David Ferrabee’s Blog

LONDON — I am not sure who else really does this.  It’s the essence of what we do.  We help organisations to ensure that their programmes work by managing change and communications.

Quite often we are called in to help with programmes like business transformation or HR / IT initiatives, when they have started to go [...]

TCR — There’s a great French expression ferme ta gueule.  Maybe because it’s in a foreign language I think it’s a bit less harsh than the English equivalent.

I worked in politics many years ago.  Almost 20 years ago.  But long enough to realise that you need equal measures of two things to succeed:

1) Enough ambition [...]

HOME — I had a good chat with a nice guy named Paul this week.  He asked ‘how we worked’, and again I recognised that buying consultancy can be a daunting experience for people.  And I hate to think that.

I can’t say that every experience will be the same, but here are a few of [...]

LONDON — What I like most about this blog on the Harvard Business website, is that it could have been written by me!

Not that I am vain or anything…!

But I think these ‘employee relations’, or internal communications, or (my preference) organisational communications issues are ones that will return to haunt us.  They are also issues [...]

LONDON — This may be the month of some riotous annual meetings.  These regular, champagne fuelled events in which the Board deigns to talk down to the blue-haired shareholders, and a few ‘institutional investors’ drop by to show how important they are.  They are not going as smoothly so far in 2009 as some people [...]

ORIANA — Did you know that an estimated 670,000 Chinese businesses failed last year?  Bankrupt. 

I didn’t even know that could happen.

The Sunday Times last weekend ran a survey that compared views and trends between 1989 and 2009.  Did you know that on average we are twice as cynical as we were then? Our trust in [...]

LONDON — There’s a reason why I love the New Yorker.  Every few years I rediscover it and read something I hadn’t thought about.  Earlier this year it was an article I read my daughters about the civil rights movement and Obama.  Today it’s about Plastiki.

Have a look at this video.

The story itself is out of [...]

“Here are 16 reason why we will miss the gloomy time.

1. Role-play will be less pleasurable. We have split the world into two pantomimic parts: the evil (the bankers) and the good (everyone else).  In future, sorting out villains and victims will require more imagination.”

David Marsh, Comment in FT, 21 April 2009

THE WHITE [...]

IN FRONT OF THE GRAND PRIX — The biggest challenge to using social media in the workplace is bringing together the various skills and functions that need to approve it.

I was at a Tuttle meeting yesterday.  Not for long.  Not long enough.  But I me some very interesting people.  And I came out with a nagging doubt [...]