Cheek-SENT-me-high. I’m not kidding. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the well-known founder of the “flow” theory, which has nothing to do with pronunciation (check him out anyway). His interesting Hungarian name, however, has everything to do with it.

Imagine meeting Mr. Csikszentmihalyi at an event. He introduces himself and hands you a business card. You try to make sense of his name. The way he says it seems to bear no relation to the way it’s spelled. What to do? Keep reading… Read More

Several years ago, I was meeting with directors at an international investment bank the day after the stock market had taken a very serious plunge. The bank coincidentally had just finished rolling out a series of sales training programs for investment bankers. During our meeting, the directors began to get feedback on a key portion of the program—contacting clients when there is bad news. This sudden decline in the market filled that bill. Read More

There are no two ways about it – almost no one likes to make cold calls. But calling someone out of the blue can be an amazingly productive way to generate business. It has always worked wonders for me and I dislike the concept as much as the next person. So how do I do it? By reframing what it means to me. Read More

It’s always bugged me that President Bush can’t pronounce the word nuclear. I thought it was because I am a speech person, thus prone to being critical about such things. Until lately, however, the only people to call him on it publicly were those fun-loving folks at jibjab, which they did beautifully in their send-up of the 2004 presidential campaign.

So it’s been interesting to see others are finally coming out of the woodwork and criticizing the President’s mangling of the word. A couple of weeks ago, it was Andy Rooney from 60 Minutes. Rooney was speaking about presidential speaking, noting that the words in Bush’s State of the Union speech didn’t sound like Bush’s words, except for “nucular.”

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As part of my professional life, I serve on boards of associations and non-profits. All of them entail some responsibility. This is a wonderful way to give back to the community and make deep and lasting friendships. It’s not bad for business either, but that’s not what I’m writing about here. Recently, while trying to fulfill one of my responsibilities for one of the boards, I found myself in an unpleasant and somewhat sticky situation.

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No, I’m not talking about the Super Bowl. Wish I was. I’m referring to those wonderful folks at guerilla marketing firm Interference Inc. You know, the ones who brought us last week’s Boston terrorism scare. In case you missed it, the story goes something like this: Turner Broadcasting hired Interference to help with the marketing effort for one of Turner’s Cartoon Network shows, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Interference then hired two performance artists, Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky, to plant several of a box-type device with lights, in Boston and other cities including New York, Chicago and San Francisco by attaching them to bridges and road signs. Read More

Ever since I was quoted in the January 21 New York Times, I’ve been in conversations with several reporters and others on the topic of authenticity. In case you didn’t see the article, my comments had to do with Hillary Clinton’s communication style in her video announcing that she was planning to run for president. (You can also read my FC blog post for more on the topic.) I said, basically, that if she could persuade voters that her new style was authentic, they’d have a hard time remembering the old Hillary. Boy, did that open a can of worms!

But I’m glad it did. It forced me to think and especially write about it, which I find always crystallizes my thoughts and makes things easier to explain. I will say I found it vexing, though. Part of that is due to the fact that the very word “authentic” is wide open to interpretation. Read More

Sounds funny, doesn’t it? The original statement, “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” was uttered by Jack Swigert, an astronaut on the Apollo 13 mission which, as many people know, became a monumental struggle for survival. Today, the statement is part of the lexicon as “Houston, we have a problem” and is used humorously to announce any type of problem.

Of course, the Apollo 13 crew was facing a life or death situation. Imagine if they had substituted the word “challenge” for the word “problem.” The entire meaning of the statement would have changed to become something less threatening, more benign. Read More

During the presidential campaign of 2004, when I was being called upon my the press to comment on the candidates’ communication styles, I was asked by Lester Holt on his MSNBC program for one suggestion for each candidate. I said that Kerry should tell more stories because when he did that, it made him come alive, which he certainly needed to do more often. For Bush, I suggested that he find a mistake he would be willing to own up to and apologize for it. Read More

I’m on a mission this year. A mission to expunge PowerPoint slides from all my clients’ presentations. For a while, I thought it was getting better. People seemed to be using fewer slides, though they were as poorly designed as ever. But, alas, there seems to have been a relapse. Maybe it’s because Microsoft comes out with new bells and whistles every couple of years or so and the temptation to use them is just too great to resist. I realize with an addiction like this one, expecting people to do away with it entirely is probably unrealistic. Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

In lieu of going cold turkey, I’d like to recommend a few techniques that will improve any presentation and that will encourage the weaning process. Read More