“Saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality.” – Alfred Painter Thank YOU for taking the time to read my A-Z Spirituality in the Workplace series and share your comments. I was inspired to write this poem to capture the essence of this work. The A-Z of your Soul at Work …

Equilibrium is death. As a biologist, I believe this fundamental truth of life also applies to business. When a living breathing business flat-lines, the end is near. It is the dynamic flow of resources, goods, services, money, information, and workers that keep businesses alive and healthy. The global financial collapse of 2008 came close to …

Someone asked, recently, about putting together a “fundraising plan.” My response was about creating a “Development Plan.” Where the latter has its focus on the relationships between the organization and its constituents/donors that can result in contributed income, the former just focuses on the dollars. And, when just focusing on dollars is sometimes OK for …

I became fascinated by change in 1997 when I led an organization-wide change initiative to purposefully redesign our Product Development and Commercialization Process (PDCP). After 18-months of organizationally created VUCA we declared victory – a success that only 30% of change initiatives achieve. Let me put this in perspective. If only 30% of your product …

I know many small business owners who struggled the last 12-18 months due to the economy. Many lamented at how rough it has been and are looking forward to business picking up this year. I took note about how they were using their downtime. Those who focused on their fears had a harder time with …

Social media has changed the way crisis management works The impact of social media on crisis management has been the story of the year, with the maturation of services like Facebook and Twitter sparking a massive surge in use that has literally changed the way we communicate. To help illustrate that, the professionals over at …

“Hey, I got an HR question for you.” This is a statement I hear often. In most cases it either involves a scenario description followed by, “Is that legal?” In my experience, most of the scenarios I hear come from bad workplace conduct, behavior or policy and are not illegal. A recent blog post by Donna Bellman breaks down the top ten employment laws that you think exist that don’t.

In 1999 I facilitated scenario building for eleven cross-functional pharmaceutical teams (R&D, clinical development, global marketing, regional operations, manufacturing, and regulatory). The future was 2020 and we were imagining the marketplace, what consumers would expect, how diseases would be treated, and the features and benefits of the gold standard therapies of the day. Imagining the …

To the point, this is a post on what most people call “teamwork.” Bored already? Believe me, I understand. Traditional talk on teamwork is overdone and underused. But the fact remains that most market evolutions rely on a team—somewhere, somehow, some way. And that’s why what happens inside teams, from a Presidential White House Cabinet …

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 …