The author of best-sellers such as First, Break All the Rules and StrengthsFinder, is back with what might be his most arresting work thus far. Marcus Buckingham exhorts companies to adopt a paradigm shift in both their operations and outlook by ‘designing’ in the element of love. Design In Love pays undivided attention and wholehearted tribute to the one emotion that is all encompassing and not just universal. And in the process, reveals many facets which even though simmering right underneath our noses, have been unfortunately dismissed and disregarded as mirages.

Currently, the hallmark of many organisations, irrespective of the sector or segment of their operations, adopt an impersonal outlook towards not just customers, but also their own employees. As Buckingham demonstrates, customers and employees are faced with innumerable ‘hand-offs’ (physically and virtually being passed along department by department and personnel to personnel), shapeshifting (Delta airlines altering their frequent flyer programme from miles flown to amounts spent on credit cards), large spans of control leading to high attritions and outsourcing at the cost of empathy. Each of these experiences, bordering on indifference on the part of the manufacturer/service provider, according to Buckingham, is “unloving” to the recipient of the service or the product.

In order to transform unloving experiences into flourishing and memorable ones, Buckingham suggests incorporating five feelings of love: control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, and growth.

The act of control removes the disorienting fog of confusion, by providing appropriate clarifications and ensuring that the customer or employee is always on top and in control. Anticipating the emotional state and freeing a person from emotional incoherence lends harmony to every experience. As Buckingham illustrates, the nurses who administer injections and drips with the least amount of pain are those who prior to commencing their procedure, gently but candidly inform their patients that there is going to be a bit of pain.

The five feelings of love need to be ‘administered’ in a sequential manner and not in a random way. A leader can design in love in her workplace by being both a mover and a maker. A mover leads with authenticity, beliefs and customs. While a mover designs in love as an innate quality, a maker spreads it outwards thereby impacting and influencing everyone around him.

Buckingham also intersperses this philosophy with a clutch of real-world experiences. Disney’s ethos of providing genuine customer experiences for people thronging their theme parks, Patagonia’s resolute and undying promise to make the world a better place and practicing what they preach, all make for some absorbing reading.

Taking a contrarian approach, Buckingham cocks a snook at the process of feedback. Terming it archaic he makes a clarion call for discarding the same. Instead, a leader would do well to ‘Walk the Stage’. As demonstrated by Joey, an employee at the departmental store Kroger, a leader would do well to put himself into the shoes of his customer and try experiencing the pleasures and pains which a customer would, by walking around the store. This is the best feedback mechanism one can incorporate.

Design Love In contains more such examples that are thought provoking. Marcus Buckingham aspires to induce companies to buck the conventional trend and shift to integrating the most powerful life force as an integral part of business.

Design Love In is published by Harvard Business Review Press and will be available on sale beginning April 7, 2026.

Thank you, Net Galley for the Advance Reviewer Copy!