Articles on PR for People

Hold onto your Ambition

We’re living in uncertain and troubled times. The very notion of truth is being called into question.  We’re not talking about creating grey areas to communicate a point of view or well-packaged spin. We’re talking about downright lying. We are being lied to and we know it. We have no choice but to rely on our own ambition. We have to create a vision for ourselves, a strategy, and a precise map to find our way along the road of this long,...


Conduct Risk Presented Daily on the National Stage

In a new volume, Conduct Risk: A Practitioner’s Guide, published by Risk Books of London, I argue that there are three root causes of conduct risk: tone, culture and conflicts of interest.  In the rollup to the inauguration of a new president, all three types of risk are playing out daily. Our relationships with other countries as well as a kind of seige...


Who Will Bell the Cat?

“Who is going to stop Howard?” our neighbors moaned.  Howard, a long-term resident in our NYC co-op, had a slick way of – as a Board member – slipping in building legislation that invariably managed to benefit – amazingly – Howard. The most recent outrage: Howard obtained and voted, for the second year in a row, a proxy for apartment 334, nullifying the vote of the soon-to-be new owner, a dear friend of the...


Minimizing Digital Risk

Technology has introduced numerous wonderful inventions and opportunities. That paradigm changes have occurred as a result is an understatement.  People wear smart watches, carry smart phones, tablets, medical devices and some even drive smart cars. There are cars smart enough to drive themselves.  We live in a society where computing is part of our everyday life.

With technology comes responsibility.  With responsibility comes...


Keeping it Cool

Boston’s ice cream scene is hot all winter

While it may be known as “home of the bean and the cod,” MA is also one of the largest consumers of ice cream per capita in the United States. In the summer, that is all fine and good. But how can the Bay State maintain this claim during its often brutal winters? Well, when you have the type of quality products from local purveyors like...


How big will it grow?

Remember Pinocchio? The Disney story was based on the children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. The little wooden boy is brought to life by the blue fairy. Pinocchio can only be made human if he is unselfish, brave and, above all, truthful. Every time President Trump lies, we’ve been saddled with the tremendous spectacle of having to watch it grow bigger, and, sadly, it is not Pinocchio’s nose. This thing that is growing bigger is something else and it is getting really, really big.


Risky Initiation

 

Playing it safe leads to an unadventurous life. How then should we take on that element of risk—to precipitate the virtue out of this dangerous mixture of spice and vice? No time is ever just right—you either go for it or not. It is never anything less than “to be or not to be!” That’s it: forge a path over the gaping gorge! This is the journey of the hero. Feel the zeal, knowing well it is you who makes the deal...


On Broken Glass

Mosaic artist Ariel Finelt Shoemaker knows the value of risk

The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 shattered many people’s worlds. All these years later, many are still picking up the pieces.

On Friday, March 2, 2002, Ariel Finelt Shoemaker used those broken pieces to begin her true life. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that she was single and broke, Ariel left a job in the C-suite...


Girvin on Risk

The Leap, the Jump to Risk

There is a path of the straight and narrow. 

And there is a path of an unexpected roadway. You can take either, depending on your expectation of outcome. 

There is an easy way, and there is another, that breaks the normal causeway to something more adventuresome. And while one path — the easier route — might be more...


Can You Spell Kakistocracy?

The morning after national elections I received an email from my editor at The Risk Universe magazine, in which she asked if I would write a reflection on risks connected with the election results. I said yes because I thought that with a month’s passing I would have a better sense of where the president-elect would be taking us. After all, by then he would have made his cabinet appointments, which would tell us a great deal. I...