Rants Raves Ramblings & Reflections

Registering Dis-engagement: How would you respond?

May 13, 2010

Tweet Here’s a little story, compelling in its simplicity, about an organizational situation that raises issues of loyalty, commitment, and engagement. When I heard about the initial situation, I had an immediate reaction. My analysis was quickly followed by a few recommendations for the employee involved.  [ Of course, as an ENTJ, I am quick […]

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Empty, Mute, and Disrespected: Pompeii as a failing cultural organization

May 6, 2010

Tweet [I can’t really find a link between these ideas and concepts of authenticity, but I had to write this anyway. So go easy on me with this one…] My recent visit to Pompeii offered me a great example of an organization that isn’t working. Cultural Organizations Must Work on Two Dimensions Every organization has […]

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Cognitive Bias Video Song: Why should it be a YouTube Sensation?

April 29, 2010

Tweet I have decided that this Cognitive Bias Video Song video is a YouTube sensation, despite its having only 1,046 hits as of this writing and the subsequent (and temporary) absence of social affirmation of its sensation-ism. This song about Cognitive Bias was made salient to me by Mediation Channel, an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) […]

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Active Lurkers: How Idea Lovecats Demonstrate Engagement

March 18, 2010

Tweet Many of us bloggers look at the disparity between the number of visitors to our blogs and the number of comments on our blogs, and weep shake our heads. Why is the ratio of unique visitors to commenters 683 to 1? Or 389 to 5? Or 200 to 0? What are those other 682, […]

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Useful research, if you are a gang member

March 1, 2010

Tweet Oh how I love empirical research– the chance to answer burning questions, with real data, so that you can act more effectively. Consider this new tidbit of info that I picked up over the weekend: Full beer bottles break with less force than empty ones, so if you are going to hit someone in […]

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What Keeps Women From Moving Up the Ladder? Not “experience”, but corporate laziness

February 24, 2010

Tweet This just in from Forbes Magazine — yet another article about why “women” don’t get promoted. (hat tip to my friend @ShaunRSmith) Orit Gadiesh and Julie Coffman, in Why Women Don’t Make It Up The Ladder summarize several of the arguments that are advanced to explain why so few women, relative to men, get […]

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Why So Much Anger at the Girl Scouts?

February 22, 2010

Tweet Ever since I poked the beehive back in August with my post about Walmart and Girl Scout cookies, my blog and I have been receiving angry comments from people who just hate the Girl Scouts. It’s one thing to be angry at Walmart, but the Girl Scouts? I don’t understand… Why is there so […]

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Fix the Brand of Men’s Figure Skating: Send Out the Clowns, and get me Johnny Weir

February 19, 2010

Tweet The ‘Brand of Men’s Figure Skating’ is broken. The brand lacks coherence, it isn’t compelling, and sometimes it isn’t even attractive. And it’s all because of what those guys wear. In an ideal world, the Brand of Men’s Figure Skating reflects a hearty frisson between between the brand’s two defining attributes: Athleticism & Artistry. […]

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Ponies in the Snow

February 10, 2010

Tweet Heaven help you if you are a business that I care about, even if your business is no business of mine. I just finished up a 24-hour email exchange with the folks at the Virginia Camp where my daughters and I do our mother-daughter riding weekends, and where they’ll be going to camp this […]

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Does the iPad Signal a Change in Apple’s Core Brand & Identity?

February 2, 2010

Tweet If products reflect an organization’s values and an organization’s identity, does Apple’s new iPad tell us something about where Apple as a company is headed? And, if that’s where Apple is going, do we all want to go there too? Here’s a proposition: Apple as an organization is changing, from an organization that’s “about” […]

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