How Well Do You Communicate With Yourself?

January 26, 2010

There is much talk and more written about effective business communication with your customers and prospects.  But what about how you communicate with yourself?

I began to ponder this question as I sat waiting to be called for a panel on my first day of jury duty.  The laptops thoughtfully provided for the jurors were hopelessly slow and outdated.  So I had the choice of reading the newspaper, or a paperback or pondering the meaning of life.  Finally, time to THINK! Read more

Nelson Mandela, The Great Communicator

January 4, 2010

I just returned from seeing the excellent film, “Invictus,” starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, shortly after he was elected president of South Africa in the mid-1990s. What I didn’t remember, or possibly ever know, is that Nelson Mandela is one of the most powerful communicators ever to lead a nation.  He succeeded in communicating to whites that they were essential to his vision of a united nation. Read more

How Well Do You Communicate With Yourself?

January 2, 2010

There is much talk and more written about effective business communication with your customers and prospects.  But what about how you communicate with yourself?

I began to ponder this question as I sat waiting to be called for a panel on my first day of jury duty.  The laptops thoughtfully provided for the jurors were hopelessly slow and outdated.  So I had the choice of reading the newspaper, or a paperback or pondering the meaning of life.  Finally, time to THINK! Read more

Nonverbal communication in a social media world

July 16, 2009

Has social media and the Internet eliminated the need for — and importance of — nonverbal communication?  When you think about it, there are three ways to communicate: Read more

Where Did the Employees Go?

May 24, 2009

The 2008 corporate annual reports have rolled off the presses and are on view on company websites.   I flipped through some of them online and, as usual, they are the same old dullards.  A letter from the president, a few words about the past year and what the future holds, followed by the financial results.

But you know what?  Several of the very largest Fortune 500 companies had not a single photo or story about an employee.  None. 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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