The Employee Advantage with Stephan Meier

In this episode of Disengaged, I'm joined by Stephan Meier — behavioral economist, Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School, and author of The Employee Advantage — to explore why the next great shift in business is from customer-centricity to employee-centricity.Stephan's argument is that business has made this journey before. Companies moved from a product-centric to a customer-centric model, building tools along the way — segmentation, journey mapping, personalisation — to understand and delight customers. Those same tools can now be repurposed for employees, and the companies that do it will create an advantage rivals cannot easily copy. As Stephan puts it, hard is good: a culture where people are engaged, motivated, and innovative takes years to build — and that is exactly what makes it difficult to compete with.What we covered:The evolution from shareholder value to customer centricity to employee centricityThe zero-sum fallacy — Amazon's Harry Potter gamble and Costco's employee-first economicsWhere money works, where it stops moving the needle, and how a $5 favour destroys a friendshipPurpose — Kennedy's single mission for NASA and the janitor who wasn't mopping floorsThe engaged coach — clear direction with real empowermentEli Lilly applying customer journey mapping to female talent progressionH-E-B's cult following and the four-star truck driverHaier's RenDanHeYi model of autonomous micro-enterprisesBuurtzorg's self-managing nurse teamsJust right tasks — why the reward for good work is more good workAI-powered internal talent marketplaces at MasterCard, MetLife, and UnileverThe workforce of one — segmentation and personalisation through one-on-onesPeopleStephan Meier — author of The Employee AdvantageAlfie Kohn — author of Punished by RewardsDart Lindsley — host of Work for HumansJessie Zwaan — value beyond priceMegan Bernard-May — people experience designUri Gneezy — Stephan's co-author on incentivesTeresa Amabile and Steven Kramer — meaningful progressJos de Blok — founder of BuurtzorgJoseph Overton — the Overton windowDan Gutman and Stuart Gibbs — the just right booksBooksThe Employee Advantage — Stephan MeierPunished by Rewards — Alfie KohnMy Weird School series — Dan GutmanSpy School series — Stuart GibbsOrganisationsAmazon, Costco, Starbucks — customer centricity case studiesEli Lilly — employee journey mappingH-E-B — the employee-centric grocerHaier / GE Appliances — autonomous micro-enterprisesBuurtzorg — self-managing nurse teamsMasterCard, MetLife, Unilever — internal talent marketplacesNovartis / Sandoz — one-on-one personalisationFind Stephan at stephanmeier.com, where you can subscribe to his newsletter on the human-centric future of work — each edition comes with an original stop-motion Lego movie.