There are three things Todd Reed is passionate about: marketing, running an open-book business, and getting people excited to come into work everyday. It was with these passions that he started the Inspired and Intentional Business podcast, a show that features the latest news about business thinkers who are creating change within their companies. Todd is among the many business thinkers who has discovered that things need to change within our workplaces.
Recently Eliot Frick, CEO of Bigwidesky and founder of Be Human Project, and Jeremy Nulik, evangelist prime of Bigwidesky and chief marketing officer of Be Human Project, sat down with Todd in our Bigwidesky studio to talk about what it means to make a business more human.
So over the next week, take a break each day and listen to the four-part series, and see why it is important to make your business more human. You can also subscribe to the podcast here, and stay up to date with what others are doing to create change.
Every day over 80 percent of the humans around us awake, get dressed and head into do a job they hate. At the same time, CEOs’ expectations for increased creativity and innovation from those humans are on the rise.
Eliot Frick founded Bigwidesky out of an effort to help business leaders view their organizations as a canvas with which we can achieve greater human fulfillment while making profits.
Recently our founder, Eliot Frick, was interviewed by Michael Greenberg of the St. Louis Business Radio about that very conundrum.
“There is an extraordinary amount of creativity out there,” said Eliot. “We know that CEOs want this. They want access to it. There is so much untapped creativity, I contend, that comes from the fact there is all these great ideas and all this great thinking that is either missed or doesn’t get presented in a way that is human enough to be adopted. So making business more human can address that. It can make more creativity happen more consistently.”
We entreat you to take a pause over your holiday weekend and listen to ways that you can make your business more human.
Has anyone seen the newish online stop-smoking program campaign becomeanex.org? It’s a program designed to help you “re-learn life without cigarettes.” I was drawn to it through banner ads containing quirky line art animations of smokers in trigger situations – i.e., out drinking, after a meal, celebrating…
In each 10-second animation, there’s a surprising reveal of the cig behind the situation: the “celebrating” girl is surrounded by confetti and blowing a party horn. After a few honks you realize it’s actually a lit cigarette she’s blowing. The “after a meal” guy finishes his food and belches up a cigarette. Kinda weird – I like it!!
Problem is, the animations aren’t a lead-in to anything; they’ve generated some angst by reminding me I want to smoke, but now they’re not following it up with any reasons why I shouldn’t want to. Where and when does the relearning begin? The “get started now” link is similarly frustrating – takes me to a heartless and disengaging sign up form.
Meh. Too hard. Too depressing. Too futile. I didn’t want to join your stupid program anyway.
The site does a clever job of nailing smoking behavior, but it seems nobody paid enough attention to understanding quitting behavior. I’m not a smoker, so maybe this approach works in a way I can’t see. But I suspect that by not dangling the benefits of not smoking and only reminding me of what I will have to give up, quitting still just sucks.