From time to time I receive grammar and usage questions from my readers, and I thought I’d use a couple of these as the basis for this week’s post. This week Margot asked me to comment on the use of the words bad and badly. Is it “I feel bad about it” or “I feel [...]

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Some time ago I clipped something out of the newspaper as a brilliant example of how not to communicate. I came across it again today and decided to make it the subject of today’s post. Here is the opening sentence from a report on Canada’s part in the Afghanistan conflict: “The Harper government failed in [...]

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“I think you have to work with people, and when I talk about managing relationships, don’t think the derogatory ‘‘managed relationships’’. It is a question of sharing emotion and feelings. The common denominator of everything can’t be money, and it should not be money.” — Anil Ambani, Reliance Industries, India

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Have you ever wondered if anything can get your staff to care about the work they’re doing? Managers who are self-starters, who enjoy and are motivated by the work they do and the organization they work for, are sometimes puzzled by the perceived lack of motivation of their subordinates. The operative word here is “perceived”, [...]

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