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I pulled into the parking lot clogged with construction vehicles with five minutes to spare. The client had asked me to work with their chairman of the board so being late would not make a great first impression. Turning the corner I eyed a rare open spot halfway down the crowded row. As I sped up and signaled to move in, a big black Infiniti coming from the opposite direction signaled the same.

Our cars inched up with no room to turn and stopped. He wasn’t budging and neither was I.

So we sat staring at each other through the windshields. I knew I was about to be late, but I wasn’t giving in. I could wait this out as long as he could. I took my foot off the break and pushed into park. Tick tock, the minutes passed. [Read more…] about It’s never too late to be the person you want others to see

I was sweating through my final abdominal crunch when I noticed the cute 20-something personal trainer trying to whip a middle-aged woman into shape. He was doing a good job so I thought. When I looked a little longer, I noticed he wasn’t really paying attention to her. Head down and fingers flying across his iPhone, he was texting, chuckling and occasionally glancing at the woman now struggling to loosen a lever on a machine.

I knew it was none of my business, but I couldn’t control myself when I walked up to 20-something and said, “Excuse me, if I was paying you to pay attention to me, I would have fired you 10 minutes ago.” Looking up from the phone somewhat bewildered, he stared at me and then said if you had been here earlier and maybe saw our workout, you would have seen that I was watching her, but I have this cool app on my phone… [Read more…] about Short attention spans are a huge threat to … where was I?

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a realistic risk exercise involving scores of local state and federal officials. The purpose of the day- long event was to allow participants to implement emergency response plans, coordinate activities and practice responding to a potential incident that could threaten public safety in order to protect the public should a real life emergency occur.

As an evaluator of communication tactics and strategies, what impressed me most was the constant attention of every participant across multiple agencies to protect those who were affected by the threatening situation that was unfolding. To their credit, no one asked how they could protect their organizations’ reputation but instead at every turn of events, the focus was on protecting the public from harm. No one tried to hide information. No one even talked about damage control. In role playing scenarios, they told the public what they knew as often and as quickly as possible in order to keep people informed and manage the message. [Read more…] about At Penn State, people in power forgot some basic rules