Internal Communications Strategies for Web-Savvy Employees

March 29, 2009

CEOs don’t always walk the talk when they claim that employees are the company’s most important asset.  If that were the case, employees wouldn’t be using social communities on the web to find what’s going on in the company.  So here are several strategies to focus employees on the company’s goals through the company’s own communications network. Read more

Employees as Company Change Agents

March 26, 2009

No question, companies are struggling to control their brand essence and key messages during this economic slump.  Communicating positive news is more important than ever in the 24/7 news cycle and with an Internet that can circulate good – and, let’s face it, mostly bad – news around the globe in a matter of seconds.  But companies are overlooking their most important advocates to the outside world – their own employees — because of a lack of internal communications.  And this can torpedo a company’s reputation. Read more

Why CEOs Think Differently Than We Do

March 25, 2009

Marketing and communications executives are being challenged by their CEOs to help chart the future of their organizations. It is their skills as conceptual thinkers that enable these communicators to envision the possibilities for supporting the organization’s goals.  If this is the case, then why do so many chief executives resist the recommendations of the very people they have selected to help drive change throughout the organization? Read more

Adding dividends with a culture of two-way communications

March 25, 2009

In a recent New York Times interview, the chairman of a private equity firm stated that he tells everyone in his organization that he is always accessible by email and will always respond within 24 hours.  He’s a leader who gets it:  that a positive culture of communication will help to drive his company’s growth. Read more

Juicing Up the Annual Report

March 11, 2009

Spring is coming and so is the avalanche of annual reports that public companies send to their shareholders.  And, as usual, most of them will be as dull as dishwater.  Think about it.  When was the last time someone told you he had curled up in bed with a good annual report to read?  Not likely, unless sleep was the primary motivation. Annual reports can be real dullards. Read more

• Try Different — Seth Godin

  The usual mantra is to 'try harder'. Trying harder is impossible when you're already trying as hard as you can.

  But you can always try different.

  Years ago, I was creating trivia questions for a product we built for Prodigy. We had a 99% accuracy rate in doing the questions. Which was great, except there were 1800 questions in a batch, which meant 18 wrong each time, which was totally and completely unacceptable. These were honest mistakes, made by smart people working as hard as they could.

  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do better than 99%. So we switched our system completely and did it in a totally different way. Same number of people, same number of hours, 100% accuracy.

  If it's not working, harder might not be the answer.

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