A thoughtful book by Marcus Buckingham on how to design love into business

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a thoughtful 2026 book by Marcus Buckingham titled Design Love In: How to unleash the most powerful force in business. Google Books has a preview through page 38. Marcus discusses it in a ChangeThis manifesto on April 8, 2026 titled The Business Case for Love. DLI is his acronym for Design Love In.

 

On page 11 he says:

 

“For leaders to create reliable, repeatable changes in behavior, they must focus on the experience that creates the forces that create the behavior. This means leaders must understand their real job. Leadership is not fundamentally about clarifying expectations or motivating teams or cascading strategies. Leadership is the craft of shaping the experiences that shape human behavior. Leaders – the most effective ones – are experience-makers.

 

This insight reframes leadership entirely. Every moment between a leader and a colleague or a leader and a customer is an experience. The first day on the job is an experience. The weekly check-in is an experience. Sending an email is an experience. Presenting work is an experience. Being recognized, being challenged, being supported – or conversely, being dismissed or ignored – are all experience. What we measure on employee and customer surveys are felt experiences. What we label ‘culture’ is really just the aggregated experiences of the employees. When we say we want to build a strong culture, what we actually mean is that we want to design every touchpoint so carefully that each person has a similar experience. (And culture building is so hard precisely because there are so many touchpoints that have to be designed).

 

Always remember that because leaders create experiences in every moment, they are always shaping the internal forces that shape behavior. The question is not whether you, as a leader, are an experience-maker. You are. The question is whether you’re a skilled one.

 

So to help you build this skill, in part one of the book you’ll learn that love isn’t purely mysterious – that instead, love, when deconstructed, reveals itself to comprise five distinct feelings. These five feelings are sequential. You start with number one and end with number five. The leader with the DLI skill knows how to use this sequence as their blueprint for designing love in to [sic] anything - from onboarding to a team meeting to a customer interaction with a brand.

 

….In part two of the book, you’ll take these insights, this data and these perspectives, and put them into practice. Specifically, you’ll learn the playbook for how to design love in to [sic] the experiences of those you lead and of those you serve.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A table of mine, shown above, summarizes the five feelings of love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marcus has a series of nine graphics starting on page 17  (which I have summarized above in another table) which compare the Current mindSET with the corresponding DLI mindMOVE.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, as shown above, his curious choice of graphics put the Current mindSET at the upper left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Cartesian coordinates we would expect that to be at the lower left (Quadrant III) and the DLI mindMOVE at the upper right (Quadrant I), as is shown in my revision.

 

The falling in love cartoon came from OpenClipArt.