“Authentic” is dead

It's time to retire the following phrases. They should no longer be used, ever, in any context except derisive mocking: * gapingvoid-yak-yak-yak Fast and easy * Putting customers first * The Holy Grail of * The leading provider of * Legendary customer support Also eschew these words, as devoid of meaning as a yogi's mantra and as useless as a simile that doesn't contribute new information: * gapingvoid-welcome-nobody-cares Authentic * Solution * Genuine * Powerful * Secure * Simple * Innovative * Insight * Disruptive

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Peter Senge on collaboration, sustainability and improvisations - MIT Management Review

What would it take to get rid of disposable cups? That was a question MIT Sloan senior lecturer Peter Senge raised in an interesting keynote address this morning at the MIT Sustainability Summit 2010. Senge, who is the author of well-known books such as The Fifth Discipline and The Necessary Revolution, focused on the need for collaboration among unlikely partners to achieve real progress on sustainability issues – and convert our “take-make-waste” economy into a new, more sustainable economy. Senge used the example of disposable coffee cups (a topic apparently on his mind because he came to the Sustainability Summit from a Starbucks-convened cup summit taking place down the street) to get the MIT Sustainability Summit attendees thinking about the need for collaboration in sustainability projects.

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Empowered Individuals and Empowering Institutions - Gary Hamel WSJ

In my last post I talked about the widening fault lines that run between individuals and institutions. Crack open the head of the average manager, and you’ll find a way of thinking that puts the institution in front of, or on top of, the individual. Represented graphically, the thinking looks like this . . . Model I: INSTITUTION –> INDIVIDUAL –> PROFITS The company hires employees to produce goods and services that yield profits for shareholders. In this model, the individual is to the institution what human beings were to the Matrix—raw material; factors of production hired to serve the institution’s goals. In real life, human beings aren’t plugged into machines, but they’re often plugged into roles that don’t suit them and jobs that don’t fulfill them. Usually, it is the individual who must conform to the institution rather than the other way around. If you doubt this, ask yourself what would you wear to work every day if there really were no constraints? What computer would you use on the job if you could pick any one you wanted? And what task or project would you tackle if you were free to choose?

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Everything You Need To Know About Social Media Marketing In Seven Short Steps

Here’s everything you need to know about social media marketing in seven short steps: 1. The biggest risk with social media is in not engaging in public conversations about your brand. So, do engage yourself and encourage your employees to engage. Ask them not to do things that will embarrass themselves or you, but expect them to. All of us have embarrassed ourselves in public, more than once, so will they. It’s okay. 2. The only solution for negative conversations is more positive conversations. Responding to and resolving negative conversations is table stakes. The only way to win is by inspiring your evangelists to start and spread more positive conversations about you. So, put in place a process to track and resolve negative conversations, then focus on organizing and energizing your evangelists.

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My Eureka Moment With Strategy - Roger Martin - Harvard Business Review

Do you find that company strategy meetings often descend into adversarial position-taking? Many people complain to me that it's the single biggest block to strategy-making that they encounter. But getting around that block is a lot easier than you might think. The solution lies simply in posing a single question, which I believe is the most important question in strategy. I discovered the question about 15 years ago in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, a town of 7,500 inhabitants equidistant from Green Bay, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota. We had a group of about 10 executives from a mining company in a conference room, split evenly between mine management and executives from head office in Toronto. Everybody had an opinion — i.e. what was true — but given the wide array of experiences, technical knowledge, and organizational interests, those opinions were all over the map. We quickly descended into adversarial position-taking and I could tell it was going nowhere.

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