Big-Picture Issues in Corporate Communication

How to Minimize Multitasking

Even professional jugglers drop a lot of balls. Research has proven that successful multitasking is a myth. What looks like multitasking is actually doing tasks in sequence very quickly. When we do this, our work suffers. Our productivity plops. We drop balls. Moreover, net-net, we spend more time on our multi-tasked items than we would have […]

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Quit Rushing to Communicate

[3 minutes to read — less if you rush!] Taptaptaptap… You dash off an email. A little voice inside you says, “Maybe you should proofread that,” and you think, “No, I’m sure it’s fine.” You hit Send. How likely is it that you would find an error or typo if you took the time to

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Why Feedback Fails

In the March/April 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review, psychologist Marcus Buckingham and his colleague Ashley Goodall present compelling arguments in favor of changing the way managers offer feedback. They reveal that telling employees what we think of their performance lacks credibility in the eyes of the employee: The feedback is only your subjective opinion

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Are you asking or telling?

How using the wrong punctuation can create confusion.[4 minutes to read] “Can you schedule a meeting with me and Bob.”“Will you let me know when you find out.” “Could you send me one right away.” Have you seen sentences like these before? What do you notice? Of course, the questions are missing the question mark. Question

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The Magic of Listening Curiously

The new flow meters at a Southern California water utility were acting strangely. They’d been replaced within the past year, but some showed readings that were inconsistent with the previous year’s results. Bob, the senior manager of all the pumping plants, was inclined to blame the technicians who were calibrating the meters. After all, the

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