New Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi must now deal with Transport for London’s decision to yank Uber’s license to operate in the city. He’s straddling two worlds — praising the team but asking for change and self-reflection. You can read his email to the global team either way, and that is the problem. Lets look at the…
Ryanair made a mistake and had to cancel 40 to 50 flights a day for the next six weeks, for a total of 2,100 flights. The legendary no-frills airline has always treated passengers like freight, and with its non-apology, has proven that accounting for customers’ feelings is a luxury that doesn’t come on Ryanair. This…
Salesforce is a great program for small business. Each of its customer sites has an administrator, many of whom are non-coders. That’s why a recent “critical update” featuring “block execution” sounded scary — but incomprehensible — to many. The salesforce email: simultaneously opaque and terrifying A correspondent working in a small financial advice firm forwarded…
We use some words so often they lose meaning. “Digital” is one of those words. When GE CEO John Flannery says the future is digital, I get confused. If I’m too dumb to understand this, how many of his other readers are similarly ignorant? A little more clarity — and a review from an editor…
Thieves “potentially” made off with 143 million consumer records from credit reporting company Equifax. This is the worst data breach ever. The Equifax response is full of vague cover-your-ass statements at the exact moment when consumers most need accurate information. This is not the largest data breach ever — Yahoo lost data on 1 billion…
Investor Shervin Pishevar wrote a letter defending his friend, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, as investors attempted to eject him from Uber’s board of directors. It’s the most florid business communication you’ll ever see. In a moment of passion, you may be tempted to write like this. Don’t — it’ll come back to haunt you….
Yesterday, Rich Rowe, CEO of Arkema, warned that his chemical plant near Houston might explode. Today it exploded. When you know something like this is going to happen, you need to get right to the point. Rich Rowe didn’t. The Arkema plant is in Crosby, Texas, about 25 miles from downtown Houston. Houston, of course,…
New research from Ben-Gurion University shows why you should never use an emoji in business communication. Researchers Ella Glikson, Arik Cheshin, Gerben A. van Kleef tested emojis with 549 people from 29 countries. Here’s what they found: Participants who received emails with smiley-face icons rated the sender as less competent. While smileys are supposed to make…
President Trump tweets lots of spelling errors. In the New York Times, Farhad Manjoo says this is just a sign of the times. It’s fine to spell things however you want on social media your friends, but when you’re communicating with people who matter — like, say, the entire citizenry of the United States —…