“The Benefit of the Doubt” on NSA Spying Versus Germany’s “Private Dignity” Narrative
The public side of a private conversation between President Obama and Chancellor Merkel Often when we want to understand attitudes, beliefs and assumptions we rely on intuition, instinct or we make quick guesses, but that’s unsatisfactory and unfulfilling. What happens is we try to dominate a narrative without paying too much attention to how people are hearing us. The question is, do we really understand our audiences before we market to them, before we try to shape their thinking, before we try to move them to action? We spend a lot of energy understanding what we want. Do we...
read moreMastering the Art of Making a Difference
Conversation with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović On May 9, 2014, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović addressed the 5th National Summit on Strategic Communications in Washington DC in her role as NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy. A short time later, she took a leave from NATO to campaign for election as President of her native country, the Republic of Croatia. On January 11, 2015, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović won the election, and in February 2015 she was inaugurated as Croatia’s first female president and the fourth president of the former Yugoslav...
read moreDisruptive Thinking: Does the US Military Social Media Policy Differ From Business?
No one doubts that social media is an important tool, and there’s certainly much we can learn from the private sector. However, in this column, author Captain Crispin J. Burke suggests that goverment agencies are vastly different enterprises than corporations, so they will undoubtedly have seperate social media strategies. Do you agree?
read moreCompeting across Borders
How cultural and communication barriers affect business A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit Using results from a global survey of 572 executives and in-depth interviews with senior executives, this study finds that the recent economic downturn is spurring companies into becoming more international. The report explores the challenges companies face when they have to operate or compete in increasingly international markets. Specifically, this paper assesses the role that cross-border communication and collaboration play in the success or failure of companies. Interestingly,...
read moreLeadership is a Conversation
“One-way broadcast messaging is a relic, and slick marketing materials have as little effect on employees as they do on customers. But people will listen to communication that is intimate, interactive, inclusive, and...
read moreConfessions of a Strategic Communicator
Georgetown professor Rosa Brooks weighs in on Assistant Secretary of. of Defense for Public Affairs George Little’s recent memo re-defining Strategic Communications. Brooks refers to SC as the thoughtful integration of issues of stakeholder perception and response into policymaking, planning, and operations at every level. Public affairs, IO, and traditional public diplomacy are tools that can support and enhance strategic communication, but they aren’t the same as strategic communication, she says. Strategic communication, in this view, is less about what we have to say than it...
read moreQuestions for your Digital Team
By pushing your digital team to take on new challenges each time benchmarks are reached, you will not only keep them motivated, you will keep them keenly aware of the overall mission their work supports…
read moreVolunteerism: A Core Competency
Companies from AT&T to FedEx earned a place among The Civic 50 by focusing their volunteer efforts on what they do best…
read moreIn Defense of Crisis PR
A recent open letter addresses an attack on the practices of Crisis Communications. “Crisis Communications,” as the author points out, “is about getting clients to make the right decisions.”…
read moreData Analytics Helped Obama Win
Data-driven decision-making played a huge role in creating a second term for the 44th President and will be one of the more closely studied elements of the 2012…
read moreKissinger on China
During a panel at the Woodrow Wilson Center, the 89-year-old former secretary of state used his unique 40-year-experience with Chinese leaders to give a tutorial on how to handle the sensitive relations between Beijing and Washington…
read morePracticing “Narrative Leadership”
Smart leaders today engage with employees in ordinary person-to-person conversation more than communicating a series of commands from on high. Practicing “narrative leadership” Increasingly, “leadership” is being defined as a conversation. A June 2012 article in the Harvard Business Review rightly focused on how the “command-and-control approach to management in recent years has become less and less viable” because “globalization, new technologies, and changes in how companies create value and interact with customers have sharply reduced the efficacy of a purely directive,...
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