Amy Bermar
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Posts by Amy Bermar
Wiki-Sabotage
October 3, 2008
by Amy Bermar
in Miscellaneous
What happens when your Wikipedia page gets hacked? The dirty data smeared one of our client’s biggest competitors – and highlighted our client’s recent wins. The victim wanted to know if our client had anything to do with it.
This wasn’t the first time, either. The first go-round was an industry blog, where someone posted vindictive comments about this same vendor.
How bad was it? Pretty bad. The company’s entry included paragraphs of damaging information, including fouled-up partnerships, competitive losses, a stream of executive defections, and mounting deal pressures.
Both
More >Speak the Truth
September 18, 2008
PR types lie for a living, right? Not really. Actually, most of us – whatever the day job – lie all the time, even if we don’t want to. We dance around the real truth – whether it’s how we really feel about that project, or why the boss is so annoying, or a million other insights we keep ourselves buttoned up and battened down.
We have a new rule here at Corporate Ink. It’s called speaking the truth.
So when I walked into a meeting the other day, and saw some quick resistance (‘Oh, no, the boss is here’), I said something. Not right away, but a few hours later. First, I pointed out the More >
Culture Change: How Long Do You Have?
September 16, 2008
by Amy Bermar
in Miscellaneous
30 days after the sabbatical, and how go the new rules?
My personal commandments:
· 90% of what we do are just distractions.
· We hired smart people. Let them fly.
· Just because you’re the boss, it doesn’t mean you’re right.
Winning, slowly, on the big ones. Not scoring so high on the others mini-commandments – like my promise of no email on weekends (sent out 30 this weekend) and no sugar (double-scoop of ice cream, anyone?)
For any company that’s growing, the biggest priority is giving staff more responsibility, accountability and clout. This means
More >Ah, Email.
August 19, 2008
by Amy Bermar
in Miscellaneous
I promised myself that I would go email free for 24 days of my sabbatical. I lied.
I managed to sneak my crackberry out of the office, before our IT maven could deactivate it. By day 2, I was sneaking a look at least once a day. By day 7, I checked email every night.
I didn’t answer many, but only because I was taken off of most work-related distribution lists. But I did figure out why I had been so drained. Just skimming hundreds of –‘there-could-be-something-useful-in-there’ emails takes a real toll on the eyes, if not the soul.
Now, I never intend to be one of those More >
So who takes sabbaticals, anyway?
August 15, 2008
by Amy Bermar
in Miscellaneous
I just came back from my first sabbatical in 26 years of working. I almost bailed out. It could have been scripted: 6 weeks before departure-day, a crisis erupted. (Severe enough to make me think I ‘needed’ to be here.)
There are 4 reasons I ended up going:
1) I stayed local, and could swoop in for an EMS search-and-rescue if truly needed.
2) I knew from painful experience that the meetings/crises/whatever which seem so urgent at the moment fast fade into oblivion.
3) I learned – mostly from 3 years in Alaska – that the things you do, not the day-to-day work, are what you More >