Authentic or Not?

McCain Campaign Exploits the Race of Their Hired Help

October 28, 2008

Tweet The McCain Campaign has hired Obama supporters to work as as "paid volunteers ."  As reported by Tom Baldwin in the UK Times, and picked up by The Huffington Post and the Daily Kos, the McCain Campaign is paying temp workers $10 an hour to go door to door handing out absentee ballot requests. […]

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Mix Fake and Real, the Palin Way

October 8, 2008

Tweet People are hungry for authentic leaders and authentic organizations .  Assessing an organization’s authenticity or a candidate’s authenticity is one way that we gauge where to place our trust. To entice people to trust us, we need to make them think the organization is authentic. Sometimes, we may even want to create "Fake Authenticity" […]

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8 Ways to be Authentic: Tyson Foods suggests how

September 2, 2008

Tweet Tyson Food claims that, as part of its core values, it is “striving to be faith friendly”. But, if Tyson’s handling of the brouhaha over recognizing an Islamic holy day in the labor contract of its plant in Shelbyville, TN, is any indication, Tyson is having a hard time finding ways to demonstrate its […]

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Broken promises hurt twice as much

August 27, 2008

Tweet What hurts more: (a) An offensive organizational action or (b) an offensive action that displays inauthenticity? I vote for (b). An offensive action that displays inauthenticity hurts more than an action that is simply offensive.  Why? Because an offensive inauthentic action represents a broken promise. When an organization makes a claim to be a […]

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Tyson Foods lacks faith in its own identity.

August 9, 2008

Tweet When organizations are being authentic, they approach their problems by drawing on their identity. An organization that wants to be authentic must regularly find ways to translate its beliefs about ‘who we are’ into actions that demonstrate ‘who we are’. When an organization has faith in its own identity, it will strive to demonstrate […]

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Want Authenticity? Design Homophobia Out of the Organization

July 31, 2008

Tweet The System isn’t working at Omnicom. Omnicom says “we are committed to ensuring that we use our position to promote socially responsible policies and practices. Yet, Omnicom’s agency, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO (AMV/BBDO) , creates advertising that is anti-gay. Because Omnicom is not addressing the contradiction between who it says it is as an […]

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Homophobia and (In)Authenticity at Omnicom: What can a leader do?

July 24, 2008

Tweet I am struggling to understand the pattern of reactions to a recent critique of an organization’s authenticity. Bob Garfield, writing in Monday’s (7/21) Advertising Age, has an Open Letter to Omnicom President-CEO John Wren, asking Wren to look at the contradiction between Omnicom’s public Statement on Corporate Responsibility and the homophobia represented in three […]

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An Authentic News Organization Doesn’t Photoshop Pictures

July 7, 2008

Tweet Show me a liberal — heck , show me a thoughtful American — and I will show you a person who says that the name "Fox News" is an oxymoron. With their fake name, Fox News claims that it is a news organization. Fox News works very hard to make viewers think that what […]

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In the authenticity battle, who wins? Barbie vs Felicity

June 12, 2008

Tweet Does an organization’s authenticity protect it somehow, and make it stronger? S houldn’t it be harder to influence, harder to infiltrate, harder to damage an organization where identity, image and action support each other? Whenever I noticed an organization differ from its industry’s norm, or noticed a subsidiary doing something completely different from its […]

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Authentic, but how? What questions would you ask this organization….

May 21, 2008

Tweet Readers- I found a great story in my local paper about a woman in my town who sings in a men’s chorus. Yes, you read that correctly–She is in a Men’s chorus. While not exactly like the photo, above, I think the ratio in this chorus is at least 75:1 men to woma n. […]

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