Archive for: Practices

We often see clients who ask us to defend them against studies that make unsupported connections between their products and  health or environmental claims.

Alex Lundry of TargetPointConsulting shows how scientific-looking charts can suggest outcomes that are nonsensical.  For example, the universe of data you select is critical.  (One of his charts shows that President Obama, when compared to every president going back to McKinley, is the all-time “pirate killer.”  His record is sadly diminished, however, when you go back to Jefferson and Madison.) Read

In the current economic environment it takes some courage to talk about a forthcoming, prolonged boom in the global economy. But Gregg Easterbrook (author of The Progress Paradox) has never been known for repeating concentional wisdom. His latest book — Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed — can serve as a primer on how to describe global economic change (and its likely intensification) in a way that a broad-based audience can relate to. He acknowledges that there is a paradox at the heart of globalization — more economic growth and opportunity, more stress and insecurity. And he describes both sides of the global economy coin, using both economic data and stories about communities.

This is not just a book about how Shenzhen is thriving. It is also about how Waltham, MA and Camden, S.C. are bouncing back. And it is about the fact that all communities will have to continually reinvent themselves to compete in the heightened, prolonged era of globalzation the author argues is coming. For anyone looking for a deep intellectual explanation of globalization, there might be more apporpriate books to recommend. But Sonic Boom is a valuable resource for anyone whose job includes explaining global economic change.

With the holiday party season in full swing, bankers across America are faced with a dilemma: Do I tell people what I do for a living?

Bankers today fall just below lawyers and persnickety salespeople in the public’s esteem. Even President Obama pulled out the old pejorative “fat cats” to describe Wall Street types – and remind the public that these portly felines were at the root of the financial crisis we’ve endured.

Bankers aren’t used to this kind of scrutiny. No longer answerable only to shareholders or directors, bank leaders now have to consider how their institutions are being viewed in Washington and in communities across America.

So how can bankers burnish their image at a time like this? Here are three ideas: Read

A recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly gets it right: authors Tracey Keys et al talk about CSR as a “creative opportunity to fundamentally strengthen [one’s] businesses while contributing to society at the same time.” The usual approaches – i.e. “pet projects” that reflect “the personal interests of individual senior executives or “propaganda” designed to build a company’s reputation – both fail the test of sound CSR, which they define as “the opportunity for significant shared value creation.”  Definitely worth a read.

Try googling the phrase, “businesses should put something back into society.” Philip Booth, writing in the latest issue of the Journal of the Institute of Economic Affairs got 21.7 million hits. I tried it, and got over 30 million. So the idea must be growing in popularity by the minute.

As Booth points out, “giving back to society” is the fundamental idea behind most discussions of corporate responsibility. But it’s fair to ask, don’t businesses by their very nature give to society? Certainly, every profitable business, by definition is giving something to society that people want – indeed, something they want so much they’re willing to pay for it. They might even be willing to work for the money to pay for it, thereby doubly benefiting society.

The primary flaw in most thinking about corporate responsibility is that it assumes that all profit-making corporations are rapacious predators (on the environment, natural resources, the disadvantaged –  you fill in the blank). CR thus becomes, effectively, a way of paying reparations for their otherwise nasty behavior.

It’s pretty certain, however, that the people who invented and are continually refining the computer chip (to give one example) have done more for human well-being and happiness, as well as the environment, the husbanding of natural resources and the disadvantaged (you fill in the blank) than all the CR campaigns since the beginning of the world put together — and they all did it to make a profit.

When communicating with people in The Netherlands, one of the easiest ways to get in dutch is to refer to their country as Holland. North and South Holland are just two of the 12 provinces in The Netherlands. Calling the whole country Holland is like referring to the United Kingdom (or Great Britain) as England. (For that matter, it’s like referring to the United States as America when you are speaking to Canadians.)

These are just a couple of small examples of the kind of idiomatic and cultural knowledge it is increasingly important to have, whether writing a speech, an article, a report or any other communications tool aimed at reaching a foreign audience. Read