Warning: culture fail

How do you know when an organization’s culture is breaking down? When you start to hear its leaders utter some of these phrases:

Barking mad

Yesterday, I observed a clinic in how not to lead and motivate a team. It was tough to watch.

Suite life

What does it take to be a trusted advisor in the C-suite? Here are a few takeaways from an excellent panel discussion last week at the National Summit for Strategic Communications.

What bosses expect: essential skills for success

Following the last post re: CCO views on emerging skills and professional development in corporate communications, here’s a related post focusing on young professionals in the field. This appeared today on Culpwrit, the go-to resource for young professionals in public relations.

Adapt or die

New technologies are transforming how, where and when people work – so how are some leaders adapting their approach to developing the people on their teams? We recently interviewed a dozen Chief Communications Officers (CCOs) at leading B2B and B2C companies and here’s what they had to say.

What drives commitment?

New research suggests that employee commitment is driven more by the quality of development opportunities and leadership at an organization than the quality of one’s immediate manager or compensation. Here’s an interesting post that details the study.

War for talent

Approaches to talent development in the communications profession must evolve and intensify. Here’s how I argued that point in a PR Week article a little more than a year ago. This remains an important issue, based on upper 90 research now underway. More on those findings in early 2014…

Unconventional wisdom

Have you ever contributed to a Kickstarter campaign? I have, and I’ve been impressed by how Kickstarter and other platforms have become fund-raising standards in only a few years. Actually, crowdfunding is one of many unconventional concepts that are disrupting the way businesses and other organizations operate. Many of us now favor unconventional tools, processes and solutions over conventional options. We prefer new over tried and true.

Start at the end

A great philosopher, Yogi Berra, once observed: “You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going ‘cause you might not get there.” What I think he was trying to say was…

The new transformers

When they were little, my boys enjoyed Transformers, robots that can quickly assume new physical forms for any battle. They are agile and versatile – and here’s why Transformers just might be good models for today’s business professionals.