Thankful for many things, including the opportunity to drop in to your busy lives and share a little of what I feel is important. Be thankful for the personal brand you already have and make a promise to yourself to take action on it after the enjoyment of the weekend is past. Happy Thanksgiving!
Many people know me for driving past a Tim Hortons (or three!) to get to a Starbucks! As I only drink black coffee the connection I have to Starbucks is more than just the coffee – its the other emotional connections I make with the brand. Starbucks marketing team has been held up as a great example of using social media to engage consumers and they have… Read More »Which came first the coffee, the cup or the store(y)?
Last week John Baird, Foreign Secretary and one of the Canadian governments leading figures, caused a bit of storm with a recent business card re-design. He seems even to have strayed from the 'brand standards' that are recommended and his Chief of Staff even had to sign a disclaimer to formally acknowledge that his office was advised against the changes. There is always the challenge of wanting to have a… Read More »What does your business card communicate about your brand?
For most of the 43 years that my Dad worked, he always took 15-20 minutes after lunch for a nap, even though he worked in a traditional, professional, office environment. It would appear that this idea of rest time is becoming more common and accepted – this company Podtime have been installing sleep pods in UK workspaces for some time now. And according to a Pew Research study from a… Read More »Is this the latest workplace Eye-Pod?
The provincial election in Ontario is a little over a week away and depending on which poll you believe anyone of the three main parties could end up winning. But if it came down to backyard barbecue invitations instead of votes NDP leader Andrea Horwath would be the winner with 37% of respondents to an IPSOS Reid poll saying they would prefer to have her than 32% for PC leader… Read More »And the new Premier of Ontario is……….likeable?
The appointment of Meg Whitman as CEO of Hewlett Packard this week brought immediate doom and gloom predictions from analysts and market experts – unfortunately this comes as no great surprise. Regular surveys including yearly studies by Catalyst find the following: Companies with the greatest number of women on their boards performed significantly better financially than companies with fewer female board members. Women in high-ranking corporate positions offer their companies… Read More »Are markets too quick to judge female CEO’s?
These are not always the words you would expect to hear from a leading CEO when admitting that a move they made in the market was the wrong one, or at the very least one that should have had a more considered approach. They are certainly not the words that Jim Balsilee the Co-CEO of Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry, has uttered (well at least not publicly). The… Read More »“I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation.”
A recent survey of 500 Canadian and US human resource managers by the American Management Association, found that 51% of employees felt their company's talent development was either flawed or unfair and 41% of the employers themselvs do not announce criteria or invite employees to nominate themselves for leadership development. NEWS FLASH……NEWS FLASH……NEWS FLASH It is up to you to take control of your career development, it's up to you… Read More »You have to own the definition of YOU!
Perhaps not surprsingly 57% of North American recruiters and managers have reservations about hiring candidates who have numerous employers or short job tenures on their resumes according to a Right Management study recently. Asia was almost equally cautious at 50% but not going so far east has its advantages in that only 38% of European managers had the same issue. Rather obviously it's stated that these moves will need to… Read More »Too many jobs?……..head east!
How would you feel if this was how your predecessor introduced you as you took over their role? According to a Business Week article "Can Brian Moynihan Save Bank of America?" , this was exactly how the former CEO Kenneth D. Lewis did and then went on to say, "Another unique charactersitic about him is that he wanted this job" Of course Moynihan continues to have his work cut out… Read More »“Hopefully he’ll be in this job much longer than the last 3 or 4”