No, Benioff’s Blurt Isn’t a Lesson to All CEOs
Just to get you up to speed: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been known for the last three decades as a stakeholder capitalist—a progressive business guy, a big contributor to …
AI and the Speechwriting Process: A Dispatch From the Front
I’m witnessing miracles! The same policy people who used to take three weeks to deliver an incoherent mess of data points to me are now responding instantly with content that …
It’s Not AI, Sweetheart: a Stirring Defense of the Em Dash, and Human Writing
I am a retired Sergeant Major. Public Affairs. Twenty-five years of balancing truth with tact, writing for commanders who barely skimmed their own talking points, and editing the rambling nonsense …
Pregiarized!
There’s nothing new under the sun. (That’s an old saying too.) For years, I’ve been telling speechwriters there are two ways to coach speakers into becoming more dynamic, authentic and …
CEOs Say the Darnedest Things
CEOs used to love to say their companies were like families and employees were their most valuable asset. Until they started laying the family members off and dumping their most …
Leadership Communication, by Lawyering Up
From today’s Executive Communication Report, to which you should subscribe because unlike most things in life, it is useful and free: I have worked my whole career counseling communication professionals not to let …
Meet Your Brilliant, Solicitous But Untrustworthy New Coworker (AI)
Artificial intelligence complicates things for writers. It’s complicating everything for everyone these days, sure. We all have AI in our faces all day long, whether we want it or not …
Leadership Communication These Days: Utterly Essential, and Hard as Hell
So many times were Chatham House Rules re-invoked at last week’s Annual Gathering of the Higher Education Leadership Communication Council at Wesleyan University. This is such a creepy time to be employed to …
Yes, This Work Is Worth It
Fourteen years ago this week I started my first executive communications job. I was (very) loosely qualified for it, but the team was scaling quickly and needed bodies. And my …
Rhetoric, for Ill
A review of The Language of Evil, by Guy Doza. (Canbury, 2025) We hear the call from time to time: If only the masses knew the tricks of speechwriters and …