Winter it lingers at this time of year,
It’ll never go away is what we fear.
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Writing about ethics does not make it happen.
One of the standard exercises for company public relations people is to write a Code of Business Conduct for the company. This is written in high flown language and tells the world what a wonderful company your company aspires to become. Sometimes there is a long distance to travel between the reality and the ethical aspirations.
Having written more than a few of these fairy tale documents over the years, the challenge is to be able to show that the policy is achieving reasonable objectives for the company. The rule is that if you cannot measure it, why do it?
In public relations, this measurement is usually done each year in a communications research project. You start with an analysis of your company’s publics. Publics usually encompass various customer groups, employees, shareholders, competitors, suppliers, trade media, community influences, educational institutions and the list can go on. You might not be able to do every group every year but there are obvious priorities for study. And do not ignore an unusual group such as competitors. If the study is done through a reputable research firm, you will be surprised what your competitors can tell you.
It is also important to recognize that communications research is also useful to other departments. Human resources needs to know how their programs are working with both employees and local educational facilities as these groups can have a major impact on the cost of finding future employees. Sales and services needs to know where their customers stand on the company and how they might improve. Suppliers, as a public, can save you a great deal of money in manufacturing operations. And the list goes on. Knowing where you stand is a huge part of running a successful company.
That is why you sometimes want to ask the senior executives of large companies why they do not take the time to listen. It makes no sense that a company such as Bell Canada cannot understand the antipathy towards the company in the marketplace. This is a company that has misused its size and power for too long. It is a company with a grandiose Code of Business Conduct that allows its divisions and their departments to do as they wish. It is a company that writes its own conditions of doing business without advising its customers.
Some apologists try to alibi Bell because of its size. Why the size is any kind of excuse is ridiculous. There is a one-size-fits-all to ethics. Is not the ethics of a company the responsibility of all employees?
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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]
Comment for today.
The entire Middle East is in revolt,
In Libya, it has given Gadhafi a jolt,
But the bastard’s not about to bolt.
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Comment for today.
We are having a birthday, we hear,
No surprise, it happens every year.
And we’ve a higher hurdle to clear.
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Why dis the NDP’s poor Jack Layton?
You try to be nice to a guy and what do you get? You get the brush-off. That is what you get. In writing about New Democrat Leader ‘Hapless’ Jack recently, we have tried to be polite and caring. After all, if you invite the guy to become a member of the Liberal Party, you hardly want to disrespect him too much.
That is unless he so rudely rejects your caring blandishments. And he is. Not only did he say that there would be no getting in bed with the Liberal Party on his watch but he has been seen meeting with Prime Minister Harper. They can be up to no good.
The relationship between the conservative and socialist voters has always puzzled political apparatchiks and researchers. You have to be a liberal to understand it. It is the hatred these hardened voters have for liberals. We used to see it in the poorer, less educated voters in some areas of Toronto. They would swing between the Tories and the CCF/NDP. They never stopped at the liberal way stations. They had grown up as confirmed liberal haters and believed firmly that the enemy of my enemy is my friend,. It seems to matter little that the philosophical gulf between the two parties is a mile wide and a mile deep.
In British Columbia and Ontario in the coming federal election, the NDP are going to be bystanders at an all-out assault on getting Harper his majority. Another minority will be considered a failure for Harper. The NDP will just be road kill on the way to a majority.
It is obvious that Jack Layton has done the math. He knows that an election in early May is not going to benefit him or the NDP. He and his party can only lose. If he helps the Bloc and the Liberals to savage the upcoming Harper budget, he will end up with fewer seats in the House of Commons than he started with. That is a no-brainer. By making what looks like some kind of deal with Harper, he kisses off the Bloc and the Liberals and keeps a happier and larger caucus on Parliament Hill.
This is also a win-win for old Harper. Whatever Layton claims Harper has done for him, Harper still gets the credit. The only thing Harper might do to please Layton is to raise the qualifying amount for the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors but that is small change compared to the corporate tax cuts that Harper intends.
What a suspended election really does for Harper is to leave Liberal Leader Ignatieff stewing and unable to get the platforms that would be his in an election campaign. As you can imagine, this will be something for the talking heads to be blathering about for the rest of the year!
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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]
Comment for today.
Kate n’ Bill’s event’ll be the wedding of the year,
But, we’re not getting an invitation either I fear.
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Comment for today.
Jack Layton said to PM Stephen Harper:
I don’t like that Michael Ignatieff either,
Why don’t you and I divide and conquer?
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A 30-year affair with Microsoft might be ending.
In all that we have written about technology over the years, the computer sitting on the desk has been largely ignored. It is utilitarian. It does the job. Sort of.
But times change. Patience thins. We are less and less happy with how we are treated by those people at Microsoft. Just once we would like to do the screwing in this relationship. We have been the screwee for much too long.
The affair started in 1981 with the acquisition of that first IBM computer with a five-megabyte hard drive. Having tried the floppy disc version, the five-megabyte disc was impressive. You would hardly run out of space on that, we said. And, after all, when we included that snazzy impact printer, the cost was only $11,000. Who would not want to be the first on their block with that wonder.
And it ran on that easy Disc Operating System (DOS). The machine came with a popular word processing package with which we were already familiar. The version of Lotus 123 with it, came on a single five-inch diskette. That spreadsheet software took about a day to become familiar and it did many a revision on the business plan.
Here it is thirty years later and we now have a computer with gigabytes of main memory and storage that cost less than $600. It uses laser printers, a flat screen and surround-sound speakers and it connects to the world through the Internet at speeds in excess of five megabits per second.
So what is not to be happy?
Maybe we just feel ignored. Hewlett Packard, who sold us the computer and laser printer screwed us out of $90 the other day saying that they would fix our printer problem. The call centre failed and they would not give us our money back. Norton let me down, let in a stinky virus and disappeared. Checking with Microsoft, we find that that company is not responsible for anything.
We cleaned house and got the computer back on track but we lost a lot of time and records in the process. The treatment in some ways seemed more brutal than the disease. And yet it is the ongoing corruption of programs under Microsoft that was a major part of the problem. Checking with techies, we found out that one of the solutions recommended becomes a virus in itself as you are unable to lose it.
Despite a rigid regime to keep out problems from the Internet and well-meaning friends, the spoilers out there are always dreaming up new ways to attack and poison the well. There are solutions. One, of course, is to move to the less vulnerable product from Apple. At 15 per cent of the personal computer market, the hackers and virus writers do not feel the challenge. And you have used Macs before. So what if the keyboard lacks the feel of a real keyboard. So what if it feels like you are playing with dolls.
It is surprising how many people are singing us the siren song to switch to Apple. The song is attractive. The screen on the Mac is a thing of beauty. The ease of use is so tempting. If we have just one more thing go wrong with this damn PC…….
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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]
Comment for today.
Did we note at Council last Monday?
There’s half a million dollars at play,
The theatre was sure to bite their A.
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