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 [...]
As August winds down, you may feel like you are falling behind when it comes to implementing and communicating Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) changes that will affect the exempt/non-exempt status of many employees. There are many web resources and organizations such as the PHRA to help you manage the change, but [...]
Janet, a director at ENCompetent Inc., summons Max to her office one morning. Max, a frontline manager, arrives at the door but he can hardly see Janet because she is working behind a giant red exercise ball that takes up most of the space on her desk. “What’s 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 [...]
Frontline managers are the center of activity for companies — where grand strategy becomes practical activity. They also establish your organization’s most nuclear bond of trust. Employees generally turn to their immediate supervisor, not just for messaging content, but also for tone: Is this really going to work? Should we take this initiative seriously? Do [...]
There is a well-known photo of Lego people pushing a cart with square wheels. An observer stands to one side holding a set of round ones, while his laboring peers respond, “No thanks. We are too busy.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a veteran trader and thoughtful essayist. In his book, [...]
Most groups want to be strategic, but we often make assumptions about what that might look like. I addressed the topic of strategic communications at a high level in one of my recent posts. This time, I want to be more specific about the tactics of strategy. What can [...]