Barb Sawyers posted a blog on Ragan.com on September 30 titled “In corporate communications, ditch the ‘we’ and make things personal.” She went on to quote an author named James Pennebaker, whose “research” yielded the statement that “‘we’ is the voice of liars and politicians at war.” To which I say: rubbish! Absolute rubbish! One [...]
My colleague Toddi Gutner’s thoughtful post last week on Continuous Partial Attention and the Law of Unintended Consequences reminded me that certain laws of organization management are timeless. Foremost among these, for me, are those of C. Northcote Parkinson, who based his dicta on analysis of the British Civil Service in the late 1940s and [...]
In a recent mentoring session, I asked one of our smart young people where she needed to improve to keep climbing our management ladder. Her response – and she is someone we have already promoted three times – was one I’ve heard often before: “I need to get better at letting go and giving people [...]
I wish there was a more effective way of learning than by making mistakes, but at least mistakes have the virtue of sounding the alarm when you’re about to make them again. For example, there was the time in the late 1970s when I was copywriting a capabilities brochure for a good, but now forgotten, [...]
Even If You’ll Never See the Customer Again My wife, Sue and I went to a wedding in southeastern Massachusetts last weekend where, in the space of 8 hours, we had three interactions with service providers we will probably never see again (we live far away). Two interactions were marvelous … and one, horrendous. It [...]
Every six weeks I get to tap into some of the smartest minds in professional services marketing. We trade war stories, discuss industry trends and try to figure out how to refer each other business. And, wonder of wonders, it doesn’t cost more than the price of a conference call! The structure that provides these [...]
Before answering that question, let me put it in context. My colleague, Cortney Rhoads Stapleton, recently led a BlissPR team that wrote the text for the Industry Practice Group section on the website of a major professional services client. The project was complex – 16 different industry groups with two to seven leaders that had [...]
An entrepreneurial mindset is a double-edged sword. On the plus side, it gives you the courage of your convictions and the faith to plow ahead even when the path ahead seems perilous. But that same single-minded determination can also blind you to very real problems, resulting in disasters of varying dimensions. I found this out [...]
When you have been fortunate enough to run a company for 30+ years and have it recognized as one of the “best places to work” in your profession, you invariably get asked: “how did you build the culture?” I’m sure that dumb luck was responsible for a good chunk of it, but I’m equally sure [...]
In recent months I have gotten to know Josh Sommers, who runs Focus Media , a very successful Hudson Valley PR & advertising agency. Josh has an unusual background – he was a radio personality before founding his firm, so he looks at things a little differently than those of us that grew up in the agency business.
