Authentic or Not?

Is there a Business Model behind that Values Statement?

March 1, 2012

There are many fledgling businesses that have laudable intent and shaky commercial foundations.   This is a problem because, in an ideal world, the businesses that stand for values we share should also be able to sustain themselves as businesses. That’s the key premise underneath social entrepreneurship and conscious capitalism. Purpose-driven organizations need compelling values, but they also need coherent [...]

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10 Reasons Why The Komen Foundation Should Stop Lying about Defunding Planned Parenthood

February 3, 2012

It always hurts when organizations lie. Lying hurts the organization, the employees, the organization’s partners, the organization’s prospects, and most importantly, lying hurts the organization’s constituents. When an organization does something that sparks a”‘reputation crisis”, the absolute worst way to respond is to lie. As the reputation crisis of the Susan J. Komen Foundation continues, [...]

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Why Do Meritocracies Hurt Women?

November 7, 2011

When it comes to discriminating against women, you’d think that only sexist organizations would be involved.   But did you ever imagine that meritocracies would encourage managers to discriminate against women? Research conducted by Emilio Castilla and Stephen Benard, published last year in Administrative Science Quarterly, documents a disturbing dynamic that the authors call “The Paradox [...]

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Authentic Corporate Reputations: The Real PR Challenge

May 27, 2011

To craft a corporate reputation that seems authentic, claims about the organization’s character must be anchored in real features of the organization. It’s the organization’s job to demonstrate a link between reputation claims and real features, and it’s the PR professional’s job to explain a link between claims and real features. (This post is drawn [...]

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Action Branding: Using activity streams to authenticate identity claims

March 23, 2011

Action Branding is the concept that brands are the sum of their actions. – Extending this concept to personal brands and organizational brands, action branding helps individuals and organizations demonstrate, and thus authenticate, the character, values and purpose they claim to have. – Social media creates opportunities for individuals and organizations to track, organize and [...]

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CSR that Improves the World But Leaves Your Damaging Business Model Intact: Authentic or not?

February 9, 2011

How can your organization claim to be making the world better, when your business model depends on making the world worse? This question about corporate social responsibility efforts has bugged me for decades — pretty much since I learned what capitalism was. The question came up again for me Tuesday during the conversation at the [...]

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The Stress of Not Having It All, guest post by Fran Melmed

December 2, 2010

[One of the special joys of blogging and tweeting about progressive movements in organizations and leadership is the relationships we make as we find kindred souls. These kindred souls are often tucked into niches other than our own, but because their approaches share the our fundamental values and because they are working with a shared [...]

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Personal Branding: It’s Different for Girls

November 12, 2010

Personal branding is inescapable.¹ A person simply cannot participate in online forums, much less in their full career, without deliberately or unintentionally crafting and framing the way that they are seen by others. However, while personal branding is inescapable, it isn’t easy to make it work in our favor. Personal branding is fraught with choices [...]

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For Diversity & Inclusion, Don’t Treat All Differences The Same

November 5, 2010

I’m troubled by a trend in the conversation about ‘diversity and inclusion’ in organizations. Some Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) consultants and conversations are beginning to treat all forms of difference as equally important. For example, differences in the gender, orientation, physical ability, or ethnicity of organization members are presented along with differences in cognitive styles, [...]

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Pattern Recognition: How to spot female digital entrepreneurs

November 2, 2010

Smarts. Fire. Audacity. Technical chops. Focus. Strong network. Innovative product ideas. That’s what venture capitalists look for when they are selecting which entrepreneurs to support and which businesses to fund. Unfortunately, VCs tend to see these characteristics most often when the entrepreneurs themselves are “white, male, under 30, nerds, with no social life who dropped [...]

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