Archive for September, 2008
Notes from CSAE 2008
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008So here I am sitting in my beautiful room at the Sheraton Wall Centre, at 5:45a.m. local time, cursing the gods of time zones. I have been up for a while so I thought I would try my hand at this blogging thing.
I’m in Vancouver to attend the annual Canadian Society of Association Executives (CSAE) [...]
The Power of Informal Exchanges
Monday, September 29th, 2008Later this week the Canadian Society of Association Executives holds its AGM in Vancouver. This year, I won’t be going. Nothing to do with the meeting, which I will be sad to miss. It’s just a scheduling issue.
But it got me thinking about why I will miss this conference and, more generally, about the value [...]
Drawing the Lines
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008There is nothing difficult about the concept of corporate social responsibility. It’s simply a matter of doing business in a way that respects the environment in which we live and the community in which we work.
It gets tough when we try to flesh out those easily described principles in a way that we can measure—in [...]
Tougher jobs than mine
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008I need to make a confession.
I am a principal of a firm that is absolutely reliant on notetaking. Without people who can take really good notes and render them into prose that is tailored to the precise needs of our clients, we couldn’t do business.
The best of those people are not just capable. They love [...]
Learning to Fly Right
Friday, September 12th, 2008Imagine an industry that shows a cumulative net loss after decades of operation. Its main business model is a poster child for showing MBA students the strategies they should avoid at all costs.
Imagine that this industry generates a large share of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
Factor in that industry’s acute vulnerability to rising [...]
Dinosaur Economics
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008The power of the Internet is partly about the unexpected connections that help people share knowledge and build community, often in ways that make services more affordable and environmentally friendly.
In meetings, we’re just scratching the surface of what might be possible online. Not simply to try and replace live meetings with virtual ones, or print [...]
What do you do?
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008Last month, a hyperkinetic speaker named Douglas Rushkoff told a roomful of MPI members at the World Education Congress in Las Vegas that “the problem with outsourcing is that the thing you do is no longer the thing you do.”
Rushkoff illustrated his point by noting that during the tainted dog food crisis earlier this year, [...]
‘People Will Still Have to Meet…’
Monday, September 1st, 2008The fact that he came over to chat had very little to do with me.
I was sitting on the patio at Bridgehead Trading, the funky, fair trade coffee shop that serves as an informal meeting room and home-away-from-home for our office two blocks away. One of the counter staff came over to visit with Maydeleh, [...]