Flourishing Edge Podcast with Ashish Kothari Building Flourishing Cultures and Human-Centered Leadership with Jeffrey Schmitz
What if your company’s greatest competitive edge wasn’t technology or strategy — but culture?
In this inspiring episode of The Flourishing Edge Podcast, Ashish Kothari sits down with Jeffrey Schmitz, CEO of Zebra Technologies, to explore how the global tech leader is redefining success through its brand philosophy: Better Every Day.
From engineering to marketing to becoming Chief People Officer and now CEO, Jeff’s career journey embodies a human-centered approach to leadership — one that proves people and purpose are at the heart of innovation and performance. Together, they dive deep into how flourishing cultures, inclusive leadership, and continuous learning create long-term business success in a rapidly changing, AI-driven world.
Key Insights & Takeaways:
- 🧭 The heart of leadership: Why people, not products or profits, define the true strength of a company.
- 🌱 The power of purpose: How Zebra Technologies built its “Better Every Day” brand around continuous improvement and collective growth.
- 🤝 Culture as a competitive edge:
- How Zebra successfully merged two massive companies (Zebra + Motorola Enterprise) through shared experiences, not slogans.
- Why culture must be defined, invested in, and lived — not left to chance.
- 💬 Belonging as survival: How inclusion and belonging fuel creativity, innovation, and retention across 54 countries and 9,900+ employees.\
- 🚀 Ownership and growth: Why the key to flourishing careers is never outsourcing your development — and how Zebra empowers employees to own their Individual Development Plans (IDPs).
- 🧠 Happiness & resilience: Jeff’s personal “5-3-2” practice — five gratitudes, three acts of kindness, and two minutes to reset before reentering family life — and why positivity, hard work, and curiosity are his “three foundations for success.”
- 🤖 Leading in the age of AI:
- How Zebra is creating safe AI sandboxes for experimentation and play.
- Why curiosity is now a hiring requirement and the key to thriving in a fast-changing tech landscape.
- 🌍 The future of flourishing leadership: Practical advice for executives who want to build purpose-driven, adaptive, and joyful organizations — even under shareholder pressure
🧘 Guest Spotlight: Jeffrey Schmitz
CEO, Zebra Technologies
🔗 Connect with Jeffrey on LinkedIn
Jeffrey Schmitz is a visionary leader who believes culture is the ultimate driver of business success. His career spans engineering, marketing, and HR — culminating in his leadership of Zebra Technologies, a global powerhouse known for its people-first, innovation-driven approach.
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Happiness Squad Website: https://happinesssquad.com/
Ashish Kothari: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishkothari1/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@MyHappinessSquad
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/happiness-squad
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