Monthly Archives: October 2016

Finish first (Part 1)

I went to two conventions last week: the IABC Regional Heritage Conference in Columbus, OH and the PHRA Annual Conference in Pittsburgh. At both venues I had the opportunity to hear smart and experienced people talk on trending topics in HR and communications.

 

Karen Hough’s presentation has stuck me particularly. She was energizing, relevant and insightful – highly recommended for any of you who are looking for speakers. Her book, “The Improvisation Edge,” has some brilliant insights into how to make organizations more innovative and creative. At the root is the implicit trust required for improvisation and the way that professional improvisers structure their interactions to encourage trust and creativity.

 

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By | October 25th, 2016|change communications, corporate events|0 Comments
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Benefits may be the most strategic thing you ever communicate

Your internal communications play a powerful role in defining the relationship that you have with your employees. Every email that you send introduces employees to choices about how far they will trust your words and accept them.

 

The tone and style of our communications accumulate and help shape … or distort … the quality of the relationship between people and their employers. It follows that employees will read more carefully and weigh more heavily those communications that are more directly relevant to them.

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By | October 17th, 2016|benefits, change communications, internal communications|0 Comments
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Doing change differently — don’t drop your outliers

Companies struggle with status quo thinking and behaviors. The larger the organization, the stronger these static forces become. One of the more common status quo behaviors is the question: “What are other people doing?”

 

Decision-makers have good reasons for asking what others have done. For one thing, it keeps outcomes safely in the center of the bell curve. Doing what others have done is less likely to produce an outlier result one way or the other – for better or for worse. While herd decisions may protect you temporarily from disastrous outcomes, they also create institutional inertia that can keep you from positive windfalls and inspiring triumphs.

 

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By | October 4th, 2016|change communications, internal communications|0 Comments
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