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This social media fad will ruin organization development

Talent Management July 8, 2010

What does the social media fad have to do with business?  How is this social media fad related to organizational development (organization development)?  Are you asking yourself if you really need to bother learning about social media? I’ve heard it all too often and continue to cringe hearing about the lack of effort OD and [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 2

Portfolio Planning July 2, 2010

The key for organizations to grow and to thrive relies on how to manage projects and how to manage projects for organization success becomes an industry competitive advantage.  But why do so many projects fail? Is it lack of preparation? Is it lack of communication? Is it lack of commitment? No, those are symptoms. Projects [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; impact analysis template

Portfolio Planning June 29, 2010

On my previous post, Scope or:  how to manage projects for organization success that included the eBook Scope – Kills Bad Breath and Kills Projects [link below] I introduced the importance of scope before a project launches.  The numbers on project failure are sobering:  90% of all projects fail and this post follows up both the [...]

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Too many links, a pause for delinkification

Marketing June 21, 2010

A couple recent articles around author Nicholas Carr’s writings and thoughts present a negative symptom of hyperlinks, mainly, reduced reader comprehension.  Too many hyperlinks or links negatively effect our ability to process and understand.  Mr. Carr’s call?  Delinkification. Is hyperlinking a hyper waste?  Search engine optimization (SEO) aside, for the moment, the whole goal of [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 1

Portfolio Planning June 18, 2010

Organizations rely on projects to remain competitive.  Projects are the way organizations deliver and realize their executive strategies.  The ability to deliver a project is the ability to compete.  Scope kills projects and projects that are not delivered kill organizations.  Scope is one of the most important ways to manage project success.  And when projects [...]

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John Glennon, Director of Management Information Systems, WR Grace

Impact June 5, 2010

“I had the pleasure of working with Toby for several years at Amicon/Millipore. Toby provided outstanding customer service to all his Marketing/Communcation constituants – both internally and externally. “I was always impressed with his customer facing skills – he was especially calm in circumstances that required a sense of urgency but not panic. “I kept [...]

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Isn’t it enough that I told them?

Talent Management May 24, 2010

Does your organization communicate or inform. Does your leader invite conversation at the table?  Does your leader offer an environment of dialogue? If the answer is no, how does that affect organization motivation throughout all levels? Do your project leaders and project sponsors sit around the table and audit the failed implementations with comments like [...]

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4 tips to use Twitter for project management

Portfolio Planning January 21, 2010

In my last post I presented a case to manage your projects as a business portfolio. The ability to deliver projects on time, on budget, and within scope directly impacts your organization’s ability to compete and stay alive and project failure is an organization-wide risk. In this post I want to introduce Twitter to manage [...]

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8 steps to better decision making in 2010

Talent Management December 31, 2009

It starts with an executive need: a new market evaluation; improve operating margins; a game-changing technology; your competition is eating your lunch. Whatever the reason, a project is how an organization translates an executive strategy. The ability to scope and deliver a project is a competitive advantage. The best organizations realize project management capability as [...]

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5 tips to manage better meetings

Organization Behavior December 17, 2009

Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. We have meetings to clear up confusion, to communicate, to interact, to make decisions, to listen, and to collaborate. Too many meetings end without clear decisions and too often it is not until after the meeting is finished when the real conversations begin when people: complain about not being heard, [...]

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Sid Ohri, Senior Manager, Accenture

Impact November 1, 2009

Recommendation of Toby Elwin’s work and ability to perform on projects, influence decision-makers, and mentor staff.

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Viral marketing and Twitter gone right – the comment & the blog

Marketing September 11, 2009

On my last blog I received a comment I thought deserved a longer response than should be posted within the comment section. So, I decided to pick up the comment and carry it onto a new post. The blog comment david_becker: I disagree with this article as this is a “contest” and not a viral [...]

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Viral marketing and Twitter gone wrong – help Adecco recognize Adecco and win $100

Marketing September 4, 2009

Viral marketing happens when a story or idea takes off and spreads. The story is spread, like a virus, from one person to another through Twitter, the blog world, email, and YouTube – to name a few. In the online community being the object of the viral campaign can bring instant fame, for free, but [...]

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Marketing 2.0 – You better free your mind instead

Marketing August 25, 2009

Marketing 2.0 is about revolution, not evolution. Where marketing and public relations (pr) of the 1.0 world relied on distribution control, marketing 2.0 relies on free distribution and the creative commons. This is less evolution and more revolution. The printing press was the key to unlock information. The printing press broke down the carefully regulated [...]

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The bully in the corner office

Organization Behavior August 3, 2009

I challenge myself to write blogs that might start a conversation either leading to change or to sustain what is working. I want to present an idea to provide a spark for action or follow-through. Anyone can come up with an idea, that’s easy, the hard part is to take an idea into implementation. My [...]

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Twitter power – Sarah Palin and the tweet to sue the entire Internet

Marketing July 13, 2009

As a follow-up to my Twitter is a waste of time blog, I provide a 4th example about the application of Twitter and social media communication: Late night, July 4, Sarah Palin uses Twitter to threaten to sue the entire Internet. Sarah Palin’s lawyer wrote that “we will be exploring legal options this week to [...]

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Twitter is a waste of time

Marketing July 1, 2009

Twitter has changed the way people communicate. The marketing world, as it was known, has been carpet bombed. The rules have changed. The roles have changed. In a series of earlier blogs I talk about communication in the age of saturation, so I won’t repeat those points. However, I will revisit one reality: people don’t [...]

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Communication in the age of saturation, part 3 visual

Marketing April 27, 2009

In 2 prior blogs, Communication in the age of saturation, part 1 and part 2, I attempt to outline our communication challenge to break through filters and biases people set up to manage their information overload. In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau’s quote, what I began by reading, I must finish by acting. I [...]

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Communication in the age of saturation, part 2

Marketing April 21, 2009

Is your communication effort designed to interrupt people? Think of the filters you put up around your world to manage the saturation of information and decisions you have to make. What percentage of today’s decisions do you make from a telemarketer, billboard, or yellow pages? Conversely, what decisions do you make from a friend’s recommendation, [...]

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Communication in the age of saturation, part 1

Marketing April 13, 2009

The goal of communication is to be understood. Typically, the first piece of communication advice is: know your audience. When you know your audience – their interests, their lingo, their needs – you better relate to their communication style. When you know their style you can write and speak in a way that they understand. [...]

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How goals help us fail

Portfolio Planning March 30, 2009

March 15th I read an article in Boston’s Sunday Globe Ideas section on how goals have a dangerous side. The article called Why Setting Goals Can Backfire jumped-started my thoughts on goals. The past two weeks I have spent time thinking and scribbling notes all over this article. I thought I’d share some. [the .pdf [...]

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Buy in

Organization Behavior March 29, 2009

>In organization change I always avoid the term buy in. You may hear the term in some variation of the following: now we need to get [insert stakeholder here] to buy in. I have never been comfortable asking anyone to ‘buy in’ to a strategic plan, a new product launch, or an organization change. ‘Buy [...]

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Leading and managing

Organization Behavior March 26, 2009

Managers manage. Leaders lead. Are these roles so different? A manager is charged to manage their resources against a budget.  Does this allow a manager to maximizing their talent, to cultivate creativity in their team, or to take risks?  The manager needs to deliver to their budget and align their resources to successfully enable their [...]

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Leaders and fishing

Talent Management March 24, 2009

I focus a lot of root-cause analysis on how a leader affects their organization. Though it may seem people are responsible for their own motivation, this assumption is far too variable to count on for results. People, rightly so, have their own view, their own filter, their own experience, and their own goals. These rarely [...]

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