When trying to manage others’ perceptions of a situation, trying to understand/empathise with the following factors in the audience’s collective headspace could be useful:

Assumptions – the inevitable preconceived ideas, prejudices and stereotypes that we all bring to every situation.
Different world views – we can each operate on wildly different baselines of understanding about how the world should and should not be. Throw personality disorders into the …

Taking a page from Peter Drucker’s The 5 Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organisation which I posted about yesterday, here is my adaptation of the questions applied to your next marketing/corporate communications activity, be this an ad campaign or a new website:

What is the point of this activity? And how does it tie in with our mission?
Who are we speaking to?
What needs/desires/wants of theirs …

Peter Drucker has a book out at the moment entitled The 5 Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organisation.

Here are the five questions:

What is our mission?
Who is our customer?
What does the customer value?
What are our results?
What is our plan?

These apply equally well to you, ie your personal brand.

It may well be worth your while sitting down with a cup of coffee on a quiet morning …

According to Paul Bracken in his article Futurizing Business Education (Futurist magazine July-August 2008), there are four major characteristics of the turbulent world businesses are faced with today:

Technology – rapidly and dramatically transforms industries.
Political risks – decisions at a political have direct impact.
Blurring of industry boundaries – businesses are chasing radically new markets beyond the bounds of their traditional offerings.
New competitors with different strategic personalities – emerging economies …

Here’s an interesting article on the role of our emotions in decision-making.

Points of note:

Without our emotions, we will have difficulty making decisions.
Strong emotions like fear can adversely affect our decisions.
The more we deny our emotions, the less able we are to make a decision; regardless of how much info we have.
Relying on our gut instincts is important.
Women make better decisions - because women are more in …

A business’ CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) values, like its culture, is an Across, not an Up-down vertical silo. CSR is part of a business’ culture – whether it is present or not.

The ideal for CSR is to have CSR practices – and I am not just referring to the donate money to charity part – integrated Across a business’ vision, goals, everyday practices and brand promises.

Some businesses are …

In smaller businesses or teams with low-rise hierarchies (a flat organisation), I have noticed that there is a higher risk for certain personalities to take on perceived responsibilities for beyond their official capacity.

Examples: A junior programmer feels responsible for the financial welfare of the company. A manager feels responsible for the quality of an employee’s personal life.

This can be especially true for those personalities with a tendency for …

In his book On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not, author Robert A. Burton made the point that:

Certainty is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. That unmistakable sense of certainty arises out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.

This is something for business leaders to be mindful of. To embrace the …

My friend Allison O’Neill is looking for ‘The Inside Dirt on Our Bosses’ for her up and coming book.

She is collecting stories (from all over the world) of the fantastic and the terrible boss/management experiences people have had throughout their working lives. This won’t be a book of petty moans and groans, but rather a collection of real life examples we can all learn from.

Share your story on …

As businesses develop and grow (and I mean this in the larger sense beyond simply size and profits) over time, their strategic needs change. This is a rough diagram that sums up my thinking thus far on the matter. Click on the image to get a PDF version where you can actually read the text.

I am using this to clarify (for myself) how …