by Annette Franz | Jul 15, 2026 | alignment, culture, customer experience, employee experience, golden thread, leadership, outcomes, strategy, systems thinking, Uncategorized
This is the fourth in a series on the Golden Thread and your systems. If you haven’t read Where the Golden Thread Breaks Most Often or Strategy Is a System, Not a Statement or Customers Don’t Experience Your Intentions. They Experience Your Systems. it’s worth...
by Annette Franz | Jul 8, 2026 | business outcomes, culture, customer experience, employee experience, golden thread, leadership, systems thinking, Uncategorized
This is the third in a series on the Golden Thread and your systems. If you haven’t read Where the Golden Thread Breaks Most Often or Strategy Is a System, Not a Statement, it’s worth starting there. We’ve established that the Golden Thread breaks when what leaders...
by Annette Franz | Jul 1, 2026 | culture, customer experience, employee experience, golden thread, leadership, strategy, Uncategorized
“Be customer-centric.” “Put employees first.” “Create a great experience.” Leaders say these things. They mean them. And then they wonder why nothing actually changes. Back in 2015, I wrote an article called “Be Positive” Is Not a...
by Annette Franz | Jun 24, 2026 | culture, first principles thinking, golden thread, outcome tracing, outcomes, Uncategorized
Most organizations solve problems by analogy, as Elon Musk and others would say. Here’s what that looks like: outcomes go sideways so someone benchmarks a competitor, imports a “best practice,” or hires a consultant to install a framework that worked somewhere...
by Annette Franz | Jun 17, 2026 | culture, employee experience, golden thread, leadership, transformation, Uncategorized
Which comes first, mindset or behavior? Leaders have been asking this question for decades (well, I know I have), and most of them have been answering it wrong. The common assumption is that behavior is the practical entry point, one that is visible, measurable, and...
by Annette Franz | Jun 10, 2026 | artificial intelligence, culture, customer experience, employee experience, golden thread, leadership, outcomes, Uncategorized
Leaders aren’t struggling with AI because the technology is immature. They’re struggling with it because their businesses are, and no amount of sophisticated tooling fixes that. They jump into pilots, use cases, and vendor contracts without first answering the most...
