Written and posted 13 Jan 2019

Time to strengthen your creativity and innovation skills! Future demand for these skills will grow stronger in the changing business environment, according to a Future of Jobs survey report by the World Economic Forum. Over the next 5 years, employers will be giving priority to those who are strong on analytical thinking and innovation, as […]

Written and posted 13 Jan 2019

The secret to successful sponsorship proposals is to invest the time to get to know your prospects and what they want. You need to do your homework! If you are seeking to land a major sponsorship, the odds are you will have to work hard to get it and provide good value for money to […]

Written and posted 11 Dec 2018

How often you have found other people misunderstanding your communication role. I can think of many times in my own corporate career when other staff had little idea of our strategic value. Typically, they thought we were merely a support function involved in low-level activities. The big difficulty is that organizational communication is a complex […]

Written and posted 11 Dec 2018

When you introduce employee recognition activities, whether in your work team, business unit, or in the whole organization, you create the opportunity for major positive results, including measurable improvements in employee engagement and organizational performance. This is not just hopeful thinking about a ‘feel good’ subject – the proof is in the consistent detailed data […]

Written and posted 28 Nov 2018

How effectively is your PR/communication department performing? And how well are you dealing with your internal stakeholders? The important thing is to identify only the matters for which the communication team has sole responsibility. For example, corporate reputation isn’t valid to use as a full indicator of PR performance because corporate communication is only one […]

Written and posted 6 Nov 2018

The best way to write a headline is to first take the time and effort to learn about the subject so you gain enough perspective on the key elements of the content. This applies to press releases just as much to advertising and marketing material. Legendary copywriter and advertising guru, David Ogilvy, did exactly this, […]

Written and posted 6 Nov 2018

I clearly remember the day as a Corporate Affairs Manager when I did nothing else but attend 5 successive meetings. I felt overwhelmed. It was surreal – but I had no choice except to attend. Nevertheless, appropriate meetings are important, and face-to-face is the best form of contact. 1-on-1 meetings between you as a boss […]

Written and posted 16 Oct 2018

It happens both ways. People dread receiving feedback – but they also dread giving it. Typical feedback conversations, like annual performance reviews, are dreaded by all. For instance, in a 2015 survey of 2,058 US workers (HBR paywall), over a third (37%) of bosses reported they are uncomfortable giving direct feedback/criticism about their employee’s performance […]

Written and posted 16 Oct 2018

If you want a high performing organization, you need to engage and inspire your middle managers. They are the key to employee engagement, according to research conducted for the UK Chartered Management Institute. But middle managers need good lines of communication from top management in order to engage their own staff. Unfortunately, good contact from […]

Written and posted 12 Sep 2018

A wildly misused word is “disaster.” (“Crisis” is another similarly misused word, but that’s the subject of other discussions.) “Disaster” is used in the public arena to describe almost any negative situation. News media and social media use it to exaggerate, especially where images are available to dramatize. Common use of the word today is […]