General E. John Teichert Joins Gapingvoid Culture Design Group as Executive Advisor

Brigadier General E. John ‘Dragon’ Teichert, United States Air Force (retired), has joined Gapingvoid Culture Design Group as Executive Advisor of Innovation and Leadership.

Teichert was Commander of Edwards Air Force Base from 2018-2020, where he collaborated with Gapingvoid on an innovation Culture Design project, largely recognized as the most successful innovation culture change effort ever undertaken by the U.S. Air Force. After leaving the command of Edwards, he served as the Senior Defense Official and Defense Attaché to Iraq and the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force, International Affairs. He has a background as an F-15E fighter pilot, an F-22 test pilot, and an inspirational and transformative leader at multiple levels of command.

Gapingvoid Culture Design Group CEO Jason Korman said, “We are honored that General Teichert has chosen to join the team. We are energized by the potential this partnership has to bring new thinking about designing innovative cultures and helping leaders expand their influence.”

Theranos Is A Cautionary Tale That Shouldn’t Dampen Enthusiasm For Entrepreneurs

In the opening statements of the Theranos trial, Elizabeth Holmes’ defense attorney Lance Wade argued, “Elizabeth Holmes did not go to work every day intending to lie, cheat and steal.” Instead, he said, “Elizabeth Holmes worked herself to the bone for 15 years trying to make lab testing cheaper and more accessible. She poured her heart and her soul into that effort. Now in the end, Theranos failed, and Miss Holmes walked away with nothing. But failure is not a crime.”

I believe years of working closely with startups and visionary entrepreneurs has given me a unique perspective on the case of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, now on trial for multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Holmes makes for fascinating theater, but rather than picking sides, I’d like to view this 37-year-old as an entrepreneur whose dreams got out of control.

Read the full story on Forbes Council

Elizabeth Holmes Was Found Guilty, But Was She Fundamentally Wrong?

In a January 4 opinion piece for the New York Times, Bethany McLean had this to say about the outcome of the Elizabeth Holmes trial: “A jury’s verdict is black-and-white, but the real story is rarely so simple. We think of visionaries and fraudsters as polar opposites. In reality… many of today’s great entrepreneurs have some characteristics of both.”

The day before, on January 3, a Palo Alto jury found the Theranos founder and former CEO guilty on four of 11 charges. A lot of the media has chosen the easy out — presenting the verdicts as either just comeuppance for a “delusional sociopath” or a referendum on Silicon Valley. I don’t buy either. Life’s not easy, and launching successful businesses is almost always messy.

Read the full story on Forbes Coache Council

‘Safe’ Language Isn’t The Solution To A Culture Of Oppression

While many of us are coming to terms with our long-suppressed issues around racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and a long list of other problems lurking on or just below the surface of our society, some institutions are more invested in linguistic quick-fixes.

They’re rooting out potentially offensive terms and phrases, many with vaguely violent or sexual connotations (think “killing it” or “that sucks”) and seeking to cancel them at “breakneck speed,” a term which no doubt will find itself on the chopping block soon enough (along with “chopping block,” probably).

Businesses That Design Cultures to Heal Divides Will Be Most Profitable

Even as health officials encourage businesses to maintain measures to stem the spread of Covid-19, the fact that more than half of U.S. adults have now at least started the vaccination process is a very good sign that big change is coming. In the months ahead, more and more businesses will start to welcome back employees on site.

How many of these workers will choose to keep working from home remains unclear. Surveys suggest that between a quarter and a third of workers will do so at least some days each week. While that would mark a profound shift from pre-Covid days, it still suggests that the overwhelming majority of people will choose to return to their work sites.

When that happens, organizations will face a major cultural challenge — the biggest they’ve seen in many years. But it will also be an opportunity.

Why Businesses Are Becoming More Employee-Centric in 2020

Our study focuses on businesses with what we call “high-purpose cultures.” These businesses are at once both employee- and customer-focused. They make this clear through their decisions and actions, not just through statements. 

