[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] Imagine this: You’re running a meeting and you have information that will affect everyone else in that meeting negatively. You decide not to share any of that information during the meeting and prattle on as if nothing is about to change or happen. Except everybody in the conference room finds out […]
Communication is the real work of leadership: articulating a vision. Breathing life into professed values. Challenging the status quo. Engaging people’s heads, hearts and hopes. A lot of that communication is in day-to-day conversation, in meetings, and other routine interactions. But some of it also comes in the form of speeches or presentations. Death-by-PowerPoint is unacceptable. […]
Let’s say you’re a guest in someone’s home. You and your friends are invited to a dinner at which the hosts, though cash-strapped, do their level best to put out a nice spread and show you hospitality. You over-serve yourself on their liquor, stagger around drunk and tear a picture off the wall, then unzip […]
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] Is it something in the DNA of biopharma CEOs that lights up righteous indignation all over social media and focuses the media spotlight on their self-made crises? Not long ago, I wrote about Turing Pharmaceutical’s 5,000 percent price hike of the toxoplasmosis drug, Daraprim, and the clueless swagger of its […]
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] The second a crisis rears its ugly head and a reporter knocks on your door about it, you start quaking in your boots. You get a lump in your throat and notice you’re sweating. But you know in your heart that your organization is not the villain in this issue, […]
[by Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications] As we try to hold on to the last days of summer, many organizations are well into planning for the year ahead. If your organization’s fiscal year begins on January 1, chances are you’re already hard at work on your budget for 2017. A former boss of mine used […]
On Monday morning, activist Wagatwe Wanjuki lit a Tufts University sweatshirt on fire, and broadcast it on Facebook Live. She did so in protest, calling on schools like Tufts to apologize for mishandling sexual assault cases. “If they care about ending rape on campus, if they care about justice, then they should be able to do […]
Presentations are a gamble; they’re risky. You invest valuable time and money, but you can’t predict the presentation climate that you will be dealt. You cannot calculate the exact mood of the audience or control all variables of the situation. To succeed, you must be bold, and come prepared with an ace up your sleeve. […]
[By Scott Juba] Facebook is rolling out a test in Brazil and Canada of having an open camera window atop the News Feed in the Facebook app. When people in those countries open the Facebook app on their mobile device, they will see a prompt to use this new feature. Upon accepting it, their camera […]
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] They’re the bane of guilty players everywhere. They pop out from behind buildings and bushes as you’re scrambling to get into your car. They run you down with a microphone stuck in your face and a Frezzi light blinding you. You’re trapped like a deer in a headlight with an […]