Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays.
It brings great food and an opportunity to connect back with family and friends (something more important than ever these days), and it is also a day where we can reflect back on and give thanks for all the good that has happened over the past year.
Thinking of the Lantern Group, we have a lot to be thankful for.
2021 was a tough year for many people. The pandemic caused and continues to bring challenges and difficulties that make many people’s lives harder and more uncertain. There is a lot of political and social unrest – creating more stress and a breakdown of lots of social norms that we’ve had over the years (let’s have more conversation like this). Businesses have had to face with increased prices and challenges with finding workers and their supply chain woes.
So, there is a bit of dissonance when we look back at our year so far. Despite the challenges we are grateful that we’ve been able to grow, expand our offerings, and work on some really cool projects this year with new partners and new clients.
In many ways, our growth is a testament to how important it is to make work more human, to truly create environments that suffice the needs of the people that make up the workforce – not just the business they represent.
It’s a testament to the power of understanding “why we do what we do”. We hope that our growth is also a sign of the new frontier in how organizations understand and treat their people.
With that, we are truly grateful for the year we are having.
Our communication work continues to thrive with a huge increase in the number of clients and the types of communications that we are working on. We started this year working on one of the largest IC communications projects we’ve ever had – with over 100 interactive plan documents that integrated customized plan information, payout calculators, and whiteboard videos into one, interactive graphical document! The results were amazing with the reception by the sales team saying this was the best IC rollout ever.
We were also honored to be named the internal communication agency of record for the US division of a global pharmaceutical company, where we’ve had the opportunity to craft their monthly webinars, write the speeches and e-mails from the president, as well as work on their IC plan communication.
Beyond that we’ve also extended our video offerings, creating not just white board videos, but longer training videos, hybrid white-board and live videos, talking personalized avatars, and long format story videos designed to showcase and build positive culture.
In addition to our communication work, we’ve also grown in our consulting work. We were one of the founding members of Diversifi, the largest network of applied behavioral consultancies in the world, with over 250 behavioral scientists, in over 18 companies across the globe.
This work has led to some amazing projects utilizing behavioral science to better understand and improve the online subscription process for a large news organization as well as training the European division of a pharmaceutical company on how behavioral science can be integrated into their everyday work.
We’ve are also very grateful for the work we did in conjunction with Tim Houlihan on Leading Human® – which is a comprehensive Playbook and accompanying workbook that can help guide leaders on how to be more human centric and drive greater performance in these uncertain times. This collaboration highlights the integration of Kurt’s work with Behavioral Grooves into the Lantern Group. The insights that we’ve gained from talking with over 200 researchers and practitioners shows in the breadth and depth of the solutions that we can provide.
With that, Behavioral Grooves has also grown tremendously this past year, more than tripling monthly downloads with special series on context, anxiety at work, and conspiracy theories to name just a few of the new and exciting things we are doing there.
Join the movement and follow along here.
These experiences have also brought opportunities to present at conferences and inside organizations. We started the year by co-hosting the Nudge.It.North conference with over 200 participants and some of the greatest behavioral scientists and practitioners in the world – including Annie Duke, John Bargh, Gary Latham and Robert Cialdini to name a few. Kurt has also been honored to speak at several industry and company conferences – with the latest version taking him to Doha, Qatar to moderate and speak at the BX Arabia conference.
We are truly grateful for all the support and encouragement from you and the rest of our network. It has been an inspirational year that has us humbled and honored to be in the position that we are in.
It is with sincere gratitude that we will sit down at the Thanksgiving table this year and raise our glasses to all of you helping us have the year that we’ve had. Thank you!
And with reciprocity in mind, – as always, we would be happy to talk to any of you about your challenges that you are facing.
