This Isn’t Writing, It’s Mincing
Last week at the Executive Communication Summit that my company convened, I interviewed the famed Yale Management School Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who took us back to the beginning of the …
How Writers Can Beat AI At Its Own Game
Today my company launched AI for Speechwriting and Executive Communication, a webinar that should signal to you that this stuff is in the leadership communication biz to stay. The question is, …
Who Wants to Be a Speechwriter in 2025?
First published in Pluck: A Newsletter for Fearless Communicators, produced by Justine Adelizzi, an award-winning speechwriter and communications leader. Subscribe to Pluck. *** Within the communications field, being a speechwriter comes …
Boe’s Work Is Our Work Now
Well, Boe Workman is retiring this Friday, after a career that began with rhetoric scholarship, continued with political work and self-employment, and concluded with a short stint as the head …
‘Does European Speechwriting Have a Future?’
Tuesday. I am on a train. Behind me is a world full of chores: the kitchen lights that flicker like the world’s worst, most desperate, domestic disco; the disintegrating garden …
It’s Lonely Near the Top (But Only If You’re Alone).
Recently Forbes had a piece quoting CEOs on why they join peer groups where they can exchange experiences and ideas with others just like them. “I joined a peer group because I was making …
Impossible to Describe: A Letter Home, from the Leadership Communication Academy
What is executive communication precisely, and what all do you need to know to be great at it? Exactly a half-decade since the founding of the Executive Communication Council—and at the beginning of …
How to Know Whether You Should Be Worried About AI Taking Your Speechwriting Job
Many of us were journalists before turning to rhetoric, which makes speechwriters an exquisite fusion of objectors and optimists with a weakness for eloquence: people who can spot the long …
Real State of the Union Revealed by State-of-the-Village Speeches
President Trump is giving his big speech to Congress tonight. But even when we have a president who does try to mouth rhetoric that remotely rhymes with reality, I’m not …
Corporate America Won’t Even Defend *Itself*
Earlier this month we invited speechwriters and executive communication professionals to share, at whatever level of confidentiality they desired, how they’re faring in the new administration: “What is going on …