by Roger D’Aprix As professionals we sometimes forget the simplest truth about communication. At its most basic level, it is really about human connections. I’m reminded of this fact as I anticipate our annual family vacation on the Maine coast this and every August. A college roommate used to say that this was the best [...]
by Roger D’Aprix In my last blog I suggested that we were unlikely to see the fulfillment of a vision of full corporate democracy imagined by a new generation of anti-authority Internet bloggers. Their dream is of the end of corporate hierarchy and autocracy to be replaced by consultation and the flowering of social media [...]
by Roger D’Aprix A very interesting trend has emerged in internal communication circles over the last several years. It’s the formation of a group of professional communicators who are ardently anti-hierarchical in their thinking and philosophy. For the most part their position has been shaped by the politics and viewpoint of Internet bloggers, who believe [...]
by Roger D’Aprix A few days ago I had the exhilarating experience of meeting with four colleagues in a two-day, brainstorming session. The members of the group have known each other for years as colleagues and even as competitors, so this was a group with a common history. Our subject was differentiation in what has [...]
by Roger D’Aprix A recent survey from The Conference Board shows that Americans of all ages and income brackets are increasingly unhappy at work. Only 45 percent claim to be satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1 percent in 1987. Worse, the youngest cohort of employees—those under age 25—express the highest level of dissatisfaction ever [...]
by Roger D’Aprix Last November, Jossey-Bass publishers released my latest book entitled “The Credible Company: Communicating with Today’s Skeptical Workforce .” Shortly after it was published, the bottom dropped out of the global economy and made that workforce both increasingly skeptical and increasingly unemployed. The book had been fermenting in my mind and soul for [...]
by Roger D’Aprix One of the saddest things about political campaigns is the abuse of language and intelligent dialogue—the tendency to make words connote something other than their real meaning and to mask intent. Or worse, to disseminate outright lies. At this phase of the presidential campaign there’s plenty of both. For anyone interested in [...]
by Roger D’Aprix I’ve just returned from a long and happy vacation at the same Maine coastal cottage my family and I have visited for the last 38 summers. It’s located right smack on the Atlantic on a high rocky bluff with a 20 or 30 foot descent to the water. It’s a modest cottage [...]
by Roger D’Aprix The July-August issue of The Atlantic features a cover story entitled “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” by writer Nicholas Carr. His thesis essentially is that our online proclivities are short-circuiting our powers of concentration and affecting our ability to focus. In his words, “My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but [...]
by Roger D’Aprix A fascinating dialogue took place online a few weeks ago. The subject was the proper role of internal communication professionals in their respective organizations. It’s a subject that badly needs airing in a time when increasingly I believe that internal communication practitioners are losing their way. The people that were engaged in [...]
