| Issue 13, July 2003 |
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This is the first anniversary issue of m news. We published the first monthly newsletter in July last year, to mark M Power’s first birthday, and have had a wonderful response to our monthly instalments. The distribution is now in the hundreds and we regularly receive wonderful feedback and subscription requests. We hope that you continue to enjoy m-news, our version of an e-newsletter. M Power is a consultancy which empowers organisational and individual performance. m-news covers related themes – six quick snippets about business, organisational and individual effectiveness, communication and public relations. Communication empowers. Karen Morath, managing director, M Power The ‘quick six’ for July are
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1. The power of conversations
Conversations move people. They infiltrate their thinking and pave the way for strengthening and challenging ideas and positions. The ideas of one person or group become infused in the ideas of another person or group and the process is repeated whenever a new conversation is started. Change is incremental and sustainable. Influence is the real power. And conversation, not consultation, is the catalyst of that influence. The act of setting up conversations or creating the environment for them to occur suffers a little from an image problem. Putting people together to talk about particular issues or to share their views about something doesn’t seem very cutting edge. The notion of having and facilitating conversations needs ‘sexing up’. Because if we can create a jargonistic term that makes people engaging in dialogue sound like the latest US management trend then we just might have the organisational change tool of the decade.
The conversation virus? The dialogue myth revisited? The seven habits of really great conversationalists? Communication empowers works for me. | |
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2. A quote we like
"Don't wait until you feel like taking a positive action. Take the action and then you will feel like doing it." Source - Zig Ziglar |
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3. Humility the key |
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Feargal Quinn, the man behind the Superquinn supermarkets in His five lessons in humility are -
Source - Polly La Barre, Fast Company magazine's First Impression e-newsletter,
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Communication empowers the Ford Motor Company if a recent address by its Australian President Geoff Polites is anything to go by. He said people need to decide how they want to lead their companies, and his choice is “being honest, open and transparent.” “We communicate to everyone our production targets, quality targets, cashflow targets; everything is shared.
“Success is about communication and involvement and communication is critical if you are going to change,” he said.
He personally conducts 19 one hour communication sessions with staff and dealers every quarter and starts every morning with a half hour open communication session with his senior management team. Source - Geoff Polites was speaking at the Hume Business Breakfast
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After two years in its first home, M Power is moving shortly to premises in Watch this space for details. | |
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| 6. This month's book review | |
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The Brand Gap,
How to bridge the distance between business strategy and design.
A whiteboard overview by Marty Neumeier, New Riders Publishing, This book is one of the avant garde of business book publishing - an edgy looking hybrid of graphics and text that challenges traditional views of what books look like, and to a certain extent, how they are written.
It's terrific. I love the easy to read appeal of books 2003 style. Whip through them in one sitting or six, but walk away energised by the experience. The brand gap is essentially about company values and how they are communicated but its appeal is broader than that. Anyone interested in business, marketing, communication, corporate ideas and ideals will find this book a real page turner. but be ready to have your ideas challenged and to embark on a journey of organisational self discovery. To buy the Brand Gap from Amazon click here.
© M Power 2003 | |
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