The question I most often get from communication professionals who want to make the shift from the current town crier role to one that’s more aligned with improving business results is, “How do I get started? How can I make a difference in our organization’s outcomes?” I recommend beginning by asking five questions. Here they… Read more
Information sharing
The Purest Form of Organizational Communication
Last month, I spoke at the Gathering of the Games, the world’s largest conference on open book management. Hundreds of open book leaders and communication practitioners from around the world were in attendance to learn, share and celebrate the principles and practice of open book management. Open book management is a leadership philosophy that’s grounded… Read more
Pilot Projects Create Big Successes
Want to produce results fast, minimize risk of failure, perfect a concept and create demand for more? Pick a pilot, improve results and replicate. Increasingly, organizations are adopting surgical approaches to improving performance, focusing on targeted segments (a branch office, manufacturing plant, laboratory, sales territory, or distribution center), making significant shifts quickly, creating stories around… Read more
Results That Last
How do we create results that are sustainable and become fully ingrained in the culture? Many organizational leaders make significant changes, smile at their work and walk away from the effort, naively assuming that the improvements will last forever. But over time, people sometimes revert to the old ways of the past because they’re more… Read more
Communication Breakdowns = Lost Revenue
Our recent survey of Leadership Report readers produced a bucket-load of content suggestions for future Reports. (Thanks to all who participated.) Several suggestions centered on using case studies to “help us get the kinds of measurable results you talk and write about.” Today’s issue is in response to the requests for case studies received from… Read more
Can We Start with Civility in Business Meetings?
We ended 2017 with a Leadership Report entitled, “Bringing Civility Back,” because at the start of 2017, I naively wrote that I hoped political and news media pettiness could subside. No way! To the contrary, politicians have turned flat-out ugly and many in the news media seem to thrive on the Game of ‘Gotcha,” preferring… Read more
Doing These Five Things Will Add More Value To Your Job
Why are you continuing to push out information when shifting your focus to where communication process breaks down can add so much more value? Internal communication functions have enormous opportunities to change their role from activity producing cost centers to results generating value creators. How does your communication function make the shift—from sending out news… Read more
Ask Me Anything
I often get great questions from people via email, social media, at conferences and in client meetings. Recently, I received a question from Chris D. who asked about ways to manage two groups of people who need to work together—those who are young, eager and willing to work within a new organization and culture and… Read more
Information Is Critical to Peak Performance
A recent Leadership Report discussed employee engagement and specific conditions that need to be met for people to achieve peak performance. Those conditions are: Line of sight, or the ability to connect my work to results I can affect; Autonomy and involvement, or my ability to take action needed to improve results; Information sharing (there… Read more