When you think of the word ‘leadership’ and how you’d define it, you’re spoiled for choice if you look up that word in a dictionary on the net. Try this Google definition search, for example, and then decide which of the many choices fit. The definition really depends on what situation you want to apply […]
Category: Leadership
Intel COO blogs with employees
While some big companies have already taken a step into the public blogosphere with executive blogs, Intel isn’t one. At least, not yet. But they do have an internal executive blog, introduced in December. The San Jose Mercury News reported yesterday that Intel’s President and COO, Paul Otellini (who becomes CEO in May), began an […]
Transparency leads to genuine debate
A thoughtful view on what the role of a blog sponsored and supported by the World Economic Forum should be and how the blog should develop comes from Lance Knoble writing in his Davos Newbies blog, in specific regard to the effects of the controversial Eason Jordan affair First, a quick recap for anyone outside […]
There is no template for executive blogs
A story in the Financial Times earlier this week (title: “Why executives should steer clear of the blogosphere” – paid sub needed to read it) took a critical look at a few blogs by senior company executives, and mentioned a senior HP exec with a blog that I hadn’t seen before. The FT commented (some […]
IABC Chair blog can succeed
Fellow IABC member and blogger Allan Jenkins posted a scathing commentary about IABC and Chairman David Kistle yesterday (and has attracted a bit of flack in the comments to his post as a result). What especially caught my attention in Allan’s post was his comments regarding the IABC Chair blog. Allan writes: […] While an […]
Get used to transparency, IABC
In yesterday’s edition of The Hobson & Holtz Report, our bi-weekly podcast show, Shel and I talked a little about IABC. We’re talking about IABC a lot these days. Our conversation was a further extension, so to speak, of the critical post by Allan Jenkins that he published last week. Like Shel and I, Allan […]
The deafening silence continues
Eric Eggertson, an IABC member in Canada, writes: […] In 10 short days I’ve gone from being a fairly satisfied IABC member with a benign attitude toward the organization’s leadership to an annoyed skeptic, wondering why such a simple organizational communications matter can’t be dealt with quickly and effectively. If the silence continues much longer, […]
Illustrating unfiltered conversation
Last week, I posted critical commentary about Anita Roddick’s website which I’d discovered when researching information about the enterprise software market (no, there’s no connection between the two – the links you follow when researching on the net can lead you to some interesting places). Anita Roddick is well-known as the founder of The Body […]
Real organization transparency
Companies everywhere talk a lot about how important their employees are and the contribution they make to overall success. But most companies don’t do this with the public openness and transparency demonstrated by CMS Cameron McKenna, an international law firm headquartered in London. The Financial Times reports that CMS Cameron McKenna is believed to be […]
GM: Poster child for the executive blog
Since General Motors began the GM FastLane Blog in early January, it’s attracted considerable attention from business communicators. That attention has been sparked by who the bloggers are – senior corporate executives, starting with GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. The blog’s been under a continuous spotlight with a great deal of ongoing commentary and opinion […]
Nike breaks new ground in communication transparency
Communicating on corporate responsibility doesn’t get more transparent than this. The Financial Times reports: Today Nike breaks a three-year silence on social reporting as it publishes its 2004 corporate responsibility report. This is Nike’s first report since a 2002 California supreme court ruling that the company could be sued by Mark Kasky, a labour rights […]
Blueprint ethics code for the profession
One thing I’ve frequently commented about in this blog is ethics in the communication profession. Or, rather, about the lack of an authoritative and cohesive voice that speaks on ethics on behalf of the profession. I’ve taken my own stand, so to speak, in castigating our professional associations – notably, IABC and PRSA – for […]
GM blog stays on track
Yesterday, General Motors announced its financial results for the first quarter this year, reporting a net loss of $839 million compared to a net profit of $1.2 billion for the same period last year. It’s interesting to see the focus in media reporting about yesterday’s announcement – “GM posts worst results in 13 years”, “GM […]
Bland but with gems
Kudos to Jeremy Pepper for securing a blog interview with Lord Chadlington, aka Peter Gummer, the ex-journalist, PR man and brother of John Gummer, British Conservative politician (and minister in John Major’s government in the early 1990s). Chadlington is a founder of Shandwick, now Weber Shandwick, one of the big PR agencies and part of […]
Why every company should blog
I’ve just been reading the drafts of the four interviews that Shel Israel posted in the past few days on The Red Couch, the blog that’s the focal point for developing the book on blogs that Shel and Robert Scoble are writing. Those interviews are with Jonathan Schwartz, COO of Sun Microsystems; Bob Lutz, Vice […]
Integrating blogs with PR and marketing
First there was Business Week featuring Steve Rubel in their cover story on blogs last week, complete with full-page photo. That feature evangelizes blogs, exploring the business perspective in quite a different way to other recent mainstream media reporting, and in a far more relevant way for the business reader. Today, the Wall Street Journal […]
GM blog continues to push the envelope
There’s a new blogger on the GM FastLane Blog, with a new approach – talking to women. A post yesterday by Cynthia Price, GM Center of Expertise, Women’s Market Initiative: I’ve been noticing that guys make most of the comments in this blog. But I’d like to address the women out there. It seems there […]
IBM publishes guidelines for employee bloggers
The news last Friday that IBM is introducing a large-scale corporate blogging initiative has attracted plenty of attention, both in the blogosphere and by mainstream media. Today, IBM published on its employee intranet its draft guidelines for corporate blogging. James Snell, a member of IBM’s Software Standards Strategy Group, has posted those guidelines on his […]
Interview: Mike Wing, IBM – May 20, 2005
For anyone with an opinion about corporate blogging, the big news this week was IBM’s dynamic step into the blogosphere with their initiative to enable employee blogging and making publicly available their detailed employee blogging guidelines. In this special edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel and Neville enjoyed a 53-minute conversation with Mike […]
It’s worth hanging out in the IABC Cafe
It seems a distant memory now that, after the IABC Chair blog launched last October, it quickly reached a nadir in expectations, engagement, involvement, leadership, worthwhile content, you name it. That changed when incoming Chairman Warren Bickford took over as chief blogger and relaunched it as the IABC Cafe. And what a change! The Cafe […]