When I wrote The Collaborative Organization, I was engaged. When I wrote my second book, The Future of Work, I was married. Now, with The Employee Experience Advantage, I'm a dad.

Each book thus far has been accompanied by a major life event and amazing new experiences. I am grateful for all of them and am excited to see what will happen when I write my next book!

My wife, Blake, has been my biggest source of inspiration, encouragement, and support. We spend most of our time together working and playing, and I'm so fortunate to have married my best friend. She makes me a better person. My family both near and far, I love you very much and appreciate your continued support and curiosity for what I do!

Writing a book is certainly a journey, and this one has been no exception, especially when considering the extensive research project that was conducted. I want to thank the John Wiley & Sons team for helping make this book possible: Lia, Peter, Shannon, and Elizabeth, you have all been a pleasure to work with (again!). Serge da Motta Veiga from American University, thank you for your support and guidance during the launch of this project. Steve King from Emergent Research, your advice, e‐mails, and phone calls really helped shape this project; thank you so much for your brilliant insights. Connie Chan, my business partner at The Future of Work Community, thank you for your continued support. A big thank‐you to all the members of The Future of Work Community, who continue to graciously share insights, ideas, and interesting topics for me to explore and think about. I've interviewed hundreds of senior executives at organizations around the world; thanks to all of you for being so open and transparent with me.

A big thank‐you to my team, who do an awesome job supporting me. Allen Mendoza, you're the best creative designer I have ever worked with; thank you for creating the book jacket and all the images in this book! Megan and Jen, thanks for keeping me on track and organized and for all you do to help make sure my ideas and messages keep spreading! Vlada, many thousands of people have listened to my podcasts and videos that you helped put together; thank you. Trisa, Teresa, Stacy, Alexis, and Erica, thanks for helping me research the hundreds of companies for this research project. Jeffrey, you are an awesome data scientist and analyst. Thank you for the hundreds of hours you contributed to help make sure all the collected data was accurate, reliable, and something that I could actually understand!

Two organizations graciously agreed to sponsor the research that is shared throughout this book. Those two organizations are Lever and Cisco, which you will learn more about in the following chapters. Francine Katsoudas, Gianpaolo Barozzi, and Leela Srinivasan, thanks for your continued support and for believing in me and in this project!