The email bully is my nemesis. Even though you might not have heard this term before, I’m sure you have run into her before.  This is different than the hard-to-deal-with-person who is always difficult or unpleasant. Email bullies are often engaging and charming in person and over the phone; however, they use terse language and are quite demanding through their email communication. When I see a case of EB come across my screen, my first instinct is to give the person the benefit of a doubt since it’s virtually impossible to attribute “tone” to a short email message. But then there’s the inevitable second and third emails. Then the case is confirmed: email bullying. Here are the symptoms: Every situation is an out-of-control crisis. Everyone gets copied on the email. Rampant usage of ALL CAPS. Long and extremely verbose language. It’s interesting that the same person who comes across so…

Finding colors that work best on you is an important fashion foundation. Knowing what colors help you and what colors hinder you will help you look your best. While every rule has an exception, with color shades in the mix, exceptions abound. But here are a few color rules that generally work for most of us. If you have dark hair and complexion: Black, white, and jewel-tone (deep) colors work well for you. Stay away from pastels, deep green, and most browns. If you have light hair and fair skin: Black, pinks, some pastels like pale blue can look really good on you. Be careful with white because it can wash you out. If you’re very blond, stay away from yellows or you risk the danger of looking like a giant banana. If you have red hair and features: Hunter green, dark browns, plums, and some deep blues are good choices. You might…

No more sinful iPad or secular Kindle, now Christians have our own tablet device, and, no it’s not the stone kind that Moses sported around the desert . You’ve read it correctly: the first Christian Tablet, the Edifi. The tablet is more than a e-reader, according to a post on Foxnews.com:  It also comes with movie-watching capabilities, Christian radio stations, and even a web browser with built-in “safe search,” so the tablet is safe for the whole family. “We put that on there just in case it was given as a gift to a child, so they wouldn’t have access to things they shouldn’t have access to,” said [Brian Honorable, a technology supervisor at Family Christian, the group that sells the tablet]. “We definitely had to tailor it to our customers.” Read more here I’m still scratching my head on this one. I thought it was a joke at first,…

Great customer service is a powerful thing. When a brand that’s built on concepts such as “simple, easy, and powerful” delivers on its promise, there’s joy in the heart of the consumer and good will abounds for a long time. Today one of our Mac laptops at the office crashed. It’s a machine. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, but it always seems to happen at the most inopportune of times. However,  Mac’s customer support was stellar. I wish churches and Christian organizations would learn from Apple on how to deal with people in crisis. Our 3-year old Macbook’s hard drive crashed. I diagnosed it by the cow-like sound the poor drive made as it was trying unsuccessfully to spin. It needed to be fixed asap. One local vendor wanted $75 to “put us on the front of the line” for repairs. Instead I went to the Apple website,…

CIOs (Chief Information Officers) have a big problem. The pace of change in technology is mind numbing. With the advent of the App store and the exponential proliferation of apps for just about anything imaginable, organizations are having a tough time managing their Information Technology infrastructure. I remember the days when Microsoft software upgrades were done annually and operating systems lasted sometimes two or three years before a new release would be officially support by the IT department. Now it’s down to a daily occurrence. New software, apps, sites, productivity tools are pouring out at us like a tsunami that cannot be stopped. Since April, 50,000 new apps were added to the App store, making it a total number of 650,000 apps and growing. That doesn’t even count the apps that are being created for the Android devices. If you are the CIO of your organization, or head of IT…

There’s nothing more difficult than dealing with a friend or client who is negative, often disrespectful, and yet completely unaware of his behavior.   In my experience, people who are insecure are also not self-aware. So a heart-to-heart about their self-centered ways usually doesn’t work. They will generally deflect that to you and try to play the victim–which is their preferred position. Sometimes they will apologize not because they think they have done something wrong, but because they think you are mad at them and they want to be back in your good graces. It’s not “I’m sorry I have wronged you,” as much as it is “I’m sorry you feel that way.” See the subtle and yet important difference? Here’s my approach: So we need to break the cycle of abuse, and the only way I have been able to do that is to wait until another “infraction” happens.…

Sometimes your best PR and marketing campaign is not telling everyone of about your “new and improved” product, which, by the way, are the two most over used and no longer effective words in marketing. People don’t really believe that the new and improved is necessarily better than the old. Think about it. What’s your reaction when you see a label that touts that? Late in  2009 Domino’s pizza had a massive PR nightmare in its hands. Thirty-second spots on national television featured Domino’s own employees saying things like “the sauce tastes like ketchup,” and “the pizza crust tastes like cardboard to me.” The spots were excerpts from “Pizza Turn Around,” a four-minute documentary about the company’s two-year battle to re-invent a better pie…commissioned by Domino’s itself. The “our pizza sucks” campaign worked. After the episodes aired, Domino’s posted a 14.3 percentage increase in sales per store–a record for the…

I decided years ago not to hire on potential. It was one of the better business decisions I have made. Everyone in our team has potential. Lots of it. But that’s not the reason they work here. They have a place in this team because they were able to harness their potential and produce, create, develop and ultimately perform the the task needed by the organization. I meet people on a regular basis that amaze me on how much raw talent and potential they have to succeed in their professional careers. However, some of them never do. They don’t have discipline, self confidence, inner motivation, focus, goals, that allow them to harness the raw talent into something useful. After all it’s not fair to the rest of the team to deal with a member who has the ability but for whatever reason might perform to their potential. Do you think…

“Burn me once shame on you, burn me twice, shame on me,” and so goes the old saying. Most would say it’s a wise saying. But as I reflect on it, I don’t think it is what God expects from us. Those words came to mind recently as someone asked me for a second chance. Immediately my mind went to “burn me once . . . .” I was ready to give him a piece of my mind, but I realized that if God dealt with me the way I was intending to deal with this man, I’d be dead by now. Way dead. Then I thought of the words of Peter, the Apostle, as he asked Jesus a poignant question:  Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I…

I have made a lot of mistakes in my business career. Thankfully, I have made some good choices that have paid big dividends. Recently I was talking with a friend who is assessing the possibility of buying an existing business. I asked him to answer these 3 questions: