“Lower Value Human Capital.” A CEO Actually Said That Out Loud.

July 06, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

The Standard Chartered Backlash Is a Warning About the Words Every Leader Chooses — and the Culture Those Words Reveal Four Words That Should Never Be Said Out Loud — and Were Last month, Bill Winters, the CEO of Standard Chartered, one of the largest international banks in the world, stood in front of investors... Read Full Article

Your Industry is Innovating Service Delivery…So Why Are Your Customers More Frustrated Than Ever?

June 29, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

I See This All the Time — and It’s Genuinely Hard to Watch A leadership team spends 18 months rolling out a new service delivery platform. They’ve done the demos, run the pilots, built the business case. They’re proud of it. And within a few months of launch, the customer complaints start climbing. I’ve walked... Read Full Article

The 20% Rule Every CEO is Ignoring

June 15, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

The Stat That Should Stop Every CEO in Their Tracks Here’s a number I keep coming back to: companies with satisfied employees achieve a 20% higher customer satisfaction rate. Not 2%. Not a rounding error. Twenty percent. 2026 job satisfaction analysis that compiled data across thousands of organizations. And yet, when I walk into most... Read Full Article

The New Employee Honeymoon Is Dead. Here’s What Killed It — and How to Fix It.

June 02, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

A Major 2026 Research Report Reveals That Onboarding Is Now the Worst Experience New Hires Have. Here’s What That Means for Your Business. A Stat That Should Stop Every Leader Cold The Qualtrics 2026 Employee Experience Trends Report — drawing on research from employees across 24 countries and every major industry — dropped a finding... Read Full Article

Good at Their Job. Killing Your Culture.

May 19, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

Two Employees Every Leader Is Afraid to Confront — and the Framework That Changes Everything A Leadership Study That Put a Number on Something I’ve Known for Decades A recent piece in CEOWORLD Magazine on courageous leadership included a finding I want every leader to sit with. Eighty-six percent of employees believe courageous leadership is... Read Full Article

The Lazy Way Out: Why Your Customer Experience Inconsistency Is a Leadership Problem, Not a People Problem

May 04, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

What Marc Benioff’s Callout of His Fellow CEOs Reveals About Building a Turnkey System for Consistency Marc Benioff Said Something This Week That Every Leader Needs to Hear On April 7th, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff went on record with a take that made headlines across the business world. Speaking about the wave of tech layoffs... Read Full Article

“I Hate AI Chatbots.” — And Why That’s the Best News Your Team Has Heard All Year

April 27, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

How to Inspire Buy-In from Employees Who Think Great Service Doesn’t Matter Anymore Three Words That Dominated Headlines This Week “I hate chatbots.” That was the headline on CNBC’s April 1st story that went viral this past week. And honestly? I wasn’t surprised by a single word of it. I’ve been saying some version of... Read Full Article

“Back to Starbucks” Is Working. Here’s the Leadership Lesson Behind It.

April 20, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

How One Brand’s Comeback Reveals the Answer to Modeling the Behaviors You Want to See I’ll Be Honest With You About Starbucks I have a complicated relationship with the Starbucks story right now. On one hand, I’ve spent 25 years holding them up as one of the greatest customer experience organizations ever built. I helped... Read Full Article

Tariffs Are Scaring Your Customers Into Shopping on Price. Here’s How You Win Anyway.

April 13, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

Your Customers Are Scared. What Are You Going to Do About It? I’ve been in the customer experience business for over 25 years. I’ve consulted through recessions, a global pandemic, and more rounds of “unprecedented uncertainty” than I can count. But what’s happening right now, in April 2026, is one of the most important moments… Read Full Article

What Are the Top Service Trends CEOs Can’t Ignore?

March 30, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

Why the Companies Rushing to Replace People with AI Are Already Reversing Course The Research That Confirms What I’ve Been Saying for Years I’ll be honest — I wasn’t surprised when I read this. But I was glad the data finally caught up. According to new research from Gartner released in February 2026, half of… Read Full Article