The story behind Southwest Airlines’ ‘Bags Fly Free’ campaign demonstrates how having a clear purpose can help an organisation make better, more profitable decisions. Having a clear purpose can help an organisation make better decisions. Southwest Airlines’ purpose to ‘democratise the skies’ helped the airline add over $1 billion to their bottom line, despite a […]

Back in 2008 Wharton School professor, Adam Grant (author of one of my favourite books, Give and Take), conducted a fascinating experiment that highlighted how important it is to be reminded of your purpose. He was working with a call centre that raised funds for a university. He divided the call centre into three groups. […]

In 1993, as the co-founder of photographic library startup, I travelled to Los Angeles to check out one of America’s largest commercial photographic collections. Remarkably they were well under way converting their film stock to Kodak PhotoCD, a proprietary digital format launched the year before. We were impressed with Eastman Kodak because it looked like […]

Here is one of the stories I heard at KM Australia as told by John Girard. On a foggy autumn day nearly 800 years ago a traveller happened upon a large group of workers adjacent to the River Avon. Despite being tardy for an important rendezvous curiosity convinced the traveller that he should inquire about […]

This week I have been talking to people about foundational stories and how they are important for reinforcing the core vales and direction for everyone in the organisation. HP has a well know foundation story about Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard starting their little electronics company in a garage with a measly $500. Within this […]