I was checking my e-mail, tweeting with friends, and reading through a backlog of blog posts last Friday while soaring across the United States at 35,000 feet. It was a great way to feel connected after a week of airplanes, hotels, and day-long meetings. But...
An interesting report from the Center for American Progress looks at the changing demographics of the U.S. workforce. Specifically, that 4 in 10 women today are the sole breadwinners in their families or are earning as much or more than their spouses. The report...
Social media can be awesome. We can build amazing communities and engage with customers, clients, colleagues, and (new and old) friends across the globe. Heck, we can even tweet with people in space. And we have lots of people hard at work trying to create relevance...
One of the toughest challenges of consulting is the “feast or famine” syndrome. If you've been doing this work for any length of time, then you have probably experienced both those times when you’re working really crazy hours and the weeks when you’re climbing the...
Remember the Deck of Cards that the U.S. military unveiled after the 2003 invasion of Iraq? In addition to Saddam Hussein, it featured a who's who of the regime's inner circle. If you'd diagrammed it, you would have ended up with a traditional hierarchical chart with...
So you want to know the secret to a great client relationship? Ask them how they want you to communicate with them. Maybe they like phone calls (office, mobile, other number?), or perhaps they respond better to e-mail. If they're on Twitter all day, they might want...
During the IABC/Washington panel discussion on 2010 trends, I posed the following question: Is 2010 the year we break down silos? In retrospect, I asked the wrong question. Breaking down silos is critical, but it's not about whether we do it--it's about how. In the...
I’m taking a page from Chris Brogan this year. He annually identifies “three words that I use as guidance for how I should conduct my efforts in the year to come.” My three words for 2010: incubate, endorphins, and endurance. I’m going to use them, hopefully wisely,...
I was talking with a representative from Sales Genie at a conference recently, and our conversation turned to the roots of list making. My first prospecting list, in the days before information was online, was a labor of much labor. Having identified my target...
Two people recently have wanted to connect via Instant Messenger. The problem: I don't use IM. I find it disruptive. It's like a conversation that demands to be had, right now. But what is instant? My friend Jeremy Meyers points out that Twitter isn't, because when we...