The Strategy Skills Podcast: Management Consulting | Strategy, Operations & Implementation | Critical Thinking

In this conversation with Bree Groff, author of "Today Was Fun" and who has advised executives at Microsoft, Google, Target, and Hilton through periods of organizational change, shares specific observations about leadership blind spots in large corporations and offers practical frameworks for creating workplace cultures that drive both performance and employee satisfaction.   Key Insights: The Professional Conformity Trap: Large organizations often mistake formality for competence, creating environments where rigid presentation styles and corporate jargon become proxies for professionalism. This stifles the creativity and authenticity that both employees and customers actually seek. Organizations that are "unapologetically themselves" create magnetic appeal, as demonstrated by early Google's distinctive culture.   The Psychological Safety Framework: Effective leaders implement simple tools to humanize workplace interactions. The "check-in" method—where meeting participants rate their current state on a scale