My friend Mike Schaffer was an hour late to work this morning. Sadly, that's not unusual (and not because Schaffer is lazy, passive aggressive, or hates his alarm clock). The problem is the city's train system. Washington's Metro system was poorly build, and it...
Did Facebook's debut ruin the market for tech companies? Of course not. Though perhaps it means future IPOs will be priced based on business factors. USA TODAY has an interesting article on the marketplace one month after Facebook's initial public offering. Buried...
IBM has a female CEO. IBM sponsors the Masters, an event held at Augusta National, a private club that does not allow women to be members. Which means Virginia Rometty can't join the club that her company pays to prop up. This isn't a new story (or a new controversy)....
Most of us would rather be liked than not. And, in business, it can mean the difference between having customers and having trouble paying the bills. (Okay, it helps to have a great product, killer customer service, and a bunch of other things too.) We're human; we...
I was reading The View From the Top,* a recent report from the IABC Research Foundation. Researchers interviewed 20 CEOs about the role of corporate communications. What I like about the report--and IABC--is the global perspective. These CEOs run companies in Peru,...
Sometimes the best customer experiences happen by serendipity. I recently pooled my Amazon gift cards to purchase the complete 5-DVD collection of the Best TV Show Ever. When it arrived, I put disk one into the DVD player I rarely use with huge anticipation. Then....
Anyone who has sat through a bad presentation knows what can go wrong. Maybe the speaker rambled on, or he spoke in a monotone. Maybe he read slide after slide. Or he punctuated every third word with an "er" an "um" or a "like." When your presentation sucks, it...
Have you ever been stiffed by a client (i.e., failed utterly in all attempts to collect payment)? It has never happened to me. Maybe I've been lucky. I've definitely been smart. Some of it has to do with selecting clients with care, building in payment phases for...
Saying you've done nothing wrong when your customers are angry may not be the smartest response. Calling customers "confused"--really? My friend Zane Safrit pointed me to this story about Kellogg's Kashi brand. Apparently some of the soy used in its cereals comes from...
I've been trying to get "free" checks from PNC Bank for six weeks. Free, apparently, is a very relative term. PNC Bank has lost a lot. Here's a brief chronology of what happened: 1. Mid-March: Call 800 number to order more checks. On hold, on hold, on hold, automated...