How you celebrate the holidays with employees and clients says a lot about your organization. Here are some quick thoughts to consider as you plan holiday parties, gifts, and communications.

• Consider giving associates cash or time off. The ROI will be much greater than that of a Butterball turkey.
   
• Limit office parties. Especially in tough economic times, it sends an important message about being prudent.
   
• Replace client gifts with contributions to worthy causes. You'll make a difference, and you'll avoid the appearance of paybacks.
   
• Practice TBWA - Thanks By Walking Around. A face-to-face thanks from an associate's immediate supervisor -- and other executives -- is a great motivator.

Dr. James Grunig has spent 15 years studying exemplary public relations.

In his groundbreaking research, Grunig uncovered a means for organizations to measure the quality, and thus the success, of relationships with important stakeholder groups. He found that relationships have four essential qualities: trust, control mutuality, commitment, and satisfaction.

The table below explains each of these four qualities and provides a sample statement that exemplifies each. You can read more about Grunig's research and how to measure relationships at The Institute for Public Relations.

 

Relationship Quality	Definition	Sample Statement
Trust	Confidence in and willingness to open itself to another party	This organization can be relied on to keep its promises.
Control Mutuality	Degree to which parties agree on who has rightful power to influence one another	This organization really listens to what people like me have to say.
Commitment	Level to which parties find a relationship worth spending energy to manage and promote	Compared to other organizations, I value my relationship with this organization more.
Satisfaction	When parties feel favorable and positively meet one another's expectations	Most people enjoy dealing with this organization.

Next time you have to edit an important document, try reading your document backwards sentence by sentence to catch errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Start by reading the last sentence of your document. Then read the previous sentence and so on until you reach the beginning of the document.

This tip works because it slows down your reading speed and forces your mind to focus on each sentence separately rather than as part of the whole document.

Cheers to an error-free 2003.

We see 2003 shaping up to be the "Year of Transparency." The best CEOs will be at the forefront of this trend, communicating openly, proactively, and often with all important stakeholders across a variety of media.

The Year of Transparency is a direct result of the meltdown in investor confidence on Wall Street. Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other regulating agencies are already pursuing new rules to ensure that financial markets cannot operate in secrecy. PricewaterhouseCoopers has even proposed a "Three-Tier Model of Corporate Transparency" that is indicative of this trend.

Transparency extends beyond financial services and investing. Savvy consumers now expect to know - and will react to - the intricacies of a company's products and services. Look no further than the child-labor crises that have embroiled Kathie Lee Gifford and Nike.

CEOs are the standard bearers of transparency. Beyond simply communicating decisions, they must prove that they are listening to stakeholders by communicating how and why those decisions were made. The CEOs who disclose more information than their competitors and willingly engage all stakeholders in dialogue will surely rise to the top.

www.howstuffworks.com

HowStuffWorks.com is a one-stop-click for detailed information about the inner working of many things -- from the everyday appliances to the weird gadgets. The site touches on obvious things, like telephones, computers, and air conditioners. On the weird side, there is the Van de Graaff generator. You know, those machines at children's museums that generate static electricity and make your hair stand on end. And last but not least, something near and dear to our hearts: How Chocolate Works.

The Five Faces Of Genius by Annette Moser-Wellman

Creativity is one of the true forces behind successful businesses. Market leaders see opportunities before everybody else, solve problems that nobody else has solved, and inspire us to think differently.

Thinking differently about creativity is the foundation of The Five Faces Of Genius. Moser-Wellman has identified five types of genius that organizations can use to inspire creativity:

• The Seer who can visualize a problem quickly
   
• The Observer who finds inspiration in meticulous details
   
• The Alchemist who finds connections between seemingly unrelated ideas
   
• The Fool who turns weakness into opportunity
   
• The Sage who reduces problems to their simplest form

According to Moser-Wellman, every individual has a dominant type of genius. Understanding associates' types allows organizations to capitalize on individual strengths and develop better brainstorming groups and teams.

Moser-Wellman provides a thought-provoking, 40-question survey that people can use to identify their primary type of genius. She also outlines tools that people can use to increase their abilities in their non-dominant types.

© Copyright 2002 Atkinson Public Relations