Latest
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starbucks, haraz, corporate training manual, coffe shops, ambiance, pastries, coffee types, coffee, artificial friendliness, corporate training, employee engagement, hyper local, UncategorizedStarbucks’ New Approach: Is Artificial Friendliness Enough?
Starbucks is trying out an old marketing playbook. They want to lift sagging sales, increase customer visits and improve affinity but the way they are doing it is artificial. Baristas who used to treat me like one standing in line at a post office, suddenly seem too friendly, and have started looking me in the…
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What makes Ferrari tick?
Ferrari is a company that sells a luxury. They sell unique, luxurious cars that offer personalized experiences for their customers. They make just 1,000 cars a month for the most discerning customers in the world. What makes Ferrari tick? How has it sustained itself remarkably well? According to CEO, Benedetto Vigna, the people who work…
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We belong to 1 of 3 dysfunctional teams.
Thomas Keil, a management professor at the University of Zurich and Marianna Zangrillo, a partner at The Next Advisors authored a Harvard Business Review article titled “Why leadership teams fail.” They studied leadership teams interviewing over 100 CEO’s across 10 years. Their study showed 3 patterns of dysfunction and most of us belong to one…
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Mastering the Art of Storytelling
By Sarat Pratapchandran There are few good stories we write, yet so many of us claim to be storytellers. Storytelling is not a gift we are born with. According to Bernadette Jiwa, author of “What Great Storytellers Know,” it is a skill we can improve with practice. Still, in today’s world, storytelling is commonly discussed…
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Jensen Huang’s Whiteboarding: A Path to Innovative Leadership
By Sarat Pratapchandran Jensen Huang, co-founder of NVIDIA, has developed an interesting habit of whiteboarding his ideas. This practice is highlighted in Tae Kim’s acclaimed book “The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant.” Huang describes the whiteboard as starting off blank. It allows for the creation of new ideas. These…
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Navigating Corporate Philanthropy in a Polarized World
By Sarat Pratapchandran Corporate philanthropy and social responsibility are vital components in today’s business landscape. As companies navigate an increasingly polarized environment, they must stay true to their core values. At the same time, they must tackle the needs of their communities. Embracing Core Values Organizations should avoid polarizing buzzwords when engaging in corporate philanthropy.…
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allyship, Alumni Engagement, Alumni Participation, Art of Giving, asking for wealth, change-makers, Charitable Giving, Charities, Charity, Charity in a box, Circle of Giving, citizens creating change, Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, corporate citizenship, Corporate Contributions, Donor Engagement, donor relations, donor retention, generosity network, Giving, giving circles, Giving in developing countries, Giving to emerging markets, philanthropic giving, Philanthropy, UncategorizedThe Rise of Giving Circles in Philanthropy
A few years ago, I worked with a group of donors who wanted to pool their resources to create collective impact. For 40 years, this close knit group was part of a book club. Every month, they consistently met at a member’s house to have dinner where they discussed their professional development. The group began…
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The Power of AI in Writing: Copilot vs. My Fragile Ego
Copilot has started hurting my ego. It beats me to the task almost daily.
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The Shift from CSR to Worker-Led Social Responsibility
The traditional model of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has changed giving way to Worker-led Social Responsibility (WSR).
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Bazooka Gum: A Sweet Nostalgia from the 80s
In the early eighties, my friend, Jose introduced me to the classic bubble gum, Bazooka. His parents worked in Nigeria. Each time he came for holidays in India, he would bring these flavorful Bubble Gums. They were much better than those available in India. One main attraction was the classic Bazooka Joe comic strip. It…
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From OPT to H1B: My Immigration Success Story
I believe it was the fall of 2021. Michael Crow had just taken over as President of Arizona State University and still holds this position. The average tenure in this country for a University president is 4 years. There are very few who have survived such long tenures. ASU’s international student services had brought in…
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Why I Still Keep My H1B Documentation After 20 Years
For over 2 decades, I’ve been holding on to this bulky H1B folder. I had planned to toss it out several times but today I am keeping it. What if they target naturalized citizens?
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An insular America.
It took six years and a Category One hurricane to know who my neighbors were. I live in insular America where a hurricane that breaks fences introduces you to your neighbors. That’s exactly what Beryl, the fiery storm did. Beryl broke our backyard fences but we got to know our neighbors for the first time…
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Poor, white and struggling.
Stephanie Land’s latest book “Class” is a must read for DEI professionals. In vivid common man’s language, Land shows us how a single white mom in poverty tries to navigate the great American higher education experience. “Every single aspect of higher education felt like a particularly cruel game, or like I was getting an advanced…
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Black Resistance
Black Resistance is the theme for the 2023 Black History Month celebrations, according to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). According to ASALH “African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon…
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The fight for equality continues
Tuesday, October 11, 2022 is National Coming Out Day celebrated across the United States. At least 31 transgender people have been murdered this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). And, in 2021, 50 transgender people were killed setting a record. Justice and equality are out of reach for the LGBTQ+ community both here…
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Why Native acknowledgements are important.
Today, October 10 is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. “Indigenous people” is a broad term that refers to any culture that lived in a place first. It is good practice that we honor the original inhabitants, understand the losses they suffered and recognize the inequities that exist in our treatment of indigenous people. According to Howard Zinn’s…
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bias, Business Relations, communications, diversity equity inclusion, email communications, everyday bias, inequality, meaningful content, prejudice, Uncategorized
Understand bias first.
We are biased, even the most open-minded amongst us. Nobody talks about bias better than Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt in her much-acclaimed book “Biased.” We hold biases based on so many characteristics from gender to race to height. Dr. Eberhardt narrates her story of how she was body slammed by a police officer on the top…
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diversity, Diversity & Inclusion, employee empowerment, employee engagement, employee well being, racism, intolerance, indian caste system, cisco, brahmans, upper castes, Uncategorized
Know the difference between racism and prejudice.
