What's one great way to generate good PR for your business? Empower your employees to make your customers/clients happy. A day after I wrote this post about how a company was chasing customers out the door, I had an awesome experience with empowerment done right. I...
Anyone who has built a successful business knows that entrepreneurship involves more than just identifying a sellable product or hanging out a consulting shingle. It takes a business mind, long hours, lots of sweat equity—and a healthy dose of financial risk...
Do you lead with your attitude? Trick question actually. We all lead with our attitudes. It's just what attitude you're showing that counts. And you can learn a lot by how people act when they don't know you. There are 5-10 "regulars" who strength train at my gym...
I was wrong. Utterly and completely. I argued with my mom in early August that former HP CEO Mark Hurd would only be unemployed for a year or so. (She thought his career was over.) That he’d do a requisite stint in the wilderness and then get some cushy consulting...
Are you happy at work? The Pew Research Center released a study the other day that finds that 26 percent of all employed workers in the United States have been out of work at some point since the economic downturn began. While it's good that some people have found new...
So I go out of town for a few days and miss the big sports story. No, not that story. This one. What's interesting about the Jay Mariotti story isn't the facts. Or even the arrest. It's the glee with which just about everyone has greeted the news. Apparently this guy...
There's a long, fascinating profile of Nike CEO Mark Parker in Fast Company. The article talks about Parker's bio, corporate culture, and where's he's taking the company and how. One line about his management style really stood out: [Bill] Bowerman's coaching...
There was a sound bite on the evening news recently about how a lot of fishermen on the Gulf Coast will be sorry to see BP pull out as they have grown used to the big pay days. (Now, whether this is true is for a different post--and one I’m not going to touch.) It...
Mark Hurd is a very stupid man. With all the money he was earning from Hewlett-Packard, don’t you think he could have paid cash (his cash) for dinner if he didn't want a paper trail? You don’t have to pay me $12 million or $10 million or even $1 million. It doesn't...
This recession has not been kind to marketers and other communications pros. Especially at the senior level. Frankly, I'm not surprised. Just look at how we typically refer to ourselves. Marketer. Public Affairs Specialist. Writer. Editor. Media Relations Manager....