When I was 15 my mother took my sister and me to see Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway. For me, it was epic. A life-changer. True, it took me until halfway through the production to realize that this wasn’t just a musical about good ol’ Jesus, a great and giving kind of guy. It had [...]

My job is often to explain complex things in layman’s terms. The hardest part of it is to put yourself into the head of said layman. Typically, you’re explaining something that you do understand … the irony is that, once you understand something, it’s a brute to explain it to someone who doesn’t, because you [...]

Assume your site visitor is ready to rock, champing at the bit to buy. Start with a bang! Think about it from a user point of view. When you’re searching for a supplier or a professional service, what do you want to learn when you land on their website? Why the service they provide is [...]

Recently I attended a fundraiser at Verity, a businesswomen’s club I joined a year ago. I soon discovered that all along one hall and filling one large room were a range of tempting items for sale from vendors, all of whom were donating part of their takings. As usual, Wendy’s glasses caught my eye. Wendy [...]

I did my first radio gig on Wednesday, and loved every second of it. There’s something very private and yet very personal about radio. As some of you who know me well have heard, I hope to get more involved in radio and start my own show. This session came at just the right time. [...]

Last night I went to hear Dr. Peter Jensen speak on Execution under pressure: performing when it matters. Peter has worked with Fortune 500 companies in eight countries, enhancing the performance of top executives. He’s counselled over 40 medal-winning athletes and their coaches. He’s been part of seven Olympics, most recently working with our rink-stomping cigar-smoking women’s [...]

Who came up with this idea of allowing small appliances to command us?  We don’t get enough of that kind of thing from the government, neighbourhood over-achievers, certain family members, and budding tyrants at work? Last year I bought a new toaster because a) it was ten dollars and b) it claimed it used revolutionary new [...]

Bear with me, I’ll answer that question. But I’m going to start with a story. All the hoopla and hoo-ha about high winds and Hurricane Sandy takes me back to a winter day in my childhood, skiing at Mont Tremblant. My Dad had learned to ski there as a child (taking half the day to [...]

Here it is! My entry for the National Punctuation Day contest. First, a recap of the rules: Write one paragraph with a maximum of three sentences using the following 13 punctuation marks to explain which should be “presidential,” and why: apostrophe, brackets, colon, comma, dash, ellipsis, exclamation point, hyphen, parentheses, period, question mark, quotation mark, [...]

Actually, by the time you read this, National Punctuation Day (September 24) may have come and gone. But don’t despair! Entries for this viciously-contested annual contest are accepted until September 30, 2012. And on October 1st I’ll be posting my entry here on my blog. You can find results from previous contests on the website. Here’s a [...]

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Yiddish is the world’s most expressive language. Have you noticed the prevalence of mouth-filling Yiddish words in English? English is a language that is highly welcoming to invaders, but still, it’s interesting how many great expressions Yiddish has given us… …Some of which [...]

Presenting with PowerPoint – Part II of a series The biggest reason for boring PowerPoint presentations? Presenters put the slides in the driver’s seat. You’ve been there, right? In the planning stages?  When everyone is talking about how many slides, and what will go on each one, and how many you can stuff in the [...]

It’s a sure sign of aging: I no longer listen to music on my car radio. Leaving me pretty much stuck with CBC radio, in my sadly non-Sirius life. Which is fine, except when they have something I really can’t stomach. Then I start hitting the Scan button. Hard. Last week I landed on a [...]

No surprise that LinkedIn and eHarmony are targets for hackers – both sites carry a whack of juicy information. They’re like those cars that get broken into at the parking lot – shiny black Bimmers with a laptop beckoning on the passenger seat – just too tempting to resist. If you’re a user of either [...]

Not long after Bob takes out our finance prof with his evaluation question, we take up an accounting case that hinges on how to compensate plant managers. Should we do it based on plant revenue? Return on investment? Gross margin? I marvel at the differences in behavior that ensue, based on the choice we make. [...]

There was a guy in my MBA class – I’ll call him Bob – that I didn’t like much. He was humourless, taut, too clean, and not much fun. He was also tall, toned and a good athlete, but the pickle up his bum took away markedly from those charms. A friend of mine sat [...]

Under-headering is a common weakness in websites and business documents.  Sometimes the disrespect is absolute – the title is the only header to be found. Even when headers are used, they’re often uninspired. Rule One– A header is NOT a label! Always, as a business writer, you are trying to seduce your audience into reading. [...]

Many of us are reluctant… to blow our own horn. And for good reason. Traditionally, bragging is a frowned-upon activity. But often this reluctance extends into the workplace in a way that can bite you in the posterior. How? Most of us have a specific area of strength, but spend at least some time working with [...]

Writing isn’t easy <sigh> Most people find writing difficult. That’s because it is. Talking is considerably easier. Talking is interactive. (It was even in your grandparent’s day.) With talking, you get feedback. Your listener can ask questions, or get you to repeat something they didn’t understand. Even their facial cues tell you a great deal. [...]

Steve Jobs’ resignation letter is perfectly in tune with the sleek and eye-catching design of his devices.You could run a whole writing workshop on the things he did right in this letter. It certainly aligns nicely with the awareness of the human element that Stephen Fry (see my following post) speaks of as being Jobs’ [...]