When a business aligns around a high-purpose culture, employees know it. It shows up in the ways they describe their daily experiences. Moreover, well-designed cultures act as management systems that work to ensure consistent organizational outcomes. Having spent more than a decade working with businesses across numerous sectors to help them build these kinds of cultures, I’ve seen the night-and-day difference they can make. 

Why employee surveys, like political polls, are misleading

It isn’t just news media and political groups that need to take note of the mismatch between polled behavior and actual behavior. This moment should also serve as a wake-up call to businesses. The systems our society uses to measure how people feel simply aren’t, at some level, working. That includes the surveys organizations use to try to gauge the sentiment of their workforces.

Through my work helping businesses of all kinds, from tech companies to the U.S. military, design successful workplace cultures, I run into this problem all the time. The internal data businesses collect gives them what they believe is a clear impression of whether their employees are feeling engaged and satisfied.

Take control by making culture your operating system

If there ever was a year when corporate leaders were made to feel how little control they have over events shaping their organizational future, it was 2020. The upheaval of the pandemic; the switch to remote work en masse; the protests for racial justice; political strife and growing tensions have created a challenging, tumultuous environment.

There may have been times over the past year that you’ve felt as though people expect you to have magical answers, inspiring ideas to guide the business through to success through all the confusion and disarray. But of course it’s not that simple. Even now, the unknowns are huge as we look to the year ahead.

But there is good news. The most important step you can take as a business leader actually is well within your control. Research by my company, Gapingvoid Culture Science© Group, shows that doing this increases profits, customer satisfaction, share value, and employee engagement. It’s also proven to deliver longevity and positive attention to CEOs. The step: actively design your culture.

Your Future Office: Designed Around Experiences?

There probably will be a period in which the idea of going to the office again feels exciting. So there may be a brief spike in the number of people who face traffic and drive in for a few weeks. But that novelty is likely to wear off quickly. People will be faced with a simple choice: Get dressed up and sit in traffic, or turn on the computer immediately and be productive without the hassle.

How semiotics drive workplace culture change during the pandemic

Businesses have long known that workplace cultures can do a lot to exacerbate or alleviate extreme stress. Cultures in which people are more comfortable and less overwhelmed see all sorts of benefits, including, often, greater focus, strategic thinking, and creativity.

Companies Urgently Need Diversity—But Bias Trainings Aren’t the Only Way

Culture is a social construct and training will never be the route to more diverse and inclusive organizations. Training solves information problems and our D&I challenge is an emotional and social anomaly; accordingly, the solution must solve that problem. Training is merely a box-ticking exercise that is convenient, feels safe for leaders, but has utterly failed.

What Is Culture And How Can You Spread It Remotely?

According to Jason Korman, CEO and founder of culture design group Gapingvoid, Memetics is exactly what corporate America needs right now. Jason has helped to transform the cultures of companies like The US Air Force, Zappos, AT&T and more. As basic as it sounds, the solution is to use memes to ensure your remote teams don’t feel stranded. That meme, an image, a virtual background can emit a feeling of connectedness, so everyone knows they’re in it together. What is culture?

5 Leaders Share Their No. 1 Tip for Building (and Sustaining) A Purpose-Driven Business

Gapingvoid’s Virtual Backgrounds Bring Life, Culture To Your Dull Zoom, Teams Reality

The United States government has so efficiently botched its response to this Covid-19 pandemic that it seems like a coordinated effort to keep us working at home forever (those of us who still have some level of employment at least). But let’s not focus on that, let’s focus instead on one of the many companies seeking to take advantage of this new paradigm of remote work by selling virtual backgrounds.

Avoid A Company Catastrophe With A Culture-Focused Approach

When Boeing fired CEO Dennis Mullenberg late last year, the markets, investors, regulators, and other interested parties likely all breathed a sigh of relief. The man at the helm during two high-profile 737 MAX plane crashes was gone.

