Toby Flenderson is not a popular guy. A few years when I spoke at a previous SHRM event, Toby was one factor in a palpable sense of extreme frustration I felt from many of the people in my audience. The Office was still on the air and Toby (the HR character on the show) cast
Continue reading »Category Archives: Influence & Behaviour
Sometimes it is hard to pick the perfect caption for your selfie, but Brazilian publisher Leya has a solution to help … and introduce you to some of their newest authors in the process. The brand launched a chatbot that will ask you about your photo and then suggest a quote from one of their
Continue reading »If you are a parent, one of the things that probably keeps you up at night is how to monitor your kids activity online and keep them safe from scams, cyberbullying or worse. This newly launched tool from Google looks to be a wonderful resource both for parents and also educators to teach kids everything
Continue reading »While the business community loves to offer Jack Welch legendary status, this article shares that measuring his successor Jeff Immelt against that legacy may not be entirely fair. The analysis is a powerful reminder that success or failure can come from the circumstances that leader inherits as much as from what a leader does. It
Continue reading »In a world that seems filled with bullshit, it is a voyeuristic thrill to see those all too rare moments when it all comes tumbling down. The article linked below from New York Post is one of those moments, as writer Maureen Callahan goes behind the scenes at the GOOP Health and Wellness Summit hosted
Continue reading »This week a theme that emerged in the stories was that of the many faces of failure. There is a new museum in Sweden celebrating product and cultural failures of modern times. A former Silicon Valley darling chat app called YikYak failed and lost hundreds of millions of perceived/bloated valuation. The Met Gala stuck to
Continue reading »Every year as part of my trend research and idea gathering, I go through more than a hundred business books and select my shortlist of 15 best ones published in 2016 to share with you. These are all profiled in a short presentation along with a review of each and my selections for the Most
Continue reading »This week the Internet went crazy talking about how Brangelina split. Despite how important that “news” might be – it’s clearly not the kind of “non-obvious” story I have to share today. Instead, this week’s underappreciated marketing stories feature YouTube’s desperate plan to fix their longtime problem with comments, a glimpse into what Netflix might do
Continue reading »I rely on books. As an author of five books, I believe in the power of them and as a trend curator and University Professor I consume many of them. I buy several new non-fiction books a week and often invest my time and attention in reading them and learning from them. What I don’t
Continue reading »About two years ago, there was a single word that could strike fear into the heart of any retail brand executive – “showrooming.” The term popularized the increasingly common shopping behaviour from consumers of going into a physical store to try out and test a product before going online (often to an ecommerce only retailer
Continue reading »