Recently, The New York Times interviewed Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University (and formerly a leader at my alma mater). She told a short story of asking Michael Porter to run a session at a retreat with the deans of Harvard’s various schools, as she sought to “build cohesiveness and integration” across the multi-tentactled […]
Tackling a little-known management issue
October 7, 2009 by
Steven DiMaio’s latest blog post on Harvard Business Publishing caught my eye. The title is just great: “How to Train Your Pet Peeve.” And he’s tackling something that management training doesn’t traditionally cover: How to manage the little but persistent interaction reactions that can break down a team, a department, a project or process. It’s […]
Crisis communications isn’t just for big corporations
October 1, 2009 by
Recently, WWF here in the U.S. had to handle a tricky situation: An ad, produced for WWF-Brazil — over which WWF-US has no control — got further than it should have in the approval process. The ad contrasted the death-toll of the Twin Towers to the 2004 Asian tsunami, pointing out that the destructive power […]
How to break down marketing silos at your nonprofit
August 15, 2009 by
I spoke at the Bridge Conference here in D.C. in July, tackling something familiar to ANYONE who’s done marketing at or for a nonprofit: Silos, those pernicious, often impenetrable walls that divide and thus limit marketing efforts by development, membership, program and communications staff. To prepare, I went and talked to several very smart people […]