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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

I started writing a series I was going to publish on Medium in my work pub a while back. I did one, but it didn't get much traction at all, so I shelved the idea. But there are so many work lessons you can extract from them - so so so many.

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Lisa Cunningham DeLauney's avatar

Values are at the core of it all, Bette. Great example. I just finished reading Maurice White's autobiography. He had very strong values and a clear vision for Earth Wind & Fire. But not everyone else was on the same page. There are fascinating leadership lessons in many band stories. It's so intense!

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Project Sunstone's avatar

Great story and reminder that it isn’t usually good vs bad, or in vs out, but just differences.

Harnessing the differences into a whole can be powerful, but also a challenge.

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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

Exactly! And sometimes you can’t overcome those differences. I do think if you can discuss them you can find an amicable way of moving forward rather than imploding or creating hurt feelings.

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Mack Collier's avatar

Thanks for commenting. I agree, those differences can cause friction, or they can compliment each other to create more value as a whole. Tricky balance to maintain, especially in a space like the music industry, where egos often collide!

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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

Plenty of egos collide in any workplace trust me. I saw it over and over in higher education - some pretty big egos there too! lol

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Hans Jorgensen's avatar

This was really fun to read! And it helped me to consider wise ways of making a change when values don't align. I hadn't guessed that you would bring KISS and leadership together in such a memorable way, but I loved it.

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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

I’m so glad you enjoyed it Hans. I think if leaders could just talk openly about this with their employees or followers I think they might find they could come to some amicable agreement where moving on might be best for all involved or a compromise could potentially happen that could make everyone happier. But when the first instinct by leaders is to tighten their grip to make the employee bend, nothing good comes from that in the long run.

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Mack Collier's avatar

Thank you, Hans! I love creative examples to illustrate concepts, Bette did a great job here!

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Neela 🌶️'s avatar

KISS as a masterclass in leadership dysfunction? Didn’t see that one coming lol

Reading this reminded me of an old startup I joined that had a similar split.

The founders wanted to scale fast, while the original team just wanted to build beautiful things. They didn’t implode… but they definitely frayed. Brilliant take on the cost of misalignment.

Thank you Bette.

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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

Why thank you! I had a lot of fun writing this one. I’m really big on misalignment and values mismatch with employees and organizations. I wish I had understood these concepts decades ago. It would have saved me a lot of headache over the years.

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Neela 🌶️'s avatar

Oh me too Bette.

We live and learn and hopefully we can help others now.

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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

I do believe every story can teach us something ;)

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Mack Collier's avatar

Hmmmm…sounds like we need a Paul Harvey, The Rest of the Story for those two companies! Thanks for commenting and supporting, sis!

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Neela 🌶️'s avatar

always will bro and thank you for looking out.

Another guy thought I was on brand hahahahahaha

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Mack Collier's avatar

LOL We all love your brand!

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