Turning Your Employees into Warriors in the Battle Against Cyber Crooks

The Nuix Black Report is not the kind of thing you read before you go to bed at night. Its subtitle is “Decoding the Minds of Hackers”. The Black Report is an amazingly comprehensive survey of people who are professional cyber break-in artists. Fortunately, most of them are on the right side of the law. They work for companies who offer their hacking skills to test a client’s cyber security. The… Read More »Turning Your Employees into Warriors in the Battle Against Cyber Crooks

What’s your filler phrase?

I recently heard a presentation from the CEO of a large service organization. It was a great chance for him to tell the story about the great things they’re doing. Unfortunately, I was extremely distracted during his entire speech. All I noticed was that every sentence seemed to have two or three “umms” stuffed in the middle. In my mind he was completely unprepared for his presentation. People who study… Read More »What’s your filler phrase?

What would your headline be?

Before you sit down for your next media interview, take a moment to answer this question: What would your headline be? Headlines are teasers. In just a few words they must capture the reader’s attention and give them enough information to make a topical connection. They’re usually not even a full sentence. Writing great headlines isn’t easy, but it’s worth your time to think about how your interview will be… Read More »What would your headline be?

4 Tips to Slow Down Your Speech

Let’s start this with a confession: I’m a fast talker. It goes back to an experience I had in elementary school. I thought I was going to have to recite something with a group of other kids but found myself all alone on the stage. The obvious way for me to end my moment in the spotlight was to rush through it as quickly as possible. I still recall a… Read More »4 Tips to Slow Down Your Speech

Communication troubles in the post-COVID world

Here’s a surprising fact to come out of the pandemic. A lot of employees don’t believe that communication within their workgroups has suffered. In fact, a big chunk of people believe it’s actually improved. While that’s great news, there’s also a problem that has popped up. Communication within a specific group may be working, but things are notso great for the people within the rest of the organization. Late last… Read More »Communication troubles in the post-COVID world

Learning a Lesson from Bad Communication

The HBO movie Bad Education with Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney is a great lesson in how to screw up communication in a crisis. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie is about a school superintendent and his assistant who embezzle millions of dollars from the district. The theft is bad enough, but the way the school board handles the situation makes things even worse. Often times organizations make… Read More »Learning a Lesson from Bad Communication

Now Is Not The Time To Go Dark

It’s time to ramp up your communication. Right now. To everyone. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have answers for all the questions. It doesn’t matter how you do it. What matters is that you’re making a critical connection. If you’re a manager, your employees are wondering what is happening at the top of the organization. Is strategy changing? Are jobs impacted? Are paychecks in the pipeline? If you know… Read More »Now Is Not The Time To Go Dark

Managing First Impressions

We are supposedly living in an era of enlightened leadership.  After all, we’re bombarded by books giving us insight into how to do it better. Whether it’s Good to Great or the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we finally have the knowledge and tools that leaders lacked just a few decades ago. So why are we still doing it badly? It’s likely because we can’t unlearn centuries of training simply by reading… Read More »Managing First Impressions

Here’s an Idea: Have a Point!

One of my favorite movies is Planes, Trains and Automobiles starring Steve Martin and John Candy. It’s the story of two hapless travelers trying to get back to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Without giving too much away it involves canceled flights, broken-down trains and burning cars. It’s your basic holiday nightmare. Of course, it ends wonderfully and will leave you thankful for your Thanksgiving meal with family. In one scene about midway through… Read More »Here’s an Idea: Have a Point!