How to be a whiz at career reinvention
“You have to embrace new ideas and new technologies even when it’s painful. The whiff of obsolescence can kill you,” observed Marilyn Moats Kennedy in an interview with Chicago Score for a case study several years ago. This past January ovarian cancer killed Marilyn...
Improve your meetings this year and crow with joy
How painful are the meetings you attend? Probably worse than you’d like to admit. If a pain detector could measure both the physical discomfort and social anguish you feel after your meetings, it could show scary outcomes with some unfortunate consequences. For...
Readers offer 7 ways to improve bad writing
If you read for work, it’s likely you encounter bad writing. Just think about all the email messages, memos, documents and other business writing that you read during the course of a day. Rather than read at a steady pace, you probably hit many speed bumps along the...
3 ways to focus on employees to win back trust
What are you doing as an organization to build trust? If you’re not focusing on your employees, reconsider. Why? Trust in U.S. institutions – as well as the rest of the Western world -- has plummeted over the past 12 months, as tracked by the 2017 Edelman...
How to start solving our $396 billion bad writing problem
What will it take for business to adopt plain language, easy-to-read documents, and lean communications®? They address a business problem right in front of our faces. Even though this problem hurts our performance by sucking our time, draining our energy, and making...
Why and how to be more vulnerable
Can you try to be more vulnerable? Being vulnerable may be the positive self-disrupting move you need to become a better version of yourself. After all, in our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world, what got you here won’t get you there. Why do you...
When and how to trust experts over scientific research
What do teeth flossing, meeting agendas, and meeting ground rules have in common? And why should you care about them? They’re examples of “keystone” habits, as explained by author Charles Duhhig in his best seller, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and...
How to be intentional and trigger good behavior
Who needs another morning chore, especially when you’re already feeling rushed getting out the door and to the office? But if you’re a parent with a child who’s hooked on Elf on the Shelf, you’re expected to find a new perch for the Elf each morning. That way, the...
5 favorite new books on influence, empathy, and growth
Want to encourage someone to do something? You’ve got to figure out the best way and time to influence them. It also helps to be empathetic and vulnerable, as well as make it easy for them to take action. And if it’s been a while since you connected with them,...
