Performance follows dignity.

I used to think I worked in advertising. In reality, I worked in self-expression. It simply took me a while to realize it.

Over the course of my career, I discovered the vast difference between people who say whatever helps them sell and people who are connected, down to their toes, with who they are and what they do. I now dare to say that this is what ultimately matters: connection—with yourself, with others, and with your surroundings.

Almost every question about culture, engagement, or leadership that I encounter in my work eventually comes down to that. This is what I find so destructive about bullshit: it breaks connection. It alienates you from yourself. People feel it. Organizations do too.

We can repair what false ideals and borrowed ambition pulled apart. We can break with the story that we must make grand promises to be seen, or perform in order to prove our worth.

Performance follows dignity.Not the other way around.

You are not a human resource, consumer, employee, brand, or project. We are mortal, relational, improbable, searching, responsible—and above all, makers of meaning. We matter.

That is why we must keep connecting who we are with what we do. We must keep examining what has meaning, and what is bullshit—not only in our organizations, but especially within ourselves.