When performing their post-mortems on Mullenberg’s tenure at Boeing, sources have blamed his insensitivity to victims’ families, his cavalier attitude toward customers like Southwest Airlines, and Boeing’s overall culture of secrecy, among other issues. For me, however, the most significant issues are Boeing’s refusal to consider divergent opinions when developing the 737 MAX and when addressing the safety/performance issues that caused the crashes, and simultaneously, the corporate culture that places profit over safety.

Optimizing Culture in Our New World of Social Distancing

As we come to accept that even more of us will be working from home for months rather than weeks, it’s important to differentiate between physical distancing and social distancing, and vital for company leaders to use all options available to maintain culture in our instant WFH era.

This is an article about what to do in this time of disconnection and how to make sure that when we are able to come together again in shared space, our organizations are still functioning. I am not talking about the rules and systems, most of which will still be intact, but the unseen piece which we call culture, essential to all long-term business success.

Coronavirus crisis shows military’s need for agility

Two major, ongoing stories involving the Navy and the coronavirus illustrate a key challenge the U.S. military is facing: the need to be agile so that innovation can thrive.

First, the USNS Comfort was sent to New York City to help relieve hospitals and other medical centers inundated with patients. But the ship was unable to quickly take on many of those patients, due to what The New York Times called a “tangle of military protocols and bureaucratic hurdles.” As the head of New York’s largest hospital system put it, “If I’m blunt about it, it’s a joke.”

Meanwhile, there’s the story of Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, who was fired ostensibly for not following the formal chain of command — though he was clearly trying to protect his crew from the deadly coronavirus. Sailors cheered for Crozier as he departed the USS Theodore Roosevelt, showing their support for him. (Crozier later reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 himself.)

CEOs Who Embrace High-Purpose Cultures Make Life Better for Everyone

To succeed over the long-term, culture needs to be the driving force behind all aspects of corporate management.

Jason Korman, CEO at Gapingvoid Culture Science© Group

A landmark study produced by my firm has confirmed what many of us knew in our guts all along—CEOs who cultivate engagement and high-purpose cultures do better for investors, employees and themselves.

Our new report “Culture as a Management System: How CEOs Who Lead High-Purpose Organizational Cultures Deliver Remarkable Business Performance” draws on Gapingvoid’s work with a wide range of clients including AT&T, Microsoft, The U.S. Air Force, and Zappos, building on our own compiled data with proprietary analyses along with respected third-party studies.

The Benefits of Framing Culture as a Management System – MIT Sloan Review

By approaching managerial decisions through the lens of culture, leaders can make a bigger impact for the organization and its employees.

Corporate culture is undergoing a transformation. As organizations evolve and reinvent themselves in response to societal changes, new technologies, and competitive disruption, they’re finding that hierarchical cultures of the past must change as well.

And while the shape and impact of corporate culture is changing in the 21st century, the role it can play as a determinant of success is not waning anytime soon. As the researchers of the MIT SMR/Glassdoor Culture 500 put it, “To survive and thrive in today’s market, a healthy corporate culture is more important than ever.”

The Benefits of Framing Culture as a Management System - MIT Sloan Management Review

Research Shows Companies Do Best When They Encourage This Kind Of Culture

Should a company be customer-obsessed like Amazon or employee-focused like Richard Branson said? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Jason Korman, CEO, Gapingvoid Culture Science© Group, on Quora:

Businesses do best when they’re built around high-purpose cultures, which are equally focused on both employees and customers. Some skeptics think this is impossible, and that one or the other must end up taking precedence. But most of the time, business leaders can do right by their staff and the consumers they serve.

When CEOs Value Employees, Everyone Wins

When nearly 200 CEOs from some of the nation’s largest corporations got together recently, they faced a big challenge.

Across the United States and in much of the world, there’s great distrust of corporate leaders—a distrust that’s growing along with CEO pay and levels of inequality. As Scientific American has reported, “economic inequality negatively impacts nearly every aspect of human well-being.” Many workers are finding that the system is rigged against them.

The result of the meeting of the Business Roundtable was an official end to the organization’s stance, in place since 1997, that “corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders.”

Calls for equality being heard by energy industry

Late last month, the company provided a $5 million grant to Catalyst, a global nonprofit working toward workplace gender equality, to support its Men Advocating Real Change program.

