Beautiful Business

We delve into the critical role of self-awareness in organizational culture, as illustrated by a global non-profit's culture audit. The findings underscored the importance of leaders confronting challenges head-on and embracing opportunities for growth and improvement. We explore how self-awareness unlocks trust within teams, fostering an environment where honesty, accountability, and creativity thrive. Insights from Carl Jung remind us of the power in making the unconscious conscious, steering organizational fate toward collaboration and productivity. Practical strategies for nurturing self-awareness are shared, emphasizing the value of understanding individual preferences, learning from past successes, and fostering open communication. Ultimately, the episode underscores how cultivating self-awareness among leaders can catalyze a positive cultural shift and enhance overall team performance.

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

In a recent conversation, I engaged with a CEO who shared their experience of feeling overwhelmed by the imposition of an external "brand process" by an agency, a phenomenon they termed as being "agencied." This encounter sparked a profound reflection on the alignment between brand and culture, as the CEO emphasized the importance of delving into the essence of their organization rather than adhering to superficial branding exercises. This resonated deeply, highlighting the intrinsic connection between brand and every facet of a company's operations. The imperative of ensuring this alignment was underscored, as fragmentation between brand, culture, and business strategy can undermine long-term viability. Trust emerged as pivotal, emphasizing the necessity of consistent delivery and fulfillment of promises to sustain customer loyalty and employee engagement.

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

Born dyslexic, I navigated an uphill battle in Catholic school, wrestling with learning difficulties exacerbated by strict teachers. But adversity birthed creativity. Now, I leverage those early struggles as a professional synthesizer, distilling complex conversations into actionable insights for business leaders. My advice? Hone your synthesis skills through active listening and distillation. It's transformative, revolutionizing communication, leadership, and collaboration. Ready to unlock new possibilities?

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

Imagine possessing immense power, one that demands wisdom and kindness in its use. Surprisingly, the one under your sway isn’t a distant figure—it’s you. In a tranquil Delaware evening, a profound realization hit me under the starlit sky: the key to happiness lay within my grasp. This taught me the importance of self-control, understanding that while we can’t change the past or control others, we hold the reins to shape our future. Being our own ally isn’t easy, but it’s crucial; self-compassion isn’t just nice to have—it’s vital for personal growth.

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

We often rely on past experiences to protect us, creating a metaphorical armor. While this armor symbolizes strength, it can sometimes block the connections vital for our growth, especially in our professional lives. Despite the competitive nature of work, authenticity and vulnerability are not just valuable but essential, creating environments where trust and collaboration thrive. Reflecting on a pivotal moment during a workshop with a leadership team, where shared struggles fostered unity, emphasizes the power of vulnerability. In professional settings, it's tempting to remain guarded, yet intentionally embracing vulnerability can lead to transformative connections, driving personal and professional fulfillment. Recognizing the balance between guarding ourselves and being open is crucial, as the wisdom gained along our journey can surpass any protective barriers. Ultimately, embracing vulnerability unlocks deeper relationships and propels us forward.

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

In our fast-paced lives, we often encounter situations—whether it's a challenging project, an infuriating email, or the chaos of social media—that send our stress levels soaring. In these moments, rather than pushing forward, the secret to gaining clarity and control is to hit the pause button. This pause acts like an oasis, allowing our slower, rational thoughts to catch up to our quick emotional reactions, transforming impulsive responses into thoughtful decisions. By embracing these intentional breaks, we can shift from reactive to reflective, turning potentially volatile situations into opportunities for insight and growth.

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

In this episode, Steven Morris and Bob Burg discuss:

• The ROI of focusing on giving value 
• The difference between value and price 
• The law of compensation 
• Putting people first while you influence
• Why it’s important to be authentic 

Key Takeaways:

• When you focus on serving others, they will trust you and would want to get to know you. Eventually, they’ll want to do business with you and tell others about you. This is the practical value of putting your focus on giving. 
• The law of value says, that your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. There’s a difference between price and value - price is a number, while value is the relative worth or desirability of something. Money is an echo of value, the thunder to value’s lightning. 
• The law of compensation states that your income is determined by how many people’s lives you touch and how well you serve them. This means that the more people we touch with the value that we provide, the more money will be rewarded to us. 
• Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first. When planning a marketing campaign, always put front and center into your mind that it’s not about you, it’s about them. Show them how they will be better off doing business with you.  
• Strive to always grow towards a better version of yourself and show authenticity. The most valuable gift you can offer is yourself. All of the skills, knowledge, and experiences you’ve gained are very important but it will be all for nothing without your true authentic core. 

"Shifting your focus from getting to giving - constantly and consistently, providing immense value to others understanding that doing so is not only a more fulfilling way of conducting business, it's actually the most financially profitable way as well." —  Bob Burg

Bob Burg’s book recommendations: 

Connect With Bob Burg:

Website: https://burg.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/burgbob

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/burgcommunications

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobburg

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realbobburg/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bobburg 
  

Get "The Beautiful Business" book by clicking on this link: https://the-beautiful-business.com/

Connect With Steven Morris

Website: https://matterco.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmorris111/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matter_smorris/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StevenMMorris

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

In this episode, Steven Morris, Denise Lee Yohn, and Adam Bryant discuss:

• Creating a purpose statement and tracking your progress 
• Is your purpose statement a part of the strategy or just a marketing exercise? 
• Why we shouldn’t generalize about the workforce 
• Creating a fusion of strategy, purpose, and values as a business leader

Key Takeaways:

• Almost every business will claim that they have a clearly defined purpose that’s integrated with their core business strategy. However, those same businesses don’t prioritize tracking their progress on their purpose. This suggests that businesses don’t take their purpose statement as seriously as they thought. 
• Most business leaders are much more concerned with what they say their purpose is than what their purpose really is and according to a survey, business leaders feel like their purpose statement is more of a PR exercise than a business strategy. 
• We need to be careful about generalizing about workforces in general. Not every employee has the luxury of wondering whether there’s an alignment in purpose or values. Some workers are in their offices because they need a paycheck and nothing more. 
• Creating made up of the strategy, the purpose, and the values of the company is not the job of the marketing department, but that of the CEO of the company. Creating unity between those three means that the leader has to be the one creating direction. 

