Switch and Shift

At Switch and Shift, we help organizations like yours shift gracefully from the Industrial Age climate we’ve all known… to the Social Age we must embrace.

While not always easy, this is a profitable journey to a more human-side organization that takes grit, focus and a willingness to grow. It takes an eagerness to let go of the Industrial Age “best practices” we’ve relied on for years. It takes a belief in your people and their ability to function at optimal levels – and consistently achieve team and organizational goals. And it takes belief in you as a social leader who cares.

We help you complete this journey by focusing on the core characteristics that grow your business, develop your people and delight your customers.

Is there really a difference between culture and climate? Well, yes. Culture influences how things are done: mission, values, processes, etc. Climate is what it feels like to work in the culture; in other words people’s perceptions of what it’s like to work in your business.

We help you purposefully create a culture that is more human. We help you create an optimistic climate. Together, culture and climate help your people become their best selves. Why is this important? When we are at our best, we treat people better. We creatively solve problems and meet challenges. We welcome new opportunity. We nurture brand ambassadors and enable champions. And we achieve greater results.

We help companies realize that social media is more than just a marketing tool; it is a fundamental shift in how we attract and retain top talent, enable employees to become brand ambassadors and actually listen to our customers.

Social strategy doesn’t start or stop at listening, however. From the newest intern to the CEO, we help create a socially-enabled culture where everyone is empowered to creatively solve customer problems, react quickly issues that have the potential to negatively impact your brand, and to further cultivate a customer-first environment.

To be a human-side leader requires shifts in the way we show up, communicate, motivate and inspire performance. Deliberately aligned with the Social Age, employee and customer expectations, and with creating an optimistic workplace, our focus is on switching leader behaviors learned in B-school and from our Industrial Age predecessors and mentors to a more social, more enabling style. In that environment, team members are enabled to collaborate, innovate and serve all stakeholders well.

Our ultimate goal: a thoughtful transition to an effective 21st century business environment where everyone contributes, feels valued and knows they are critical to the team’s success.

We know engaged employees are the key to achieving extraordinary results. And we know a primary factor in ensuring employees remain engaged is a strengths-based business and leadership philosophy.

Your team members light up when they do work that aligns with their strengths. Personal and professional growth is significantly greater. Teaming is much more collaborative, and productive.

At Switch and Shift, we help your organization determine the strengths of your executives, leaders and employees – both individually and as members of their respective teams. We help align those strengths with the roles and tasks assigned. And we help you determine which people and teams might need a nudge to realize their potential – and accomplish their mission.

The team at Switch and Shift serves an ever-growing community of leaders – from the newest members of our workforce to the C-Suite – who know there is a better way, a more human way, to do business.

We, and they, know that in the Social Age we are all eager not just for information on how to lead more effectively, but also for connection – human-to-human relationships – that enrich lives and shift this movement forward.

Thus, our “Be Be Do” – our declaration of purpose:

• Be Inspirational
• Be Heretical
• Do Good

Be Inspirational

Our content, messaging and actions inspire those within our community of purpose to be different, to act different. Our writing, podcasts, and videos inform, mentor and motivate. The topics we bring you, as well as our guests and our core contributors (who we affectionately call our “League of Extraordinary Thinkers”) enable you to create, collaborate and perhaps provoke. Because positive action is contagious, we take our responsibility to inspire seriously.

Switch and Shift, however, is not a source of vapid rah-rah encouragement. At every turn, we provide not just motivation, but actionable inspiration – real advice and practical wisdom that helps you make a difference, right now.

Be Heretical

As we move our mission forward, we shy away from “best practices” and “conventional wisdom” – two terms we leaders seem to fall back on when we abdicate our responsibility to lead while maintaining our title, rank or influence. If it’s what everyone else is doing, you won’t find it here. We bring you only what the very best are doing to drive change, bring optimism to the workplace, and nurture innovative cultures.

The Switch and Shift community rejects “what is.” Instead, we ask “what if?”

To some, we will be perceived as rebels. Or rebel heretics. And we wear that label like a badge of honor.

Do Good

Switch and Shift exists for a simple reason: to make the world a better place.

To that end, we do not present morally neutral content; indeed, we don’t believe there is such a thing. You’re either actively making the world better, or you’re passively helping keep the status quo.

On the path we’ve chosen, we’ve met many thoughtful, passionate leaders. These friends are out to create the exact same world we are: a world where the human-side of business is practiced seamlessly by millions, maybe one day billions of people; at work and at home, in nonprofits, for-profits, and for-purpose workplaces; in government, schools and clubs. Everywhere.

The Social Age… is the Human Age.

What is the role of our community of purpose? We engineer change. We make business more human.

We make shift happen.â„

We are a new generation of rebel heretics. As a community, there’s no end to the good we can do together.

Contribute your knowledge. Extend the conversation. Challenge normal. Embrace the Social Age. Join us, and help us move this mission forward.

Enlightened leaders understand that people who love their work do better work. And should that passion for the work, their role or the mission of the company dissipate, those leaders know their business is doomed to mediocrity.

This is why the Human-Side of Business movement places people at the center of its mission. Yet there’s more to it than that. Much more. And to grasp how the Switch and Shift way can significantly impact your business, we must discuss the ten principles at the core of our beliefs:

1. Hire mature, fully capable adults.
2. Treat them with the trust and respect they deserve.
3. At all times, engage head, heart and minds.
4. Respect the whole-employee—personal and professional lives are intertwined.
5. Know your people’s story; relate to them as a person, not a resource or a replaceable asset.
6. Create a culture where employees flourish, feel valued and know they personally make a difference.
7. Enable organic connection amongst employees, that bond – and the mission they have in common – is vital to engagement with customers.
8. Know and define your personal values and be guided by them—always.
9. Know that power doesn’t originate with your title, but the good you cause.
10. Recognize that sustained profits are a direct result of doing good.

The Switch and Shift way isn’t a “people first, profits second” movement, but a “profits as a direct result of putting people first” movement. And in the Social Age, this Human-Side of Business is how we create workplace optimism that sets us apart; it’s how we recruit, retain (and repel) employees; it is how we innovate, collaborate, and compete.