The Midland location last year was one of Chevron’s first to launch a MARC program. The Chevron Women’s Network and Chevron Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth brought the program to the company in 2017. The company instituted a pilot program in Houston, and it has expanded to seven Chevron locations globally and includes more than 750 employees. It joins other employee networks at the Midland campus, including a Women’s Network and Black Employees Network that brings the workforce together with cultural events, networking, volunteering and speaker events.

8 Things Every Person Should Do Before 8 A.M.

Most people’s lives are a reflection of their past, rather than their future.

For most people, today will look quite similar to tomorrow. 2019 will look similar to 2018.

Most people’s lives are highly predictable. And there’s a very good reason. Your brain is quite literally a “prediction machine” designed to keep you from situations and scenarios filled with uncertainty and the possibility of failure.

According to several psychologists, the foundation of all fears is the “unknown.” We want our lives to be predictable. We don’t want to deal with the intense emotions involved in doing something new and different.

This One Strategy Increased My Email Open Rates And Click Throughs By More Than 5 Percent.

Greater professionalism in an easier job market

Job-hunting isn’t like what it used to be. Feelings of desperation have no place. You’ll become more human – more like yourself – and free yourself to be more professional by becoming aware of values, fine-tuning your self-knowledge, standing out with recruiters and interviewing with a new strategy.

These 20 Pictures Will Teach You More Than Reading 100 Books – by Ben Hardy

“Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”―Seth Godin

The above image is my “Culture Wall,” created by GapingVoid, a company that helps people design their organizational culture. The art is done by Hugh McLeod, who has drawn pictures for books by Seth Godin and many other influential individuals and companies.

This Culture “Tool” Is Being Used By All Of The Best Entrepreneurs

For most executives, organizational culture has been a bit of a mystery. We read about companies with great cultures: Zappos, Rackspace, REI, Southwest Airlines, etc., but how did they create workplace environments that enabled their employees to be more efficient, passionate and effective? Was it deliberate? If so, can it be repeated and designed?

For ten years, Gapingvoid Culture Science© Group has been working with some of the most culture-centric businesses in the world — seeing what works — and developing new approaches to design and scale what we call end-to-end Culture Science©.

In the midst of their tinkering and testing, Gapingvoid has come up with something incredibly useful, scientific, artful, and effective.

The tool they’ve developed is so effective that many of the leading entrepreneurs and organizations are using it.

So what is it?

It’s called The “Culture Wall.”

Gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman on change, culture & being one of a few men at HERWorld18

At HERWorld18, we turned the energy gender gap on its head.

In an industry where women comprise about 20 percent of the workforce, most energy conferences have a similar percentage of female speakers. At HERWorld18, we too had a roughly 80/20 breakdown.

82 percent of our speakers were women. 18 percent were male.

One of our goals as an organization is to elevate the women in this industry. But we also want men to have a seat at the table and a voice in the conversation.

So we asked one of our male speakers — Jason Korman, CEO of culture design firm Gapingvoid — what he thought of the HERWorld18 experience, both as an industry outsider and a member of the gender minority.

Your Employees Need Meaning and Connection

Almost every company in the United States has organizational change wrong.

They believe “culture” is about having a list of values.

Culture is not about having a list of values. Nor is leadership about charisma.

The reason organizations fail at their primary task (which is delivering value and delighting customers), is because they fail to grasp what truly motivates and inspires their people.

People aren’t motivated by rewards or punishments.

They aren’t inspired by upward mobility and performance rating.

People, at their core, want to have MEANING in their lives. They want to feel a part of something bigger. They want a true sense of connection.

Culture begets creativity – a gapingvoid perspective

Gapingvoid and Brian Solis have a new schtick about the business of creativity. As with most things that gapingvoid churns out, 10 reasons your culture is failing and new insights on how to fix it is highly accessible and entertaining as they tap into the zeitgeist around creativity, culture and the perceived need for change.

