I believe in ghosts. In fact I’ve seen plenty of them haunting corporate America. From the boardroom to the factory floor, professionals are haunted by behaviors that worked for them in the past but are an impediment to success today. I even wrote a book about it.

GHOST STORY is a business fable that has some pretty weird characters: A magpie who hoards information, a green, 8-foot tall Martian who is the ultimate outsider, a 400-pound pig in an admiral's uniform who "protects" staff by keeping them uninformed, and the two-year-old head of IT who speaks "dribble" – to name only a few.

Yet, surprisingly, I have met all of these characters. Of course I’m speaking figuratively. The pig, for example, is the prototypical "command and control" manager whose role in life is to protect people who are unable to absorb what's really going on within the organization. Let them know what's really happening, he insists, and they would panic, freak out, and defect like rats.

And we’ve all met the “techie” who can’t translate what he knows into words the rest of us can understand.

Even the heroine of the story is fighting the ghost of “unconscious competence.” And this is how many women are haunted. Because they “don’t know what they know,” they are less likely to speak up in meetings, less likely to believe that their contributions are valuable, and more likely to personalize failure while externalizing success.

In writing the book, I came to realize that I am as haunted as any of my characters. Under some circumstances, I’ve held the same limiting assumptions and made the same errors. Now that’s scary!

Happy Halloween!

My nephew saw his first musical comedy on Broadway when he was eleven. I took him to a revival of “The Music Man” and Joshua went home to take up guitar lessons and song writing. Now that’s he’s in high school, Josh is on the football team and in a band. If he gets chosen for the school play my wishes will be fulfilled.

I’m certainly prejudiced, but I think that theatre and the performing arts are an ideal perfect background for business success. Especially when it comes to understanding the power of creative collaboration. Most theatrical productions require elaborate collaborations between many disciplines - researchers, writers, visual designers, actors/singers/dancers, musicians, choreographers, directors, producers and technicians - all working together for the good of the production.

Collaborations in the theatre require open and steady communication to bring a diverse group of people together and to capitalize on the richness of each person’s expertise. Each discipline brings its own ideas, background and skills to bear on the work, and from there it becomes a total concept, integrating as many ideas from the participants as possible. Central to this concept is the premise that there is no one particular way to create or assist others in their creating. In a world defined this way, everything is negotiable, and collaboration is always valued. Could there be a better model for today’s organizations?

What if your job changed significantly -- or was being eliminated? What if you had to reinvent yourself to stay relevant in your profession? What if you had to change careers? Would you survive?

Some people actually do survive, and even thrive, in these circumstances. They flourish in chaotic times by (first of all) understanding the forces of change in a world where nothing is guaranteed.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself. Better yet, gather your team and answer these together:
• What trends and forces of change are currently impacting my profession? Especially -- What could happen in the future that would make my profession obsolete?
• What assumptions do I have about my current situation? (Write them down and then write the opposites. Analyze what would happen if the opposite assumptions proved correct.)
• Which skills and abilities are my current strengths?
• Which current strengths will continue to make me successful in the future?
• What new skills do I need to learn to stay valuable in the marketplace?
• What do I need to unlearn? (Which skills are becoming obsolete? What practices -- attitudes, behaviors, work routines, etc. -- that worked for me in the past are no longer valid?)

If you put a microphone in every coffee station, doorway and stairwell in your organization and listened to people’s conversations – what would you hear? Well, sure, you’d get the latest dirt on who’s sleeping with whom – but that would be a minute percentage of the talk. Most of it would revolve around issues like these: Where is the knowledge in this organization? Who’s reliable - trustworthy? How am I supposed to behave in this situation? Have you ever dealt with this customer – problem – manager before? How did that jerk get promoted? Did “so and so” really retire or was he asked to leave? Why did the stock price take a dive? Have you heard that we may be acquired – get a new CEO – move headquarters?

This is the office grapevine in action - and we couldn't operate without it. But office buzz can also pose a big threat for management and corporate communication professionals.

I just finished a study on the office grapevine and how it compares with more formal channels of information (including speeches from senior management, articles in newsletters, and messages from first-line supervisors) and I think this response from my survey sums it up perfectly: “Formal communication focuses on messages the company wants to deliver, with a scope management feels is appropriate, and at a time management feels is right. The reason the grapevine plays such an important role is that it delivers the information employees care about, provides the details employees think they should know, and is delivered at the time employees are interested.”

To view the article I wrote on this research, go to www.CKG.com and click on the "articles" link.