Yearly Archives: 2011

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month through History, Numbers and Public Service

Did you know that we are in the midst of Hispanic Heritage Month? In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson established an annual week-long celebration of the culture and traditions of those who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan expandedRead… Read more »

Connecticut launches Startup Connecticut

Governor Dannel P. Malloy and business leaders from throughout Connecticut have partnered to launch Startup Connecticut, a new initiative to support entrepreneurship throughout the state. Startup Connecticut is the latest in a national effort coordinated by the Startup America Partnership to help small businesses create jobs. Connecticut is the third state to adopt a StartupRead… Read more »

Netzwerk Bürgerbeteiligung: New German Online Community for Public Participation

Late last month, a new online community launched in Germany for people and organizations that “want to advance citizen participation in political decision making and shape the future of public participation” (translation mine). From the website (in German): Die Partizipation der Bürgerinnen und Bürger an gesellschaftlichen und politischen Entscheidungsprozessen ist ein elementarer Grundpfeiler der Demokratie:Read… Read more »

How does external communication through customer service improve the reputation of the organization?

What is a reputation? It’s basically a preconceived expectation of behaviors based on previous direct experience and indirect assumptions. What is the reputation of your favorite restaurant, how about your doctor, or the last place you decided never to go back to? Every person you come into contact with every day is forming an impressionRead… Read more »

How do internal communications affect the ability of an organization to provide good service?

Picture great service as a three-legged bar stool. Your customer is sitting on top. What happens if one of the legs isn’t strong, or is flat out broken? That’s right, the customer falls off the stool and has a bad experience. Each of the elements represented by the bar stool can be given its ownRead… Read more »

Is there an NAO community?

At the moment we are spending some time helping colleagues launch this year’s graduate recruitment campaign – branded as Big-on. We are quite proud of our contribution including the branded Big-on Facebook page which my colleague Alex Mueller does a lot of work on. We also have a dedicated Big-on area of our website IRead… Read more »

What Bob the Builder Taught Me About Training

It’s not rocket science, but I’m talking about training to reach the stars. Forgive the pun and the cliche, but they seem most appropriate here. Can we do it? Of course, we can. I learned all I know from the Cave Man who must have said, “I need to fix this. I have no otherRead… Read more »

CO2 Emissions Explained Simply

Tom Brokaw hosted a program back in 2006 that sought to explain a typical American family’s carbon footprint in a simple yet memorable way. All these years later, we dug up the video to see how it has aged. It still seems fresh to us, and remains a great illustration of our impact on theRead… Read more »