Employees/Individuals

Employee Branding at BP: Do snazzy uniforms protect the response teams?

June 16, 2010

Somebody at BP has been reading The Onion. BP has figured out that dressing their employees in groovy outfits can help build esprit, camaraderie and a even a sense of importance. Okay, I’m being snarky here… but I am wondering about the positive (and possibly negative) effects of the outfits these BP control center personnel [...]

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3 Types of Employee Engagement Advocates: Which type are you?

May 17, 2010

Is there ever a time when our reactions don’t reflect our own perspectives on an issue? The whole wisdom behind the dictum: “Seek First to Understand” turns on our awareness of the near-impossibility of uncoupling our initial reactions from our personal standpoint. Our experience with an issue, as well as our general world views, are [...]

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Will Newsweek Respond to Claims of Sexism?

March 23, 2010

I would love to have been in the room when three journalists at Newsweek proposed that Newsweek publish their article criticizing Newsweek for gender discrimination. Why? You know you’re getting close(r) to authenticity when you can have a recursive sentence like that one written about changing things that are wrong at your organization. Here we [...]

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Social Media, False Urgency & Anywhen: Chris Brogan shows how to improve your Work-Life Fit

March 15, 2010

Blogger & Trust Agent extraordinaire, Chris Brogan, recently shared a mini rant that contained an important demonstration of work-life initiative. His suggestion — that we learn to recognize and respect what really is or isn’t ‘urgent’ — is a key element of constructing a healthy relationship between work and the rest of your life. Chris [...]

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That Special Starbucks: Does the place help the people be authentic?

March 4, 2010

First it was the Siren. Then it was the Christmas cards. For a while, it’s been the original artwork by their very own baristas displayed on the walls.. And now, my favorite Starbucks is getting bouquets of flowers. On a recent visit, there were two big vases of flowers on the counter by the espresso [...]

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Authentic Student Entrepreneurs: Embedding Personal, Product and Organizational Brand

February 17, 2010

What do fledgling entrepreneurs need to know about creating authenticity? And what, if anything, does this have to do with cupcakes? I had a chance to try to boil it all down to a few key ideas when I taught two classes of an undergraduate Entrepreneurship course at NYU’s Stern School of Business. My colleague, [...]

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Ponies in the Snow

February 10, 2010

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 summer. [...]

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Work-Life Initiatives Are the Foundation of Authentic Organizations

January 29, 2010

Earlier this week I met with a group of organizational change advocates, each of whom is dedicated to reshaping the relationship between work and life. Work-Life issues per se aren’t really my gig, although I’ve had a fair amount of work-life conflict in my day as an employee and as a manager. However, I invited [...]

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Work-Life Fit is an Enterprise 2.0 Solution

January 19, 2010

This headline could be puzzling…  What could possible make Work-Life Fit and Enterprise 2.0 relevant to each other? After all, one is a challenge of the modern workplace, and the other is a challenge to the modern workplace. They come together because both concepts ask us to redesign our organizations. Although Enterprise 2.0 and Work-Life [...]

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Networks and The Myth of Flattening Organizations

January 14, 2010

I was excited to hear from a few social media/Enterprise 2.0 advocates after my post last week asking When will social business become social change business? Special thanks to Jon Husband of Wirearchy, who not only confirmed that he has a revolutionary agenda behind his networked models of organizing but who also sent me some [...]

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