart. We teamed up with genius visual artist Sarah Moyle to create this 7-minute video. We sincerely hope this video gives you – and your team […]

“Permission to practice badly!” Creating culture through practice-in-action

Kelly Ritchey-Davoren has had unusual – and unusually successful – practice as a culture-building leader. During one period as an operations executive at The Decurion Corporation (one of the most paradigm-shifting companies you’ve never heard of), she and her teams improved critical metrics while launching 5 new locations and prototyping a new culture that unleashed […]

How unicorns motivate employees

mary kay car from pinktruth.com

Contributed by Deeper Funner’s Superhero Jessica Wallenfels – who knows a thing or two about leaping tall buildings because she wants to. That pink Cadillac Mary Kay salespeople were once set up to vie for? It might be a smooth ride, but compensation is actually not the number one employee motivator. A 1968 article in […]

My Bet: Story thinking helps with (almost) everything

luke skywalker image via rabittooth.com

Today, you might be helping a team member get over the hump in a critical project. Maybe you’re pitching to a new client. Maybe you’re  dreading the weekly meeting with your leadership team, anticipating the conversation will circle around… and around… as you try to make a tough decision together. Whatever adventure you’re embarking on, […]

50 years of experience says: Kickass meetings start with single tasking

Last night, I had dinner with a group that included mindfulness warriors Wendy Palmer and Pamela Weiss. Wendy coaches leaders at places like NASA, Old Navy and Twitter in embodied leadership, while Pam takes mindfulness into corporate environments like Genentech and Pixar. As we ordered our salads, I couldn’t help but be aware that 50+ […]

Adaptive organizations, listening like an improviser and the intelligence of crows

Here’s one more “mental sorbet” post – a sampler of interesting reads on leadership, listening and change to refresh your brain. Here’s an oldie, but a goodie, recently brought to my attention in a post by Canadian leadership blogger Tanveer Naseer. He cited the controversial Joshua Klein TED Talk on the adaptive power of crows […]

Leadership development: The 50/10 mental sorbet

I’ve worked with very few leaders over the past three years who aren’t ramped up, stressed out, and working hard to hold things together between work and life. They are trying to slice through email, texts, instant messages, and all of the other updates that come their way. They talk about the need to create […]

Organizations that think (and what they do that others can’t)

After what seems like a seriously long time – more than a decade – helping leaders lead change, I feel like I’m just breaking the surface of the water. And in my 3-month-old job as doctoral student (which already seems seriously long to those around me; last night, I overheard my partner say, “yeah, Julie’s […]