Live Mint, a new Wall Street Journal publication in India, today published my thoughts on what makes Apple so successful. Here is a link to the Live Mint article entitled “‘Think Different’ is What Makes Apple Stand Out.“
Monthly Archives: August 2008
Webcast: SabreTown Helps Sabre Holdings and Its Employees Thrive!
Join me in a webcast with my guest Al Comeaux, SVP of Corporate Communications for Sabre Holdings. Al will present an overview of SabreTown, the remarkable social networking platform Sabre built in-house. I saw Al’s presentation at a conference and was struck by the profound and positive impact SabreTown has had on Sabre Holdings. In Al’s presentation you will learn:
- how the SabreTown community is increasing connections among employees over geographic distances, while saving the company money and creating efficiency,
- how SabreTown has become a powerful knowledge management tool,
- what Sabre did that has resulted in an extraordinary rate of adoption by Sabre employees,
- how Sabre designed SabreTown so that it requires little oversight, and
- how SabreTown helps employees get up to speed faster.
If you work in information technology, corporate communications, employee engagement, training and development, or corporate learning functions, this is a presentation you don’t want to miss! I hope you’ll join me in this lively and enlightening webcast that shows how web 2.0 and corporate culture are combining to take organizations to the next step in their evolution. Click on “SabreTown Helps Sabre Holdings and Its Employees Thrive!” to sign up for the webcast.
U2: The “Band” as Family
Earlier this year I posted about the unity among the members of the band U2 and how it contributed to the band’s success. Comments from several individuals made me dig much deeper into the band’s story (thank you Astid, David Zinger, Lee Smith and Rachel for enlightening me). What I discovered was an extraordinary journey the band made to evolve into the force it is today.
The article I wrote about it was published today in The Economic Times (in India) and it will be published later this year in two of the American Management Association’s publications (Moving Ahead and the AMA’s Catalog). Here’s the link to The Economic Times’ article.
Let me know what you think.
Interview with Jim Blasingame, The Small Business Advocate
Reducing employee anxiety
What can managers do to reduce the anxiety workers feel these days? Anita Bruzzese, award-winning journalist and workplace columnist for Gannett News Service, recently interviewed me about this topic for her nationally syndicated column. The article, entitled “In gloomy times, good management becomes essential,” has appeared in Gannett papers across the country.
Changethis.com: Free e-Book on the Competitive Advantage of Connection
“For those of us who write about business, every once in a while, a book or an article comes along that seems so simple on some levels and yet communicates great wisdom. The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage is one such work.”- William J. Holstein of The New York Times (on his BNet blog)
Fired Up or Burned Out will soon go to its second printing which will include new endorsements from thought leaders such as Marshall Goldsmith and leaders from such prestigious organizations as Goldman Sachs. If you’ve not read it, you can do a test drive, so to speak, by reading my free e-book entitled The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage. The e-book was published by changethis.com, a website that includes contributions from best-selling authors such as Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, Tim Ferriss, Guy Kawasaki, and Bob Sutton.
Get the free download in pdf format at changethis.com.
From Process-centric to People-centric
Another theme that emerged from Communitelligence’s Employee Engagement conference in Chicago last week is what I would describe as “Moving from Process-centric to People-centric.” It seems that every organization has a robust set of process-oriented programs in place such as Six Sigma and Balanced Scorecard. These programs have helped organizations but people sense something’s still missing.
The next steps in the evolution of organizations will be focused on people and their values rather than additional process improvements. Organizations had lost their way in some respects by focusing so much on processes. By turning their attention to their core values, organizations were finding their way again, re-discovering their identities, who they are and what’s important to them.
Here are my observations from various presentations:
Communitelligence’s Employee Engagement Conference: Social Networking Tools Inside Organizations
Research Insights from Communitelligence’s Employee Engagement Conference
Communitelligence’s Outstanding Employee Engagement Conference
Last week I gave a presentation on Connection Cultures at Communitelligence’s Employee Engagement Conference in Chicago. While attended the conference I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the speakers who were for the most part responsible for internal communications at some of America’s leading companies.
Thank you John Gerstner, Communitelligence’s president, Rick Sauter, vice president for partnerships and community development, and Shelia Williams-Gerstner, vice president, for inviting me to speak and for orchestrating such a productive conference. I found your conference was especially valuable because the agenda included breakout sessions for participants to meet and learn from each other. This format was more stimulating than the traditional speakers-all-day format. I learned more about what other organizations were doing and met more people. It was a format that encouraging connection.
In the coming days, I’ll be posting fascinating insights shared by conference presenters. Here are a few tidbits of what I learned: