I was in New Orleans for a treasured aunt’s funeral, sitting in my elderly mother’s kitchen, some 650 miles away from my office. It was 4 a.m. I was connected online via my mother’s land line. (You make do with what’s available.) My company’s CEO was in Switzerland for a big business conference that would be livestreamed over the internet. The plan was for people at the event … [Read more...]
Crisis – 2,000 Emails Are in My Inbox
Thirty years ago, I was one of three full-time speechwriters working for a Fortune 500 company. Our boss wrote speeches part-time and supervised us. This was a fairly typical set-up for speeches across the corporate world. Today, that company has no full-time speechwriter. The work and the need for the work are still there, but it’s parceled out, decentralized and included in a … [Read more...]
Innovation: Can You Do Your Job Too Well?
Years ago, following a reorganization of our function at the company I was working for, I was called into my boss’s office late one Friday to learn my assignment. All the teams had been changed, with new functions (and headcount!) added, and I and my peers were finding out one-by-one what our new assignments were to be. I expected to be the manager of the team I had been … [Read more...]