Suggestions
Jeremy Dean
Founder of riders&elephants and The Emotional Culture Deck
Jeremy Dean is the Founder and Master Game Maker at riders&elephants, a company based in Wellington, New Zealand, that specializes in creating innovative games designed to facilitate emotional connections within teams and organizations. His work focuses on simplifying complex conversations about workplace culture and emotional dynamics, enabling leaders to better understand and engage with their teams.
Professional Background
- Founder & Master Game Maker at riders&elephants (May 2016 - Present)
- Dean's primary mission is to humanize decision-making processes by fostering open conversations about emotions, culture, and performance in the workplace. He emphasizes the importance of emotional culture, arguing that understanding emotions can significantly influence organizational behavior and effectiveness.1
- Previous Roles:
- New Zealand Cricket Museum Board of Trustees (May 2020 - Present)
- Board Member at Cricket Wellington Inc. (Sept 2018 - Oct 2020)
- Consultant at Ocean Design Group LTD (2013-2016), where he worked on brand and culture transformation for various businesses.
Philosophy and Approach
Dean believes that leaders must create environments where team members can express their emotions freely. He utilizes game design as a tool to help organizations articulate their values and desired emotional experiences. His approach often involves card games that prompt discussions about how employees want to feel at work, shifting the focus from traditional metrics of success to the emotional experiences that drive engagement and productivity.2
Outside of his professional endeavors, Dean enjoys outdoor activities such as cricket, golf, and fly-fishing with his wife on New Zealand's Tongariro River. He is passionate about making complex topics accessible and actionable for leaders looking to foster better workplace cultures.1
Highlights
“What a valuable Course! The ECD Masterclass provided insight to the evolution, psychology, practical application, and flexibility of using the ECD cards in a Workshop. The templates and tools shared are invaluable and will have such a positive impact in my application of the cards in future Workshops. I can’t wait to run my next session!” — Marah G, Manager, Learning & Talent Solutions, The Walt Disney Company
When a leader from The Walt Disney Company calls the ECD Masterclass "invaluable" and eagerly anticipates using it in future workshops, it’s clear this course delivers real impact. Join Marah and many other professionals worldwide who have discovered the power of The ECD to FLIP team dynamics and foster deeper emotional connections in the workplace.
If you've felt stuck or paralysed at work and unsure how to change things. If you're uninspired by the traditional methods of culture building and culture change. If you're facing a big challenge but have a small budget, if you've always wanted to be heard, but unable to communicate what's going on for you, or you know there just HAS to be a better way! Then our deceptively simple, counterintuitive, emotional culture crafting method could be what you've always needed but never knew!
This is your final opportunity to enrol in 2024—don’t miss your chance to enhance your skills and drive positive change in your organisation OR FOR YOUR CLIENTS!
Joining The ECD Online Masterclass is your chance to dive deep into the world of emotional culture to build a better workplace and team.
Back by Wharton Business School research and trusted by over 1,400 people across 40+ countries, with a 4.8-star rating. This course is designed to be both flexible and impactful—you can learn at your own pace, with bite-sized modules that fit easily into a busy schedule. It’s practical, hands-on learning in an online environment. Over the course of 90 days, you'll explore a wealth of practical tools, step-by-step guides, and real-life examples that will equip you to lead meaningful conversations and build a more emotionally aware leaders and teams.
The ECD reimagines the way people can connect and grow—at work, with their customers, and within themselves. We offer training that empowers you to guide others in laying their cards on the table and speaking their truth through simple, powerful words. We provide a structured, innovative approach for leaders to emotionally connect with their teams, and we give people the language they need to foster those deep connections.
If your goal is to help people redesign their lives, teams, or organisations, consider becoming ECD-Certified. With your All Access Community Pass, you’ll stay connected, continue learning, and be part of a global movement to create workplaces where people truly thrive.
Hope you'll join us!
#emotionalculture #emotionalculturedeck #emotionsatwork #emotions
How your people feel directly impacts your customers’ experience. Your customers and stakeholders experience emotions through their interactions with you. If you’re not deliberate and strategic about the emotions you want to foster and intentional about managing and addressing the undesired emotions within your team, your stakeholders will inevitably feel the effects.
So yesterday in Wellington, we explored how we create these conversations, plans and strategies! I had the incredible privilege of hosting our first-ever ECD Emotional Stakeholder Engagement Course. I want to take a moment to celebrate these amazing, curious, and daring early adopters who took the leap and became the world’s first ECD Stakeholder Practitioners! 🙌
This group embodies the spirit of curiosity and courage in our community, diving into new ways of thinking about stakeholder and customer relationships and how emotions play a crucial role in shaping them. They are pioneers, leading the way in rehumanising the workplace and setting the stage for others to follow.
During the course, we explored how to use The ECD to design emotion-led stakeholder experiences, connecting EX & CX—drawing inspiration from one of my all-time favourite ECD & CXD projects by Melanie Howell. We also focused on building human-centred partnerships that are built on a foundation of shared understanding of the emotions of the people within them.
Even though this course is all about Stakeholder (& Customer) engagement, it was also a bit of a trojan horse into emotional culture building. After all, how your people feel greatly influences your customers’ experience of your organisation, service, or brand.
This course is just one of three new certifications we’ve launched in 2024, and we’re thrilled to see how these certifications will expand globally. Stay tuned for more exciting news as our new ECD Specialist Courses will soon be delivered by our incredible ECD Certified Consultants in 15 countries around the world (and counting)!
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us yesterday—you’re making history and helping us flip the script on how organisations engage with their stakeholders (and the people who serve them).
#EmotionalCultureDeck #Leadership #StakeholderEngagement #ECDPractitioners #Innovation #WorkplaceCulture #LeadershipDevelopment #ridersandelephants
People also viewed
T
Related People
Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
People also viewed
TRelated People