Every business problem is a human problem. The companies that win are the ones that learn to decode it.
In this episode of Show Your Value, Lee Benson sits down with Johanna Faigelman, anthropologist and founder and CEO of Human Branding, a global consultancy trusted by Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Visa, and Logitech. She's spent 25 years studying why humans actually do what they do, and she's built a career taking that lens into the boardroom, where the data ends and the real answers begin.
Johanna explains why surveys tell you everything about the what and nothing about the why, and why the why is where all the value hides. She shares the story of taking a banking executive out of his boardroom and into a customer's living room in New Jersey, sitting cross-legged on the floor in his socks, and the epiphany he still talks about years later. Her iceberg principle runs through the whole conversation: 80 percent of what drives your people and your customers sits below the waterline, invisible to dashboards, and that's exactly where culture lives.
Lee brings the operator's side of the same truth. He built a company of over 500 people with no HR department, no employee lawsuits, and no leader who ever quit, then watched that culture change the moment new ownership set a different tone. He's candid about where he thinks the leadership industry gets it wrong, and why concepts that never connect to measurable value creation are wasted money.
Along the way, they cover:
- What an anthropologist sees in your company within an hour of walking in
- Why leaders hide behind surveys instead of talking to their people
- The living room epiphany that changed how one C-suite leader saw his customers forever
- Why AI gives leaders amazing answers to the wrong questions, and why human wisdom is becoming more valuable, not less
- The most emotional purchase decision you'll ever make (it's not what you think)
- Fulfilment as the most important number, and how intentional value creation earned Lee a 3x exit multiple
Learn more about Johanna's work at humanbranding.com.
Most leadership teams don't have an effort problem, they've got an operating discipline problem.
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