Archive for Leigh Sauter

Every day, organizations lose millions in a cost center that never shows up on their balance sheets. Gallup calls it disengagement. I call it the “Silence Tax” – and it’s far more expensive than most leaders realize. Early in my career, I discovered why. While analyzing employee engagement surveys, I noticed something that changed how […]

Mark Perna’s recent Forbes article highlighting frontline worker burnout resonated with me, particularly the stark statistic that 83% of Gen Z frontline workers are experiencing burnout. As someone who partners with visionary leaders to transform workplace culture, I see this as both a warning signal and an opportunity for meaningful change. The disconnect between frontline […]

When I recently shared findings from SHRM’s 2024 Global Workplace Culture report on social media, I didn’t expect the floodgates to open. But with over 250 raw, emotional responses, it became clear that workers are desperate to be heard about the real state of workplace culture. The timing is painfully relevant. According to SHRM’s research, […]

Your people want to be heard. But there’s a fundamental difference between having a feedback channel and having a feedback culture. Let’s break down three critical factors that determine whether a feedback system thrives or withers. Create Loops, Not Just Channels Think of feedback as a circuit rather than a pipeline. A pipeline moves things […]

For decades, business leaders have dismissed workplace culture as a “soft” issue – something nice to have but secondary to the “real” metrics of revenue, profit, and market share. Command-and-control leadership, with its emphasis on top-down directives and strict hierarchies, has long been viewed as the path to operational excellence. But the data tells a […]

Have you ever had that moment, about six months after you adopted a company-wide strategy, when reality hits? The offsite was inspiring. The deck was polished. And everyone left feeling bought in. But now, the sales team says market conditions changed. Operations is drowning in competing priorities. Marketing’s still trying to “align messaging” while campaigns […]

2025 will require new approaches to building and sustaining healthy workplace cultures.
The organizations that will thrive are those that can honor their legacy while embracing change, preserve their core wisdom while welcoming new perspectives, and create environments where every generation can contribute their best work.

What if instead of asking “Why won’t Gen Z adapt to our workplace?” we asked “Why are we so attached to practices that don’t serve our business?” Forward-thinking companies are realizing that reducing unnecessary friction isn’t “coddling” – it’s smart business.

When companies first get excited about creating a shadow board, they often rush straight to execution, eager to start gathering insights from their frontline employees. But here’s what I learned the hard way: the infrastructure you build at the start determines whether your shadow board drives real change or becomes just another failed initiative.

In 2019, Harvard Business Review published an article that caught my eye – a case study of how Gucci used a “shadow board” of younger employees to drive unprecedented growth. While their competitor Prada was watching sales decline by 11.5%, Gucci’s revenues soared 136% over four years. The difference? Prada admitted to being “slow in […]