ROA = Return on attention.  When some people shoot the breeze, they kill it with wasteful talk.  In this attention starved world, listenership is rewarded to people that give great return on attention.  Think of it as the new ROI for personal and business relationships.  The key to delivering conversational value is:  1.  Thoughtfulness — …

Want to be hilarious during your next presentation?  Try a little irony, just know the rules first.   Author and speech coach Nick Morgan offered some excellent insight into the art of irony on his blog today.  For many of us, being funny is tricky — you make some laugh and can upset others.  If …

Thanks to Chas Martin over at Natural Step.  He just sent me this fantastic YouTube video that follows Miles the Can on his journey around the world. This clip is in the spirit of The Story Of Stuff, and should be a mind bender for all of us.  Miles has traveled more miles than any …

According to Winston Churchill, pigs are cool.

Thanks to HR World for the traffic and welcome to all my kindred spirits in the world of human resources.  Late last year, I wrote an article for Employee Relations Today (How HR Can Green Up Your Company) about how the HR department can go green and influence other departments to follow its lead.  The …

You don't prevent the Swine Flu in your life by reading about it.  We are so worn down by bad news, we are likely on tender hooks. Recent news about Swine Flu can tip many of us into a tizzy — even if we haven't been to Mexico recently or work around someone who has. …

I spent 1998-2003 evangelizing the internet.   Some got it right away (Intel), other jumped in by the turn of the century (Victoria's Secret and Wal-Mart) and others joined very late and still dogpeddle in this area to this day.   It should have been pretty obvious by 1999 that, if you have customers, you …

In my continued nod to Earth Day/Week/Month, I'm posting an excerpt from my latest book, Saving The World At Work.  In it, I talk about the people that take their values to work and seek to make a difference — not just a dollar.  I call them Saver Soldiers.  They find purpose, generate value and …

I'm doing to post something every day for the rest of April in honor of Earth Day.  Aveda Corporation practices Earth Month in April — so I'll do it too!  Today's eco update refers to a very well written post by Greg Christian over at Saving The World (the Facebook for people that want to …

Oprah gets it.  She's my media hero.  She just cancelled her episode on the Columbine massacre because "it would focus too much on the killers."  Bravo!  I wish the cable nets and NBC were as responsible.  Here's my point of view: It's irresponsible to turn killers into rock stars. When we make killers rock stars …