New book by Greg Kihlström discusses follow-through on key priorities as the competitive differentiator between leading and lagging businesses
What do our words truly mean, whether they are posted on a website, spoken on a shareholder call, projected on a wall in an internal meeting, or shared with a customer? While eloquently written prose may inspire and engage any audience for a short time, it is our actions that define both our priorities as well as our future success.
Our priorities are what we do not what we say we’d like to do. This premise forms the foundation of Priority is Action: 7 Principles for Better Strategies, Decisions, and Outcomes. In this twentieth book from best-selling author Greg Kihlström, readers are given a reality check on the difference between a strategic priority and business realities. The book is centered around seven principles that separate leading organizations from laggards, and the mindsets and ideals that make the difference between achieving important goals and getting mired in bureaucracy, groupthink, and a focus on the wrong things at the wrong times.
These seven principles are explained in terms of what we should be striving for as well as some of the myths that often plague otherwise high-functioning teams. Mixing real-world examples and stories with some hypotheticals, Kihlström has created a business book that offers practical advice and actions that readers can take immediately.
Drawing on Kihlström’s experience working with some of the world’s top brands, as well as hundreds of interviews with Fortune 500 customer experience leaders and industry-leading platform marketing technology executives and thought leaders for this book and his podcast, The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström, the blueprint to achieve a customer-centric, sustainable platform for growth is made tangible.
Priority is Action is Kihlström’s twenty-first book, following the internationally best-selling House of the Customer (2023), and his best-selling The Agile Brand Guide series of short-read books on marketing technology platforms and concepts.
About Greg Kihlström
Greg Kihlström is a best-selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur, and serves as an advisor and consultant to top companies on marketing technology, marketing operations, customer experience, and digital transformation initiatives. He has worked with some of the world’s top brands, including Adidas, Coca-Cola, FedEx, HP, Marriott, Nationwide, Victoria’s Secret, and Toyota.
He is a multiple-time Co-Founder and C-level leader, leading his digital experience agency to be acquired by the largest independent marketing agency in the DC region in 2017, successfully exited an HR technology platform provider he co-founded in 2020, and led a SaaS startup to be acquired by a leading edge computing company in 2021. He currently advises and sits on the Board of a marketing technology startup.
In addition to his experience as an entrepreneur and leader, he earned his MBA, is currently a doctoral candidate for a DBA in Business Intelligence, and teaches several courses and workshops as a member of the School of Marketing Faculty at the Association of National Advertisers. He has served on the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Marketing Mentorship Advisory Board, the University of Richmond’s CX Advisory Board, and was the founding Chair of the American Advertising Federation’s National Innovation Committee. Greg is Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified, is an Agile Certified Coach (ICP-ACC), and holds a certification in Business Agility (ICP-BAF).
Greg has had multiple best-selling books, including his 10-part Agile Brand Guides series on marketing technology platforms and practices. His most recent book, the best-selling House of the Customer (2023) discusses the 1:1 personalized customer experience of the future, and how brands can organize the people, processes, and platforms that enable it. His award-winning podcast, The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström, now in its 6th year with over 450 episodes and 2 million downloads, discusses brand strategy, marketing, and customer experience with some of the world’s leading experts and leaders.
Greg is a contributing writer to Fast Company, Forbes, MarTech, CustomerThink, and CMSWire, and has been featured in publications such as Advertising Age and The Washington Post. Greg has been named a 2022 Top 10 Marketing and Customer Experience Thought Leader by Thinkers 360, was named one of ICMI’s Top 25 CX Thought Leaders two years in a row, and a DC Inno 50 on Fire as a DC trendsetter in Marketing. He’s also participated as a speaker at global industry events and has guest lectured at prominent universities and colleges.