Stever Robbins, Get-it-Done Guy blog

How do you persuade? Questions! This post leads to my HotJobs article on the same topic.

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I just received a voicemail from an amazingly sincere, genuine-sounding coaching “guru.” She went on and on about how she wants to give back to me and show her tremendous appreciation. All I have to do is visit her web page for details. I visited. It turned out to be a long-form sales letter. You [...]

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Conventional wisdom has it that you should sandwich negative feedback between two pieces of positive feedback. You can read about “the hamburger method” here. Shelle Rose Charvet points out that most people already know the method. Now, when they hear positive feedback, they simply bypass it and wait fo the shoe to drop (then they [...]

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I just read this article in the Atlantic about how the Net has changed the way the article’s author thinks. He’s wondering what the larger, societal effects will be. Being The Atlantic, he’s also savvy enough to realize there may be unintended good consequences that can’t be predicted, in addition to the negatives he highlights. [...]

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Today’s podcast is about how to be self-promoting without being a jerk about it. I think it’s one of my better podcasts. What do you think? Should this be expanded into a chapter (or part of a chapter) in the book? If so, do you have specific examples, questions, stories, etc. that you’d like me [...]

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I was reading reports that Michael Bloomberg was rumored to announce his candidacy for President. A friend mentioned that he had reportedly said he would spend up to $1 billion to get elected (no sources were cited). I was thinking: what would you do if you were going to spend $1 bn on a Presidential [...]

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Chris Matthews was just commenting that Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was “a reminder of the dangerous world we all live in.” In that moment, it struck me: we all live in a world of our own making. Oh, I don’t mean literally, though fans of The Secret may disagree. But our experience of the world is [...]

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I was just reading a blog post on David Maister’s BLOG (David is one of the world’s experts on managing professional service firms) about a time he was caught off guard when a CEO publicly questioned his integrity. How should he have responded? What he did was to remain silent until the discussion continued. That [...]

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shudder I just called Crowne Hotels to make a hotel reservation. Then I called back to make a slight change. Both times, the account rep greeted me with a chipper, “What is your name so I may have the pleasure of serving you today?” While they sounded friendly, that script is awful. Am I supposed [...]

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Ok. I can’t keep quiet about this any longer. It’s driving me nuts. I just read a story titled $2 million US settlement in Boston TV ad bomb hoax. This is a fine example of how the wrong words can do damage, even when intending to inform. “Bomb hoax” implies intent to deceive people into [...]

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