#122—Stephan Meier: Employee-Centricity as a Competitive Advantage

Outthinkers

Stephan Meier, is Chair of the Management Division and the James P. Gorman Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School whose work lies at the intersection of behavioral economics, business strategy, and the future of work.

Customer-centricity has long been at the forefront of conversations that involve optimizing profit, with the idea that happy customers lead to increased revenues. But a new theory is quickly gaining traction—that employee-centricity is just as important.

Stephen is a big advocate for the idea that happy employees not only boost company morale, but have a clear direct correlation on the bottom line. In his upcoming October 2024 book, The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Business Thrive, he collects fascinating case studies and insights from his research to showcase how businesses that invest in employee experience often outperform others.
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In this conversation, we discuss key points from his book, including:

• How you can adapt customer-centricity frameworks and tools to improve your employee experience
• The four key motivators in the workplace beyond compensation that have an enormous impact on performance
• How technology can both help and hinder the workplace—and how you can use it to optimize the employee experience

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
1:26—Introducing Stephan+ the topic of today’s episode
2:59—If you really know me, you know that...
5:34—What's your definition of strategy?
06:06—The thesis of Stephan's book
08:38—Clarifying employee value creation
09:58—Employees as the new customer
16:13—How companies should see their employees
19:49—Are companies really prioritizing employees?
22:03—Common misconceptions about employee motivation
27:47—Exemplary employee-centric companies
32:20—How can people follow you and continue learning from you?
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Additional Resources:
Personal site: www.stephanmeier.com
Link to book: The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Business Thrive
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephan-meier-5297082/
X: https://x.com/meier_steph?lang=en

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.
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