The Art of The Wow

Transforming Lives Through Art

Changes in culture have defined human lives throughout the ages. At the Toppel Career Center on the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus, change has been top-of-mind for as long as Christian Garcia (associate dean and executive director) can remember.

WorkWise: Workplace environment for the employment crisis

Jason Korman, CEO of gapingvoid ltd., maintains that employees who believe in their workplace and are fulfilled in their work contribute to the ideal environment for recruiting. He’s developed a strategic approach for his consulting, primarily to multi-national organizations.

How to Keep Employee Morale Up After Firing an Employee

Intrinsic motivators are the key to getting through tough times, says Jason Korman, CEO of Gapingvoid Culture Science© Group, and the coauthor with Brian Solis of a new e-book, 10 reasons your culture is failing and new insights on how to fix it.

‘Brogrammer’ Attitude May Hinder Technology Diversity

Jason Korman, CEO of Miami-based culture consultancy Gapingvoid, whose clients include a number of tech companies, has a different view. He believes the diversity problem in technology has more to do with a lack of female and minority candidates.

The Art of Healing: Connecting Patients to Positive Outcomes by Enhancing the Interior Env …

As the delivery of care continues to transform, physicians are being called upon to address costs, improve outcomes and increase patient engagement. Miami-based Gapingvoid, a consulting firm focused on change management, believes they can help meet that triple aim by creating immersive art installations that purposefully connect people with positive outcomes both visually and emotionally.

Gapingvoid: When motivational art meets healthcare

Many hospital and clinic waiting rooms are stark, dated, poorly lit and uninviting. As Gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman points out, the only thing to fixate on is likely a 2010 copy of People.

Hugh Macleod – Cartoons Crafting Next-Gen Entrepreneurs

University of Miami’s Toppel Career Center looks a little brighter these days. Maybe it’s because of the new building. Or perhaps it’s the smiles of recent graduates glad to be rid of homework. But one new development stands out among the rest: the opening of a permanent exhibition featuring 80—that’s right, 80—artworks by the cartoonist Hugh Macleod.

Building Company Culture with Office Art

“If you’ve ever been to Paris, or Rome, or any old European city, no matter where you stay, you walk out of your hotel room, you walk two steps, and you look up, and there’s this art,” says Jason Korman, CEO of Gapingvoid, which helps companies “transform [their] businesses” through art.

Finding business advice from cartoons

Some of the world’s biggest companies are taking serious business advice from lighthearted cartoons. The likes of Intel, Volkswagen AG and Cisco have turned to artist Hugh MacLeod and business partner Jason Korman of Miami Beach-based Gapingvoid Ltd. to inspire employees and revamp corporate culture.

Can cartoons teach you about business? These just might

We’ve been turning to the comic pages for a long time for business advice, whether intentional or purely by luck.

A Holiday Gift From Gapingvoid: “I’m Not Delusional, I’m An Entrepreneur”

Gapingvoid’s unique style of visual communication has long been popular among successful and aspiring entrepreneurs: They decorate their offices with prints of gapingvoid art; they wear our t-shirts; and they read our blog and newsletter. We admire and appreciate all entrepreneurs – they are the future – and we salute them (and you) with this short look at entrepreneurship told through a series of cartoons.

Art For Work, Work For Art

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – When artist Hugh McLeod first starting scribbling cartoon art with motivational messages for businesses on the backs of business cards years ago he had no idea his work would eventually adorn the walls of some of the top corporations in the world including Microsoft and Facebook.

Artful Insights

For Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid, the message behind his work offers a special meaning to anyone who comes across it – at home or in the office.

The entrepreneur as art

Get inside the head of an entrepreneur through cartoonist and author Hugh MacLeod’s first one-man show. “I’m Not Delusional: The Art of the Entrepreneur” is a tribute to the emotional journey of the entrepreneur.

Gapingvoid: The art business with a purpose

When cartoonist Hugh MacLeod arrived in New York City in 1997, he checked into the YMCA with two suitcases, a couple of boxes and a copywriting job at an advertising firm. His only canvases were a handful of blank business cards in his pocket.