#023 How to Make Business Beautiful with Tim Leberecht

Making Business Art

If you could reinvent your organization and your career, what would you do? After many years of working with executives from prominent organizations, Tim Leberecht recognized and wanted to support people’s desire to feel a sense of belonging, dream bigger, stretch their wings and transform how they lived and worked. After publishing his first book, The Business Romantic, Tim took the leap to reinvent his career and life. He co-founded The House of Beautiful Business, a unique company that helps humanize organizations and build a more beautiful future. Today Tim is sought out by leaders of Fortune 500 companies and organizations across sectors who are seeking to develop a new playbook to align their work with a deeper sense of purpose and human connection.

In this conversation Tim and I discuss the work he does through The House of Beautiful Business; how his time as a musician and recording artists influences his work today; lessons learned as a C-suite executive; how to create beauty in business; the importance of cultivating imagination and conviction; and how the future of business might be outside of business.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Tim Leberecht is a German-American entrepreneur, curator, and author, and the co-founder and co-CEO of the House of Beautiful Business, the global network for the life-centered economy. Previously, Tim served as the chief marketing officer of NBBJ, a global design and architecture firm. From 2006 to 2013, he was the chief marketing officer of product design and innovation consultancy Frog Design.

He has spoken at numerous conferences worldwide including AI Masters, DLD, HSM Expo, New Cities Summit, Online Marketing Rockstars, Re:publica, SXSW, The Conference, The Economist Big Rethink, The Next Web, Unleash, Thinking Digital, WOBI, and the World Economic Forum. His TED Talks “3 Ways to (Usefully) Lose Control of Your Brand” and “4 Ways to Build a Human Company in the Age of Machines” have been viewed more than 3 million times to date.

Moreover, Tim has delivered keynotes and workshops for many leading global brands, including at high-profile senior executive forums for Adobe, Airbus, BCG, Cap Gemini, Daimler, Deloitte, Galp, Google, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Merck, Porsche, SAP, Siemens, Sky, UPS, and others.

Tim served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Values from 2013 to 2016. He is a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader.

He is the author of the book The Business Romantic (Harper Business, 2015), which has been translated into ten languages to date, and The End of Winning (Droemer, 2020). He is currently working on a new book about curation. His writing regularly appears in publications such as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Inc, Psychology Today, Quartz, and Wired. He is the co-publisher of the Book of Beautiful Business (2019), and the co-host of the Next Visions podcast with Porsche as well as the Tangier Memos podcast.

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we explore how to make our work more meaningful and enchanting for ourselves and the people we serve. We draw lessons and inspiration from entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, creative leaders and artists about creating remarkable experiences that light up our customers and our teams.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.