From fan- to employee-obsessed: lessons from Taylor Swift (video)

Most organisations are busy, fragmented, and under pressure. People are heads-down, focused on delivery—but often disconnected from meaning, community, and impact. The result? Workplaces that function, but don’t inspire.

This conversation reframes that challenge through an unexpected lens: Taylor Swift’s fan obsession. What if HR leaders applied that same level of intentionality to employees?

1. Obsession is not optional

One of the clearest lessons is that great experiences don’t happen accidentally, they come from obsession.

Taylor Swift doesn’t just appreciate her fans, she is relentlessly focused on delighting them, even when it’s difficult. That level of commitment is what sustains loyalty at scale. 

For organisations this translates to why employee experience cannot be a side initiative but must be deeply felt, intentional and continuous.

2. Craft matters but relationships matter more

Many professionals pride themselves on their craft, whether that’s product, strategy or execution.

But Swift’s success shows a dual focus:

• Excellence in craft
• Equal investment in relationships

She listens, adapts and evolves based on her audience. 

For HR and leadership, this translates into a shift: rom building great systems to building meaningful relationships at scale.

3. Consistency builds trust, even through reinvention

Taylor Swift has reinvented her music repeatedly. But what hasn’t changed is her commitment to her fans. That consistency creates trust and trust enables change.

In organisations transformation often fails because trust is missing. The lesson here is clear: You can pivot strategy but not values.

4. Long-term thinking beats short-term pressure

Businesses often struggle with short-termism, driven by markets, metrics,and quarterly expectations.

Swift operates differently. Her decisions are guided by what feels right long-term, even when unconventional.  She doesn’t innovate for the sake of innovation but follows instinct, then adapts.

For leaders this suggests that strategic clarity comes less from over-planning and more from aligned, values-driven decisions over time.

5. Communication turns change into loyalty

Swift doesn’t just make bold decisions but explains them clearly and emotionally. When she reversed course on her music catalogue, fans didn’t resist but istead celebrated.  Why? Because they felt included.

For organisations this is critical. Change without communication creates confusion whereas change with clarity builds commitment.

Key takeaways

• Employee experience must be treated as an ongoing leadership priority, not a side initiative.
• Trust and consistency make reinvention possible.
• Great organisations balance craft excellence with strong relationships.
• Clear communication helps people stay aligned through change.
• Long-term loyalty is built through sustained attention to human experience.

👉 Watch the full video above to hear Kevin Evers explain why Taylor Swift’s fan obsession offers a powerful lesson for employee experience and leadership.. And listen to the full podcast Why Work Needs More Taylor Swifts

Transcript

We all work for organisations where people are trying their best and everyone's so busy heads down in their own work. And it's really hard to build these types of communities and workspaces where people thrive and feel like they matter and feel like they're doing something that serves a higher purpose.

So one thing I would say based on my research into Taylor Swift is, and we've talked a lot about this, is it needs to be an obsession, right? If you're in charge of people, like you need to feel it deeply and it needs to feel authentic to you to want to delight and bring joy to people's lives and to work as hard as possible to make that happen because it is a job it is really, really difficult to do. And if you look at Taylor, she has millions of fans who all have very, very strong opinions about what she should be doing. And she continually finds new ways to delight them. And that has to be a struggle for her to really try to come up with new ways to do that. Yet it's the work that she's willing to do. And I don't think that Taylor Swift would be as popular or as successful if she wasn't so obsessed with her fans and their experiences. And I think that's something that we can all take away from her. Taylor is, I call her fan obsessed. In business, we call customer obsessed. And this, I wouldn't say it's rare for an artist to be fan obsessed, but I think the levels that she goes to is pretty rare. And I think as creatives and artists, we tend to really focus on our craft. And I think that's

Essentially, you really do need to focus on your craft, but Taylor has always been equally obsessed about her fans. Finding new ways to delight her fans but also listening to her fans and really understanding what they want from her. And that's a big reason why she's able to make these shifts. It's a big reason why she's found such longevity because she never seems to lose track of that. We need to think about our jobs. We need to think about our craft. We need to think about the products that we're making. But I do think that it's equally important to think about the employee experience, but also our customer experience, right? And that's something that we need to be obsessed about. And that's what Taylor is. Taylor reinvents herself, but I think she prizes trust and consistency above all else. And it all comes back to her fans. So even though she's, she has moved from country music to pop music, to synth pop, to indie rock.

The core of what she does never changes. It's really hard to get past short-termism. It's a scourge on business. I mean, understand it. CEOs and leaders are beholden to their shareholders and Wall Street and the stock market tends to be very short-term focused.

Taylor's in a different position. She's a company of one and she's not a publicly traded company. But what I admire most about her is that she received the Innovator of the Year award from iHeartRadio. And she gets up to receive the award and she's almost sheepish about it. And she said, you know, I don't wake up every day saying I want to innovate stuff. I do what's best for me given the circumstances. And it just so happens that those decisions don't have prior precedent sometimes that some of my best decisions are ones that no one has done before. And I think that's what makes her such a great strategic thinker is she makes very music first decisions. She doesn't seem like the type that's sitting in a boardroom who's really trying to strategize like a chess grandmaster. She really tends to trust her instinct and wherever she wants her music to go, that's the direction she moves in. And then she makes decisions from there. That's where her strategies come from.

So think that's why a lot of her decision making, it does seem like she's three moves ahead of everyone else. But in many cases, I don't think she is. I think she's just really making decisions that's what's best for her. And then she has the ability to adapt and pivot from there. And you can see this when she bought back her re-recordings, or her original recordings, right? Because she had spent so much time doing the re-recordings, and it worked. She did everything she wanted to accomplish, yet she still bought back that original music. And that's her ability to adapt and do what's right based on the circumstances, even though you could argue that that decision might have been a tough one because she had asked her fans to not listen to the old music. And then now all of a sudden she's turning around and saying, you know what, never mind, you can listen to the old music now because I bought it back. But this is what she does so well. She changes, she adapts, and then she really, really communicates.

She makes sure that she communicates in a very clear and emotional way to her fans and it works because even when she brought back that old music, there really wasn't any pushback. Her fans were celebrating and called the day that she brought them back Independence Day. So her fans are just so willing to go above and beyond for her because Taylor makes sure to include them in the decision making, at least after she makes the decision, she's really clear about why she does the things that she does. For my entire career, I've been very craft focused, like very focused on improving as a writer, improving as an editor. And that's really important. But I think what Taylor has taught me is that yes, she's obsessed with those things too. She's a great songwriter. She's always trying to evolve and grow her craft. But again, she's like really, really smart at understanding that relationships are just as important. And I think I understood that, but just following her career, it's really hammered that home to me. And for her, it comes from a sense of humility, I think. She understands that superstars, in her case, aren't self-made. They're created by fans. It's a fan-generated phenomenon.

And that's why she's so obsessed with delighting her fans over and over and over again and building the right relationships to build her career. And that's something that I think about daily at this point, that it's not just about being a great writer. It's not just about being a great editor. It's really about building and forming exceptional relationships.