Personnel Today are writing about a recent survey that blames middle managers for lost productivity, even putting a spurious figure of £220bn on the loss. This smacks to me of a lazy and particularly unhelpful PR exercise. (Given that it’s Read more…
From the recent Demos email: Breaking the RulesWhat do public servants do when they’re asked to meet targets that just don’t make sense for local people? Increasingly, they break the rules and do the right thing anyway. And when they Read more…
Yesterday’s post on Malcolm Gladwell’s article on puzzles and mysteries prompted me to write about measurement. I recently chaired a Media Trust conference/seminar on public relations and one of the speakers talked at length on measuring PR results. [In fairness, Read more…
Another interesting piece from Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. "Open Secrets" uses the Enron story to talk about the difference between puzzles and mysteries, which fit beautifully into the Cognitive Edge complexity framework neatly. But there’s a further angle Read more…
Catching up on some podcasts, I’m listening to SciPod – the New Scientist podcast from 20060908 last year. There’s a piece on the Macbeth effect – research around how physical cleanliness is related to morality. It’s from the University of Read more…
I came across this recently and laughed out loud. "We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to Read more…
It’s short notice, I know, but I’m going to be chairing the Media Trust’s “Introduction to PR” seminar next Tuesday 16th January at the Park Crescent Conference Centre, Great Portland Street, London from 2pm onwards. It will be a good Read more…
I was talking with a colleague recently about a project she was peripherally involved in. One of her clients is very command-and-control, by-the-numbers (mostly made up of engineers, maintenance men, manual workers) and is about to embark on a large-scale Read more…
I’ve made no secret of my general dislike of mission statements. The process of putting one together can be very powerful and help clarify many things, but as pieces of communication they generally stink. But in Geneva today, I saw Read more…
I’ve just had one of those frustratingly familiar online survey experiences. I’d gone online to check out my BTOpenzone account and struggled to find any details of it on either the www.btopenzone.com or bt.com sites. And then I got a popup Read more…