In the summer of 2011, Eric Deggans, now NPR’s first full-time TV critic wrote an interesting piece in the St. Petersburg Times clarifying the difference between prejudice and racism. I’ve often found Deggan’s view on prejudice and race simple and thought-provoking. According to him, prejudice is something that you observe in the moment. “You are…
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Culture Amp, DEI practitioners, diversity, Diversity & Inclusion, Uncategorized, workplace diversity
Old silos kill collaborative DEI work
In the second half of 2020, following the killing of George Floyd, we saw a global movement for racial equity. Companies pledged money, chief executives wrote heartfelt essays, millions of dollars were invested and many chief diversity officers were hired with over half of them starting last year. Has it yielded any systemic change? Not…
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creating connections, Creativity, Cultivation, digital storytelling, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Influencers, LinkedIn strategists, Online Customer Relationship, Uncategorized, writingStrangers on LinkedIn, please leave me alone!
LinkedIn strategists, consultants, experts, and a whole slew of people want to make us influencers in a single day. As noted marketing expert, Seth Godin says, drip by drip…be authentic…these things take time, effort and genuineness. Here are ways not to connect with me on LinkedIn. Saw you in the best practices group. (A common…
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Gun in a Black boy’s pocket
A. Van Jordan’s poem “Airsoft” dedicated to Tamir Rice made me sad and angry. Just five days before Thanksgiving, on November 22, 2014, Rice was shot and killed by police at 3:30 pm in broad daylight at a recreation center in Cleveland, Ohio. His gun was an Airsoft replica whose pellets the boy was ignorant…
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Why language diversity matters in healthcare
50 different languages other than English are spoken throughout the U.S. in daily healthcare encounters, says the inaugural edition of the Healthcare World Language Index published by AMN Healthcare Language Services, a provider of healthcare language interpretation services. Based on assessing 110 million minutes of interpretation services, the top 10 languages other than English used…
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business, career advice for the young, career management, career prospects, career tips, Careers, diversity, Diversity & Inclusion, Uncategorized, workplace diversity, workplace goodness
DEI: A booming cottage industry
Median DEI manager’s salary: $103,693 (Salary.com) VP & Chief Diversity Officer (Major public university): $315,000. (Plus sign on bonus, car allowance, and here is the kicker: 2 complimentary season tickets for football, men’s basketball and men’s hockey!) Pre-2020 online DEI courses: Hardly a dozen courses existed on Coursera or LinkedIn. Today, hundreds of courses, certificate…
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authentic content, Brand building, Brand Equity, Brand Management, content authenticity, deloitte, diversity, Diversity & Inclusion, Uncategorized, workplace diversity
Be authentic while communicating diversity
How do you communicate your organization’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) strategy in an authentic way? Instead of using standard DEI statements, get to the heart and soul of your organization’s commitment to DEI. Provide a truthful account of where you are and where you want to be. You need to communicate at two levels…
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The death of the soap.
I miss tiny soaps, shampoos and body washes, the ones you looted on your last day of check out from hotels. The cheap motels I frequented had tiny, cute soaps that smelled like sandal and took me back home to India 8500 miles away. They were so small that thrifty motel owners made sure that…
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authentic content, Capitalism, cause marketing, change-makers, employee engagement, Employee Loyalty, Employee owned businesses, employee resource groups, Engaging employees, Uncategorized, workplace diversity
“Teaching people to be unbiased is hard work”
The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) world is in hyper-growth. A cottage industry rife with consultants, thought leaders, LinkedIn gurus, coaching sessions, books, and new acronyms by the day, it’s hard for the common man to understand what all this means. Dr. Rohini Anand’s book “A guide for systemic change in multinational organizations: Leading global…
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authentic content, Branding, business, Business Relations, buyers journey, content authenticity, content drives sales, content editor, content is king, content marketing, content strategist, Creativity, keywords, Uncategorized
Oh! How we embellish on LinkedIn!
Hyped words on LinkedIn So much goodness all in one place! Thanks to a cottage industry that thrives on hyped up resumes, fakes who we are, and dangles high profile words in front of recruiters, there is now a dictionary of LinkedIn hype out there. Here are some interesting ones… from a pandemic resilient franchisee…
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Bloody Sunday: 50 Years of Injustice
British police killed 14 protesters at a civil rights protest in Derry, Northern Ireland, on January 30, 1972, setting off a four-decade long hostility among the British and the separatists in Northern Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland were asking for the same rights the British enjoyed. Justice has been denied for the families of…
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authentic content, donor centric fundraising, Donor Engagement, donor relations, donor retention, Fundraising, global philanthropy, helpful content, Non profit funding resources, Non-profits, Nonprofit failure, Nonprofit financing, Uncategorized
Want new donors? Check out the importance of diversity-related data.
Diversity-related data is key to finding new donors The term “culture of philanthropy” is boring. Instead, let us focus on creating a culture shift by incorporating Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) data in our conversations with donors. The “culture of philanthropy” has been around for over a decade, repeated in case statements, campaign materials and…
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business, Business Relations, diversity, linguistic racism, Marketing, native speaker, non-native speaker, Uncategorized, writing
Linguistic racism is a global phenomenon
No one owns the English language anymore. In my BA English literature class in India, I was first introduced to the Cockney accent, the dialect of working-class Londoners. The Queen’s English came to us later. I got my first taste of linguistic racism working in a newspaper in the Persian Gulf. Linguistic racism occurs when…
Lettersnatcher 