Email is far from dead. With billions of emails sent to and from individuals around the world each day, there is more email now than ever before.
The new book "Mailed It!" is due out on August 20 and changes everything by:
showing how to craft and send the most effective emails possible
assisting email marketers in improving results
demonstrating how to use emails to build trusting relationships
It's a guide book on crafting emails that build relationships and get results written by Ashley Budd and Dayana Kibilds.
We’ve followed the creation of the book closely (see Using email for action from December) and in a recent members’s call we celebrate the new book with the two authors and heard more about what's inside.
To get the conversation started, the authors shared a few slides on how email is changing and we also briefly covered a few helpful templates.
Read more“The Narrative Age” is a new book that came out in April written by our friend and Staffbase co-founder Frank Wolf. It provides compelling insights into how successful narratives go beyond storytelling to create messages that inspire change and support success
In a world where story and narrative are often used interchangeably, understanding their distinction holds the key to giving organizations a significant edge in building compelling, authentic connections with their stakeholders. “The Narrative Age" explores how the world's most successful organizations and movements, from SpaceX to DeBeers to the Barbie movie, have harnessed the power of narratives to inspire their audiences.
The Narrative Age makes you think differently about the way you perceive the role of communications in shaping organisational vision and direction. It offers a roadmap to navigate the complexities of modern communication and stakeholder engagement with confidence and clarity.
In a recent members’ call Frank joined us for an informal book launch. He shared a few slides (download as PDF) and we talked about the book. The conversation, as per tradition, started with ‘why’ - what was it that triggered our dear friend Frank to write 200+ pages on narratives?
Read moreWhen we make decisions our thinking is informed by societal norms, “guardrails”, that guide our decisions like the laws and rules that govern us. But what are good guardrails in today’s world of overwhelming information flows and increasingly powerful technologies, such as artificial intelligence?
Based on the latest insights from the cognitive sciences, economics, and public policy, the new book "Guardrails" offers a novel approach to shaping decisions by embracing human agency in its social context. In brief: The book explores the importance of establishing guardrails to manage the power dynamics in the digital age.
Written by Urs Gasser (Professor of Public Policy, Governance and Innovative Technology at TU Munich) and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford), the book shows how the quick embrace of technological solutions can lead to results we don’t always want.
The two authors explain how society itself can provide guardrails more suited to the digital age, ones that empower individual choice while accounting for the social good, encourage flexibility in the face of changing circumstances, and ultimately help us to make better decisions as we tackle the most daunting problems of our times, such as global injustice and climate change.
In a recent member’s call we were joined by Viktor who took us through the thinking behind the book, how human decisions are flawed and also how just looking at AI through the lens of misinformation, bias or privacy is short-sighted. The problem is bigger. The book is about principles for good decisions, and Viktor shared quite a few memorable examples.
Read more“The world is in need of better design, and Kozma’s book shows us how to get there.”
Last year Robert Kozma published "Make the World a Better Place: Design with Passion, Purpose, and Values".
The book has been well received and presents an insightful and hands-on discussion of design as a profoundly human activity and challenges us all to use design to transform the world for the better. The book explains how and why the design industry lost its way, and how to re-ignite the idealism that once made it a force for good.
Robert Kozma is a San Francisco-based author, researcher, and consultant with over 40 years of experience in technology, education, and social development. As an emeritus principal scientist at SRI International, he has collaborated with ministries of education, national agencies, multinational organizations, and high tech companies on how to use information and communication technology to transform education and support economic and social development
Make the World a Better Place describes a set of moral principles, based on our shared humanity, that can be used to create “good” designs: designs that reduce harm, increase well-being, advance knowledge, promote equality, address injustice, and build supportive, compassionate relationships and communities.
Read more"By standing together, we can build a better version of the tech industry."
Ethan Marcotte published a new book back in August and it's all about improving the industry that many of us work in.
Ethan is a web designer, speaker, and author. He’s perhaps best known for creating responsive web design, which helped the industry discover a new way of designing for the ever-changing web.
In his new book - You Deserve a Tech Union - he shares a how-to guide, a history lesson, and a manifesto all in one.
In a recent member’s call Ethan joined an talked more about the resurgent labor movement in the tech industry, why unions matter and why you—yes, you—deserve a tech union.
Read moreHow do online businesses exploit consumers through carefully designed tricks and traps? Regulations are changing rapidly, and we're seeing a big rise in legal enforcement. But is it enough to protect consumers?
Our former Boye Aarhus conference keynote speaker Harry Brignull published his first book back in August titled: “Deceptive patterns - exposing the tricks tech companies use to control you”
Based on over a decade of work on deceptive design (also known as dark patterns), the book takes you into the shadowy world of deceptive design.
Harry holds a PhD in cognitive science and works as Head of Innovation at UK-based pensions firm Smart. We recently did a member’s call with Harry as an informal book launch to our community.
Read moreThere's a new book on email coming and it’s written by two of our friends who really believe in good emails:
Ashley Budd, Director of Advancement Marketing at Cornell University and also a speaker at last year's HE Connect 22
Dayana Kibilds, Strategist at Ologie
They have seen what a good email program can do. But, unfortunately, they are also reminded daily what a terrible experience combing through your email inbox can be.
