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Macabre Humor: Strange but True Stories for Trainers

Either I have weird friends or friends who just know weird things. To be quite honest, they know true, scary things. Not exactly Edgar Allan Poe but still interesting facts of history I thought I’d share on Halloween. Not exactly Cave Man stuff, but close. I’m thinking more 15,000 B.C., but we’ll find humor just …

MD or CEO – which title suits the circumstances?

The difference between chief executive and Managing Director is one of thesubtleties that can confuse board members. Boards have the right to delegate the tasks of running the organisation to any person they rationally believe is capable of performing them. When the board delegates those tasks to one of the directors, that person becomes known …

When Companies Think They Are Too Smart for Customer Service…

When companies think they are smarter than their customers it’s time to time customers learned how not to play their game. That’s right, I said it. We need to train customers; they just aren’t savvy enough. Actually, we, customers, probably are, but we don’t have the time to fight the companies taking advantage of us. …

“Show Me the Money” – Where Nonprofits Should Be Looking

The survey completed by the Nonprofit Research Collaborative is quite extensive and has lots of insight from nonprofits about what is working in their fundraising efforts. This article shares some of the highlights from that report about what nonprofits see is working for them. And, as always, it comes with my commentary. So where to look if you are in a Jerry Maguire mood for someone to “Show Me the Money.” Let’s see what 813 charities who participated in this survey had to say.

Simplify and Repeat

We’ve all struggled with the question: how do I get my message across? While there are many strategies, as is the case in life, simplicity is often best. In this guest article, PR pro Jerry Brown explains how to… Simplify and Repeat “Remember the . . .” “Damn the torpedoes, full . . .” “Ask …

The Cave Man Approach to Training: Basic Survival with a Smile

Imagine training others, not only how to make the wheel, but how it could be used to make life easier. This trainer had a full-time job. He probably ate well, too, thanks to grateful people. I should probably explain the “Cave Man” thing. I wrote an inexpensive ebook called The Cave Man Guide to Training …

Ten Ways to Help Your Employees Make a Little Magic

n the early days of my retail career, I knew I had reached the ultimate level of success, when I could leave on vacation and return to no other messages than, “welcome back.” See before I reached this point, I would come back to work (most of the time a day or two early just so I could what was really going on in my absence) and there would be a long list of things that I needed to handle; there would be all kinds of things ranging from angry customers, to incomplete projects, to a dirty store. Somewhere after years of getting frustrating by this, I figured out how to engage and develop a team of employees to give whatever was needed to get the job done. Up to that point, I had always been really good at setting expectations and keeping people focused at work while I was there, but what happened when I left?

Learning from Crisis

Admit mistakes, create solutions, move on At some point every organization will encounter a crisis. What sets the greats apart is the way they handle the situation, and what path they take after recovery. In a recent Businessweek article, leadership expert Marshall Goldsmith hit the nail on the head with this suggestion: Ask each person …

Training: Tricks or Treats?

These Questions and Answers lay out in plain and simple–in Cave Man terms–how easy it is to be misunderstood. Not only be misunderstood, but be quite funny in the process–intentional or not. Enjoy. While I suspect this series of jokes hits the Internet every so often, the answers did make me smile so I thought …

Government Grants: Stepping Back from the Keyboard!

Clear/concise writing is an important component of the government grant proposal development process. But, as John C. Lauderdale – the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Government Contracts (2009) – points out, there are some tried and true maxims that you should follow to write well. Two of those maxims are: Proposal quality …