In “one fatal keystroke” Rose Zory, the Chief People Officer at Carat Media sent a “for top management only” email on the messaging managers should use when firing (oops, rightsizing) some employees.
She sent that email to every single person in the company. Carat is Europe’s largest media group, by the way. It provides advertising and public relations services, [...]

I am gratified by the 249 comments to this post I wrote for Harvard Business Review and seek your specific tips on quotability, the first step to connecting in this increasingly complex, information-flooded, and connected world:
You can feel the tension in the compressed smiles, quick nods and pointed questions at the annual Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare [...]

… you may want to recognize ways to avoid such self- sabotage — not that you would need such advice, of course, yet your intelligent friends might.  According to the 15 experts cited by Yale professor, Robert J. Steinberg, Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid, high I.Q. people are more likely to fall into [...]

Give customers the bragging rights that spur them to tell others about their experience at your place or event.  I wondered. Was it the butterscotch-colored walls, light coconut scent wafting through the door as I opened it or the cushy island of deep blue carpet under my feet as I stepped into the boutique hotel?
I [...]

We women generally worry more than men.  For example, “While men are bearing the brunt of the job losses, women report much higher levels of fear and worry about their families’ financial security than men do” and women worry more than their husbands about prostate cancer coming back.

Yet it is vital to recognize the difference between worry [...]

Years ago a candidate for California Superintendant of Schools repeatedly insinuated that his opponent was lying on her business tax returns and had an affair with a student intern. His charges were immediately disputed by her accountant, the student and several co-workers at her firm.
Not surprisingly, the attacks generated considerable interest in their first televised [...]

After a priest moved to a new parish he approached his superior one afternoon to ask, “Would you mind if I smoked while praying?” and was, not surprisingly, turned down.
Yet how one makes a request has a huge impact on whether it will be  granted. For example, the priest might have said, “Would you mind [...]

Simplify.
It’s clarifying.
Only then can one can focus. Focus on what is really going on. From the inside out
What do you feel right now?  What most matters to you?
What is happening, truly happening with those in the scene you are playing out right now?
What best serves the situation?  My friend Nate says, “What would love do now?”
Gratefulness. [...]

To this day I’m mortified when I see a box of chocolates. Perhaps sharing this story may save you from embarrassing yourself in a similar way. I was in the Antwerp airport, heading back to San Francisco. Before settling into a seat at my gate I bought two indulgences for the flight home, John LeCarre’s [...]

When one billionaire CEO lambasts another, labeling his technology the “roach motel of clouds” he is bound to make news. Few corporate CEOs would be that vividly denigrating except Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison.
Fewer still would deliver a lightening-quick, equally negative label back, as Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff who compared Ellison to an “oppressive dictator” adding [...]