"You as an organization, you as a leader, or you as a person, need to play an invaluable, irreplaceable role in this world. And your purpose statement enables you to articulate what that role is: why you do what you do" —  Denise Lee Yohn 
 

 "We need to open up the conversation about the fact that employees bring their own purpose. Purpose is ultimately about narrative. It's about storytelling. And we all create our own narratives around purpose in our lives and what we do things for." —  Adam Bryant 

Connect With Denise Lee Yohn:

Website: https://deniseleeyohn.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deniseleeyohn

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/dyohn1

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/deniseleeyohn

Connect With Adam Bryant:

Website: https://adambryantbooks.com/

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: https://twitter.com/adambbryant

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership/

Get "The Beautiful Business" book by clicking on this link: https://the-beautiful-business.com/

Connect With Steven Morris

Website: https://matterco.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmorris111/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matter_smorris/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StevenMMorris

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

In this episode, Steven Morris, Charlotte Lockhart, and Michael Bungay Stanier, discuss:

• How employers should partner with employees 
• Three elements that need to be balanced to make a goal that matters
• Why does your goal need to be daunting? 
• Lessons learned from the pandemic for employers 

Key Takeaways:

• As employers, we have to remember that we borrow our people from their lives. Someone has a life and they bring it to their workplace. In order for our businesses to operate, we need to partner with our people, but we must only partner with a part of their life and not the whole. 
• There are three elements that need to be balanced in order to make a goal that matters to you. The goal needs to be thrilling, meaning it excites you while at the same time, it has to be balanced against the fact that it is important. This means that it has an element of giving back to the world. 
• Your goal has to be important, thrilling, but also, daunting. When looking at your goal, you’ve got to ask the question of “is this a place where I’m going to learn, grow and stretch?” We unlock our greatness by working on hard things, so you have to work on hard things. 
• The pandemic granted us some insights into what the future of work could be. Most importantly, we’ve got to ask employees what would work best for them and listen and implement changes that make a difference. Design your business for all the people that it matters to, which is your customers but also your own people.   

"Understanding that moving forward as businesses, we cannot operate without partnering with our people. When you partner with someone, you partner with their entire life, but you're only entitled to part of it." —  Charlotte Lockhart

“If you don't have the right goal, it doesn't matter how smart it is. It doesn't matter how good or wonderful your measurableness is if you're working on the wrong things… We unlock our greatness by working on the hard things, you have to pick the things that are thrilling and important.” - Michael Bungay Stanier 

Connect With Charlotte Lockhart:

Website: https://www.4dayweek.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlottelockhartnz/

Connect With Michael Bungay Stanier:

Website: https://www.mbs.works/

Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B002QK41GQ

Get "The Beautiful Business" book by clicking on this link: https://the-beautiful-business.com/

Connect With Steven Morris

Website: https://matterco.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmorris111/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matter_smorris/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StevenMMorris

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.

In this episode, Steven Morris and Dr. Kevin Sansberry II discuss:

• The Four “Horsemen” of Workplace Masquerade
• Did the pandemic make workplaces intolerable? 
• Practicing self-love and positive self-talk
• The most important values of a leader 

Key Takeaways:

• Remember the four “horsemen” of workplace masquerade: facades conformity, cultural theatre, courage, and avoidance. People avoid being their authentic self if the environment does not encourage it or feels safe enough to do so. 
• The pandemic didn’t make a lot of workplaces intolerable, it actually exacerbated intolerable workplaces
• Change a part of your life where you’re going to spend time with you and for you for 5 minutes a day. If you don’t know yourself, you won’t know what impact you have on other people. Self-love is not vanity, it’s sanity.
• Behind every great person, there’s a circle of great people. If leaders display humility, the organization would end up generating more ideas and be more united. A leader must also be a healer, a vessel of compassion that inspires their organization to be healers of the world as well.  

"There’s far too many leaders who coasted by simply because of their positional power and now covid is requiring you to be more empathetic,  now the market and the employees are demanding you to be more people-first. If you’re not, they’re gonna leave." —  Dr. Kevin Sansberry II

Dr. Kevin Sansberry II’s book recommendations: 

• The Untethered Soul, by Michael Singer - https://www.amazon.com/Untethered-Soul-Journey-Beyond-Yourself/dp/1572245379/

Connect With Dr. Kevin Sansberry II:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevindsansberry/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toxicleadershippodcast 

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ToxicLeaderShow 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJH-Z6f3ZjdE5v40S6LVMKA/featured 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@toxicleadershippocast?lang=en 

Get "The Beautiful Business" book by clicking on this link: https://the-beautiful-business.com/

Connect With Steven Morris:

Website: https://matterco.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmorris111/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matter_smorris/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StevenMMorris

Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.

With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.

His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.

His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.

You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.