Blog, EEC Industry Expertise, Utility Leadership
Organizational Change? Be Prepared to Communicate Until You are Blue in the Face
I’ve always loved the saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I first heard it 20 years ago, in business school. Since then, I’ve been able to personally experience the truth of that statement, and I have spoken to innumer...
Uncategorized
Time to Rev Up Your Clean Energy Communications for Customers
California’s decision to go to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045, passed late last month by the state legislature and awaiting Governor Jerry Brown’s signature, means electric utilities and electric cooperatives in the Golden Stat...
Uncategorized
Customer Communications: Reaching Customers’ Brains Through Their Hearts
“Poles and wires are boring, but people are interesting,” a utility communicator once told me. I agree completely: The best way to feed your audience, especially customers, the information you want them to know is to embed it in a co...
Blog, Effective, Utility Communications
Better Public Speaking: 6 Tips, 6 Sins and 1 Golden Rule
Does the photo look familiar? It might. I used it five years ago to illustrate this blog post on how to become a more effective public speaker. I attended several industry conferences earlier this year and found the same public speaking ...
Blog, Effective, Utility Communications
Utility Communications: How to Stay Out of the “Smart-Talk” Trap
When was the last time you did a 540°? What hill are you willing to die on? Have you ever used “architect” as a verb? Do you have enough bandwidth to growth-hack the analytics? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, yo...
Blog, Crisis, Utility Communications
Crisis Communications: What’s Brewing Inside Your Utility?
“Do you ever speak on utility crisis communications?” Barry Moline, executive director of the California Municipal Utilities Association, asked me in a recent phone call. I told him I did. He asked if I could speak on that topic at C...
Blog, Efficiency & Conservation, Programs & Services, Utility Marketing
Utility Marketing: Cash on the Barrel or Cash Down the Drain?
Raise your hand if you think your utility marketing efforts are misguided. Yeah, that’s what I thought. But rather than call out your utility’s marketing team, a less-confrontational approach might be to consider third-party research...
Employee, Employee Communications, Employees, employee commitment, employee engagement
Battling for Employees’ Hearts and Minds? Don’t Lead with “Reliable, Affordable and Safe”
Those words might have worked as a rallying cry 75 or 100 years ago, when the U.S. was electrifying (right). Back then, working in the electricity business was a leading-edge, change-the-world endeavor, like working in the space program ...
Blog, Messaging
Effective and SUCCESful Messaging for Utilities
Our challenge as utility communicators comes down to two separate yet interconnected things: Messaging and Messenger. That’s the Alpha and Omega of communications. You need to craft a message your audience can grasp and you need to del...
Crisis, Utility Communications
The Simple, Enduring Truths of Crisis Communications
Listening to Bruce Hennes’ talks on crisis communications for utilities, I was reminded of a long-ago quip attributed, as best as I could recall, to Pierre Salinger (right), former press secretary to President John F. Kennedy and a pri...