Powerful email programs can get people to do stuff–for better or worse. And lucky for them, they get to see email do good every day.
In a member's call back in the summer, we heard more about the emerging book, while the authors shared some of their key insights. We also looked at bad emails and most importantly, supported them on their new writing journey.
Read moreMagic @ Work is here! Inner secrets from Christian Vandsø Andersen, a magician who is also VP at the LEGO Group.
The new book ‘Magic @ Work’ is a journey into the extraordinary and in a recent member's call, Christian told us more about the book, shared his perspective on combining magic and management, and even used a card trick to illustrate his point.
The book dives into the mesmerizing world of magic and teaches the reader how its principles can elevate your leadership, whether you're leading teams, projects, or even yourself. You can also discover the enigmatic techniques that magicians use to captivate audiences and apply them to leadership, innovation, and influence.
There’s more in the book, incl. the first publicly available documentation of the leadership model at the LEGO Group. The book is also written on a sad personal backstory, and we’ll get to that, but in the call, we started with Christian telling us about the idea behind the book, so let’s begin there.
Read more“Change is inevitable. Resistance to change is just as predictable.
How do you motivate teams to willingly get on board?”
This is the premise from the recently published book called Change Fatigue by Jenny Magic and Melissa Breker. Released in May, the book focuses on what the authors call ‘flipping teams from burnout to buy-in’ and it addresses the foundational psychological safety domains that drive willingness to change, alongside practical change facilitation techniques you can use today, regardless of where your team is starting from.
In a recent member’s call we were joined by the two authors who in an informal conversation took us through what’s in the change facilitation book, and they also shared a few insights on how your team can lead, plan, deliver, and sustain change.
Read moreFarther, Faster, and Far Less Drama offers a simple but powerful set of leadership behaviors to align teams and accelerate progress.
From team leaders to consultants to stay-at-home parents, everyone wishes life could be less complex, but that often feels impossible.
In this new book that came out in April, Janice and Jason Fraser introduce the Four Leadership Motions, a method they have been using for decades to help all kinds of teams make fast, meaningful progress—including Navy SEALs, startup CEOs, and Fortune 100 executives.
Read more“A productive work environment doesn’t have to be stressful.”
Back in April, Texas-based Maura Thomas released her most recent book on individual and corporate productivity titled "Everyone Wants to Work Here: Attract the Best Talent, Energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market".
Maura is an award-winning international speaker and trainer and saw a gap in the skills being developed in leaders and the ever-increasing demands of work. She’s spent decades working in the trenches with tens of thousands of leaders. This research has led to proven solutions for how leaders can solve the problems eating away at productivity, and help their teams succeed in today’s fluid, fast-paced work environments.
In a recent member’s call we held an informal book launch for the new book, where Maura told us more about the book and shared a few actionable steps to plug your productivity gaps and energise your team.
Read moreHow do you lead and deliver successful services, sustainably?
All organizations are becoming service organizations. But most weren’t built to deliver services successfully end-to-end, and the human, operational and financial impacts are abundantly clear.
In the digital era the stakes are even higher, given how rapidly services change. Yet default working practices (governance, planning, funding, leadership, reporting, programme and team structures) inside large organizations haven't changed. Rather than modernize just one service at a time, it's the underlying organizational conditions that need to be transformed — anything less is futile.
Kate Tarling has written the must-read guide: The Service Organization, which came out in February 2023. In a recent member call, Kate introduced the book and we also talked about the future of service organizations.
Below you’ll find my highlights from the call and at the end you can lean back and enjoy the recording.
Read moreHistory shows that hard times can lead to the greatest opportunities for renewal. The Purpose Upgrade, the latest book by UK-based Paul Skinner, supports readers in leading enterprises that thrive by solving our most important problems.
It shows how businesses can create more compelling benefits for customers, build meaningful livelihoods for colleagues, and unlock superior returns for investors by 'repurposing' and revitalising the activities they engage in.
The Purpose Upgrade is his second book. It builds on Collaborative Advantage: How collaboration beats competition as a strategy for success, which argued that we have now reached a turning point in history from which creating Competitive Advantage may no longer be in the best interests of an organisation.
Read moreThe conversation around digital leadership tends to go from somewhere between tech fascination and pretending that the rules of gravity don’t apply.
I’ve often wondered, why after all these years of doing digital, with many books covering each individual aspect of what that means, we haven’t had a handbook for leaders leading digital teams.
This is what Christian Vandsø Andersen, VP Digital at the LEGO Group, set out to write and in a recent member call he talked about his new book appropriately titled Wonderful digital leadership.
Read moreHow do you identify and remove the barriers to strong, effective content work?
This is the focus of Rachel McConnell’s recent book 'Leading Content Design', which shares how to create common standards, improve collaboration, iron out wrinkles in the design process, and build advocacy—so you can lead your team with impact.
Rachel works as Head of UX content at Flo, a women’s health app and was previously in various content roles at BT. In a recent member call, she shared her thinking behind the work and introduced us to her work on content operations.
Read more