Video meetings aren’t as effective as being face to face. You’re probably not shocked to learn this. Our world changed with the COVID pandemic; we thought we were out of business until video meeting platforms like Zoom and Teams came riding in like the proverbial cavalry to save the day. ...
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You probably remember the story of the collapse of a section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia this summer that was expected to result in a local traffic nightmare for at least months while the fix was planned and executed. Instead, the repair was accomplished and traffic restored in astonishingly record ...
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We’re living in a time of relentless talk where we’re encouraged to continually spew our opinions (and photos of most of our meals) through social media. And broadcast infotainment and angertainment is populated by any number of talking heads, many of whom clearly have their sphincters on the pulse of ...
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I’ve been fortunate enough to have been facilitating a community group of concerned people in a small town around a large and highly controversial proposed mining project for more than 10 years. It may actually take another 10 years for it to come to fruition – if it ever does ...
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So, there are better, more effective ways of crafting emails, but consider the message that the medium itself sends. If you have the option of actually talking with someone face to face, even when it’s less convenient for you, get up, move, walk, drive if you have to, but go ...
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It was interesting to find the corporate world acknowledging the value of engagement but using different terminology, in this case, influence … mutual influence. In other words, operating differently from a position of unilateral hierarchy, coercion or authority, which is the way that we have come to expect most companies ...
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Working with people in leadership positions reveals an interesting conundrum related to credibility with communities. Leaders more often see themselves as cheerleaders for the projects that they manage. That zeal, however, makes it difficult for them to empathize with those who don’t see those projects quite as positively, which creates ...
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We live in a time of talk. Someday anthropologists will decide that people who lived in 2023 all had ginormous mouths and itty bitty ears. We have 24 hour access to a megaphone that’s always on and people use that amplifier relentlessly, broadcasting every momentary thought and posting pics of ...
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Successful public participation requires authenticity. Authenticity requires participation to be meaningful, not perfunctory. That can cause stress for organizations that have dabbled in public involvement in the past, but have done so with minimum commitment. They want credit for engaging their stakeholders but they avoid any serious involvement because they ...
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People find it quite impossible to relate to faceless, sterile institutions. I have yet to meet anyone who gets all warm and tingly around the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The challenge remains that those sterile public institutions are all in the business ...
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