During my most recent trip to India I was invited to speak as part of a series called The Other Side, in which business leaders share stories about how they rebounded after failures and setbacks. At my advanced age I have plenty of those, but I decided to tell them The Big Story about how I […]
I’m not sure a pseudonym is really me, and other debates Read More »
A second look at how United Airlines just can’t seem to avoid shooting itself in the foot any time it leans on corporate communciations to accomplish anything. This time they completely, utterly botch an employee engagement effort by replacing a bonus program with… well, you have to read about it to believe it.
How not to build employee engagement Read More »
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” – T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (1920) Professional marketers and communicators often take their inspiration from earlier works in fine art or popular culture, and build new commercial messages that evoke or take off
Mature poets steal Read More »
Being a company spokesperson is an important role. And there are rules – rules about professionalism and rules about ethics – that guide us business communicators in the execution of that role. The spokespeople in the Trump administration, unfortunately, completely trash those rules.
Five rules for spokespersons in the age of Trump Read More »
Two recent articles on the news site Quartz caught my attention, as they both had to do with the importance of knowing your skill set, and the value of transferable knowledge. One was about basketball coach Phil Jackson, and the other was about Elon Musk, and they were contrasting portraits.
Know your skill set, transfer your knowledge Read More »
Sports analogies are often used when referring to specific, tactical, transactional events. But they have a lot more meaning and relevance when applied to strategic situations: Where do you want to end up? Where are you now? What stands in the way? What is the core elements of the game you are playing?
Communicators: Know what game you are playing Read More »
An assessment of the terrible crisis communications management by United Airlines after that infamous incident when they dragged a semi-conscious 69-year-old man down the aisle and off the plane because they wanted to give his seat to a United employee.
How not to do crisis PR Read More »
I was speaking the other day with an acquaintance who was very impressed with how president-elect Trump made a tax-break deal to keep close to 1,000 jobs at Carrier in Indiana. “This is how you fight globalization,” he said I wasn’t in the mood to argue, so I didn’t point out that the $7 million
Globalization: Not reversible, and not the problem Read More »
Several of my friends are making mid-career and late-career job changes – by choice, not because a position was lost – and this reflects an interesting trend, especially in the United States. Older workers who once might have been happy to stay put where they are, riding out their final years and looking forward to
Making a purposeful mid-to-late career change Read More »
Recently I had the pleasure to be on a call with Nik Sekhran, Chief of Profession, Sustainable Development Bureau for Policy and Program Support at the United Nations. Nik talked about how, in 2015, more than 190 world leaders committed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to help eliminate extreme poverty, combat inequality and injustice, and mitigate
Aiding sustainable development around the world Read More »