Hinton

Creating extreme competitive advantage

Deborah Hinton — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:29:13 +0000

Meeting people who really get communication is rare. So, I was pleasantly surprised to meet with Bob Weiler, founding partner of Brimstone Consulting Group last week. It was a meeting that proved to be both interesting and provocative. Early in the conversation Bob suggested I change my business card to read Hinton : Communication strategies [...]

“Where everybody knows your name”

Deborah Hinton — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:08:44 +0000

There are very few of us who would associate the place we work with the Cheers theme song. In fact that was the point of the song. Cheers is the place where we can escape our worries. A place where we’re understood and appreciated. You’d think that a place where we spend 50% to 60% [...]

From the inside looking out

Deborah Hinton — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:13:42 +0000

Earlier in my career I worked for one of the most admired brands in Canada. It’s the kind of thing that makes you proud. You walk into any situation and people are all over you about how great it must be. Except it wasn’t. The buzz and hype had created an external brand that didn’t [...]

Innovation culture & internal communications

Deborah Hinton — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:34:44 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk about the need for organizations to innovate. But, since organizations don’t innovate, people do, there’s also been a lot of talk about building “innovation cultures”. My friends at CommScrum have taken the discussion further and begun a conversation about innovation and what the drive to an “innovation culture” means [...]

Tension that’s good for you

Deborah Hinton — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:57:47 +0000

This past week two of my favourite blogs have posted about tension – In over your head and Six pixels of separation. They both refer to the need to create tension if you want to create. And the second, refers to a conversation I had with Mitch Joel the other day. I thought it would [...]

The music of internal communications

Deborah Hinton — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:48:55 +0000

I’ve always thought about the design side of what I do as a musical composition and the implementation side as conducting. It’s not something I talk about that often but I was reminded of today as I read a draft of the new introduction for Robert Fritz’s book Managerial Moment of Truth. There Robert describes [...]

“Always look on the bright side …”

Deborah Hinton — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:57:04 +0000

Well no, not always. Sometimes it’s just the wrong thing to do. A lesson I hope the staff at Planet BP — an online, in-house British Petroleum journal – learned this week. You can imagine the challenge the BP internal communication team has. You can picture them gathered in a room with their other communication [...]

Getting grassroots

Deborah Hinton — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:51:05 +0000

This week I’ve spent a lot of time with people who are part of grassroots movements of one sort or another. And, I started to think about whether there was anything we can learn from grassroots movements like these that are making important and fundamental societal and environmental change? It started last Friday with a [...]

Waffle words

Deborah Hinton — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:49:20 +0000

“I’ve challenged our team to end this year at the No. 1 [sales] position in the marketplace. If that doesn’t happen. . . my thoughts are simple: If you’re the most profitable No. 2, it may be a better position in the marketplace.” Yes, this is a reported quote from a real executive: Kevin Williams, [...]

“Chevy”: Going, going… well, not quite

Deborah Hinton — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 05:33:30 +0000

This summer will you might “See the USA in your Chevrolet?” but you wouldn’t be “Driving your Chevy to the levy” if GM had their way. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported on a memo GM sent to Chevy employees in Detroit. The message was clear. Stop saying “Chevy”. From now on their [...]