We spend so much time worrying about the content and process of the projects and initiatives that we’re involved with that we lose sight of what’s right in front of our eyes. Never forget that ultimately we’re in the people business – the relationship business. That means building rapport by ...
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Working with people is frequently difficult and complex and the rules of engagement aren’t always easy or quick to learn – except sometimes....
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Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said ‘Don’t change anything.” He’s right. Most people want things better but hate the idea of change – particularly having to change anything in themselves. Those who do what we do for a living are in ...
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The biggest, loudest, most passionate voices attract the most attention and those activists tend to get things done. Additionally, those activists almost always represent themselves as the voice of the people, suggesting they speak for the majority. Trouble is that more often those loud voices only represent a narrow interest, ...
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The work that you do is important. OK, maybe it’s not as important as our egos sometimes tell us we and our work is, but still, pretty important stuff. The stakes are high in the need to communicate the problems that need to be solved and engaging people in understanding ...
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Ideology, partisanship, and self-service in government aren’t necessarily new, but it sure seems more obvious recently. There are always those who, shall we say, have less than honorable motives. And there will always be those who truly believe in the righteousness of what they choose to believe and perpetrate. Added ...
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Cable and online media have created a culture where everyone talks – or yells, and nobody bothers to listen. It’s as if the last person standing – talking … wins. Empirical evidence and research has taught us that one of the most effective first steps in dealing with adversarial groups ...
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From our “using the right words” division of The Participation Company comes some suggestions for making presentations more effective. Some of these are repetitive and redundant, some are dumb excuses, some crutches, or shoptalk, or weasel words. All are good to lose....
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We work with very smart and very caring people doing very complex public sector jobs who do their darndest to make great decisions that benefit all of us – the public. And at the end of the day, often the hardest part of their job is getting us to ...
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“You’re on mute” may be the most used phrase of the times. We’ve spent nearly two years working with each other by way of Teams, Zoom, GoToMeeting, WebEx, Google Meet, Skype, or some other video conferencing/meeting platform. And it turns out a lot of people have learned to like it ...
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