Probably the most widely used mis-understood piece of communication today is the e-mail. We have become so over whelmed with it that we rush read or rush reply. This opens us up to a whole host of problems. There was a recent article in the Wall St Journal on this very subject with a story of a consultant feeling things were wrong with a client because of the pressure to… Read More »What Is Someone Trying to Tell You?
When you are able to incorporate a passion that you have in to the work you do it makes for a an even more engaging experience. When you run your own business this of course can be a whole lot easier. You decide what you want to. For the last year or so I have taken up running again and also do the annual climb for cancer in May. This… Read More »Bring Your Passions to Work
With all it’s recent economic troubles, the Spanish government is seriously considering abolishing the country’s siesta. This would be a major culture shift and potentially more damaging than good. There are many famous examples of leaders and geniuses who were regular nappers. It is something I do on a regular basis and my Dad always did. So what are the benefits? A recent article in the Washington Post highlights… Read More »It’s Siesta Time at Work
So probably by now you have seen at least one parody attempt of the most re-tweeted selfie ever. This Lego one is probably one of the better ones. There have been numerous attempts to parody the shot. You can see a collection of some of them here. Some of them are clever, but none of the company/brand ones are winners. There are even lame attempts by brand marketers to put… Read More »Why Every Ellen Oscars Selfie Parody is a #fail
I am always flipping between seeing LinkedIn as a useful tool and experiencing it as flea market. But one place it should not be used for is to send terse rejection notes. Meet Kelly Blazek. Or at least this might be one of the few places you might now see her. Following a particularly terse and some would say nasty rejection of a unsolicited request to connect on LinkedIn,… Read More »How to behave badly on LinkedIn
Think charity and thin pink and probably most of you are immediately connecting to Breast Cancer. Except today is Pink Shirt Day and it has nothing to do with cancer. Two high school friends were so shocked by a fellow student being bullied for wearing a pink shirt that they went out bought 50 pink shirts and handed them out at school the next day to their friends. The bullies… Read More »How Colour Brands a Cause
Wow the car park was empty, people must have walked or be running late. The lights were on but there did not seem to be any activity in the meeting room. It suddenly dawned on me. I had the wrong day. In fact I had the wrong month! All day I had been running non-stop from meeting to phone call to meeting. I had driven 20 miles, wasted… Read More »Have You Ever Been a Month Early for a Meeting?
As the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi draws to a close, one thing always interests me – the medal count. Some media produce tables that rank countries in order of the number of Gold medals. Other media produce table with total number of medals. Often it is the country’s media that dictates which one is more favourable. So which one is right? Well according to the Olympic charter the spirit seems… Read More »Which is More Important – Medals or Brand?
It turns out that one of the co-founders, Brian Acton, of What’s App was rejected by both Facebook and Twitter! Sometimes getting rejected for a job can pay off. In the same year (2009) he and a friend and colleague from Yahoo founded WhatsApp the instant messaging service with now over 450 million users just sold to Facebook for $19 billion! That is over $350 million per employee! What… Read More »Whats Upp? – $19 billion For Getting Interview Rejected That’s What
Working with an image consultant as part of communicating your personal brand can be very beneficial and on occasion very life changing. As part of my brand and something I had been promising myself for a while was a pair of custom designed baseball shoes. If you have seen my presentations you will know the connection between baseball shoes and my personal brand. Last fall I did my annual… Read More »What Your Shoes Say About Your Personal Brand