Leaders must step up during a crisis Too often leaders are paralyzed during the crucial beginning stages of crises. When things start to heat up it’s important to keep control, or things can quickly get out of hand. In an article for the Harvard Business Review, leadership expert John Baldoni gave his advice for those …

As we approach Valentine’s Day I couldn’t resist the urge to write about working from the heart. I like the teachings of the Eight Fold Path in Buddhism as a roadmap for working with a pure heart. In the Buddha’s sermon on how to eliminate suffering and achieve self-realization, he outlined eight ways to bring …

Blogs provide a simple crisis communication solution Dark sites, fully built web pages held offline until needed, are known as valuable crisis management tools because they grant you the ability to react almost immediately to negative incidents. Taking that a step further is the idea of basing your dark site on a blogging platform, which, …

Get engaged and get protected As with many other aspects of crisis management, businesses are hesitant to invest in social media strategies because the returns are often difficult to quantify. Get caught up in a Web-based crisis, though, and you’ll be thanking your lucky stars for the protection. In a post on the SmartBlog social …

How well do you toot your own horn? There’s a well know saying: “It’s not what you know …but who you know?” Well in today’s changing world, replace it with this: “It’s not only what you know, it’s not only who you know, but, as important, it‘s who knows you.” In order to be known …

The topic of employee engagement seems to be one that is quite popular in recent years especially with all the changes that have occurred in the landscape of the workplace. It has been sited that a culture of high engagement is necessary to help overcome the fear of the fleeting workforce with the improvement of the economy and the increase in hiring in some organizations.

Naming Opportunities (This post is Part 1 of a 2-Part Response to a Submitted Question) When I think of playground fundraising, I picture swings, a set of see-saws, a jungle gym, and various other pieces of equipment; and, I see multiple opportunities to raise money. There are many ways to raise money, but I can …

Imagine that you could dump all the words of a million books from the past 500 years into a giant database, and look to see how various words have waxed and waned in usage over the centuries. You could look and see when archaic words like thou and yon disappeared from popular usage. You could …

Since every business has competitors, every business plan needs competitive analysis — also known as competitive intelligence. Direct competitors provide more or less similar products or services, such as coffee shops. Indirect or generic competitors provide different things, but customers will often choose between them. For example, nearby restaurants may offer different eating options, but …

We’re in the very early stages of learning how social networks and social media tools impact behavior.