I’ve been blogging a lot lately about the importance of endings. As part of my research, I came across an interesting, possibly apocryphal story about Steve Jobs that I thought was interesting. It goes something like this: […]
Businesses lift many working metaphors from sports and political campaigns because both these spheres are compelling and dramatic. What gives sports and politics their drama is precisely what many businesses fail to incorporate: clear scoring and defined, unambiguous endings. Sports clocks count down. The buzzer sounds. The polling booth [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
In The Signal and the Noise Nate Silver correlates exponential growth in information with periods of violence and unrest. In his words, “The amount of information was increasing much more rapidly than our understanding of what to do with it, or our ability to differentiate the useful information from the mistruths.” [...]
This article continues last week’s about the increasing need for year-round benefits open enrollment communications. This week our focus is on the finances of benefits elections with emphasis on incentives and taxes. Here are a few reasons why communicating once a year in the Fall may no longer be enough: [...]
Open enrollment communications used to happen annually. Not any longer. Changes to health care have turned benefits communications into year-round campaigns with heavy education and training components. In addition to health benefits enrollment communications that traditionally happen between September and November, there are now good reasons to plan separate but related campaigns [...]
What is the dollar investment of one all-hands employee meeting? Forget the logistics: the venue, support staff, communications, and other costs. For a minute, just consider the salaries involved. Assume 10,000 employees making an average of $50,000 per year, or about $24 per hour. For a two hour meeting (with [...]
Information overload is at this moment harming the productivity and competitiveness of your business. A 2009 Harvard Business Review article by Paul Hemp references research on “the surging volume of available information… [that] can adversely affect not only personal well-being but also decision making, innovation, and productivity. In one study… [...]
In the book, Leading Change, John Kotter identifies “a failure to communicate” as one of the major factors causing low success rates among corporate change initiatives. He estimates that in one month: the total amount of communication reaching the average employee is roughly 2.3 million words or numbers the typical communication of [...]