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Tips for interrupting unconscious bias
Michelle Silverthorn Business Management, Services & Risk Management"Why do you brush your teeth?" When I ask that in my unconscious bias trainings, people give me a very strange look. Because you want healthy teeth and fresh breath, obviously. Except, for millennia, humans were perfectly happy without either. So what changed? Advertising. Marketing. Pepsodent, especially. They made you want to brush your teeth. They made you desire that clean feeling. They made it into a habit. A habit is changed behavior. And making people want to do something is how we always think habits should form.
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Study: How ‘empathy lens’ marketing can increase your brand’s…
Lisa Mulcahy MarketingAs a marketer, you know the importance of brand outreach. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it more important than ever for your customers to respect and identify with the "faces" representing your products and services. You want your customers to like the point people they deal with initially and bond with them on a fundamental level. How can you most effectively achieve this goal? A recent study published in the Journal of Marketing may hold the key.
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Why there’s no such thing as instant coffee
Hank Boyer Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementYou and I have been born into an accelerating world. Travel that took a week by horseback two centuries ago is now competed in a few hours in the air-conditioned comfort of your car. A little more than 10 years ago, the two-hour meeting you had in the next time zone that required flights and overnights is now completed in two hours, plus 2 minutes for the set up and tear down of a video call. We've become so used to speed that we actually believe there is something called instant coffee.
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Avoiding the cardinal sin of communication
Linda Popky MarketingWe all have opinions about the communications we receive from businesses and associations. In some cases, we get too much material too often; in others, not enough. Some pieces are too generic; some too detailed. But there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to turn off your customers and prospects: being too boring. How do you avoid turning off your target audience with your communications? Here are a few suggestions.
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One simple trick to boost workplace knowledge sharing
Gail Short Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementMany experts say having a workplace culture of knowledge sharing raises productivity and creates a more positive work environment. Unfortunately, knowledge flow among employees doesn’t always happen. Worries about looking incompetent can keep struggling workers from asking for help. But in a new study in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Jason Sandvik, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Tulane University's Freeman School of Business, and his co-authors discuss an innovative strategy for increasing knowledge sharing at work to boost performance.
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Bring love to your leadership style
Jill Ratliff Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementWhile "love" and "leadership" might sound like incompatible concepts, leaders who are unafraid to add love to their leadership style will find it motivates and engenders loyalty in their teams like nothing else can. Obviously, I’m not talking about hearts-and-flowers love or even familial love; those types of love are usually best left out of the workplace (family businesses aside). The kind of love I’m talking about is broader, more encompassing.
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How to power up the consent agenda
Robert C. Harris Association Management"We’ve been in this meeting for an hour and done nothing but listen to reports," said the board member. The standard board agenda includes a dozen reports and updates. Reading and listening to reports are not good use of board time. Meetings should concentrate on advancing the mission and strategic goals.
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Churches, ‘COMM’centrate on 6 things
Mark MacDonald Religious CommunityThere are many distractions and options when thinking about church communications. Focus is the key, and that “COMM”centration is required for a church to become noticed. Each person in your community and congregation has a lot of competition for thoughts and actions, too. The shotgun approach rarely works. If you’re not concentrating on the right things by limiting what people know about you, you will be ignored. Here are the six things your church needs to COMMcentrate on.
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Stay on track with your content marketing
Sheilamary Koch MarketingYour content shouldn't give readers a déja vu feeling. Nor should they feel like they've stepped onto an automobile showroom. As you plan your content strategy or next piece of content, ask yourself three key questions: 1. Is my content relevant to my audience? 2. Does my content solve real problems? 3. Does my content offer something people can't get elsewhere? Here's how to answer a resounding yes on all three.
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A massive no-no: Hiring to repay a favor, not because someone is the best…
Anne Rose Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementHiring an employee or appointing someone to take charge of an important assignment is a serious endeavor. Ideally, it’s one in which you critically assess the skills and character of the applicant before selecting the most suitable. Ideally. But sometimes such a decision isn’t so much a thoughtful, critical judgment as it is an emotional, visceral response to a perceived sense of obligation.
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