Ellen Naylor | Ellen Naylor

Christmas, A Season for Gratitude

November 28, 2017December 23, 2009 by Ellen Naylor

One of the purest ways to communicate is to express gratitude which is one of the practices of cooperative communication. There are so many way to express gratitude. A thank-you when someone does something nice is a good start, especially to those people in our lives who are often unseen as we go rushing through our lives. This Christmas is bittersweet for me as I mourn the loss of my Dad who was such a warm and giving man. I am grateful to have been influenced by such a good man.

Cooperative Leadership: Lessons Learned from my Dad

November 28, 2017December 14, 2009 by Ellen Naylor

I have noticed that cooperative leadership emanates from people who are comfortable with themselves and who don’t have those psychological issues of trying to be “one-up” on others. They are deeply rooted with “take me as I am.” People feel comfortable with this type of person: all personality types.

The Long Good-Bye

November 28, 2017December 4, 2009 by Ellen Naylor

I learned when you lose someone near and dear to you, like Dad was to me, it’s really hard to concentrate on work or anything intellectual. In our culture, we don’t talk about death enough: we’re so wedded to birth, babies and youth tha twe avoid talking about the side effects of death to dear friends and family which delays our ability to pick up the pieces and live our life anew.

Are We Losing the Art of Conversation?

March 18, 2021November 18, 2009 by Ellen Naylor

What is ‘social’? I find that the connections I make and the blogs that I read through social networking are shallow in comparison to the connections and knowledge I gain and exchange in conversation. Social networks provide snippets and tidbits of information. As a society are we losing our ability and culture of conversation?

Introduction to Competitive Intelligence

March 18, 2021October 19, 2009 by Ellen Naylor

Over the years very little has changed in the competitive intelligence (CI) process, while the execution of the collection phase has changed remarkably over the 20+ years I have been in the business with the advent of the Internet in all its iterations, e-mail, text messaging and more recently through social networks. This also affects counterintelligence, since it is easier for your competitors—or anyone who is interested enough—to dig up information about your company that you consider proprietary.

Competitive Intelligence Advantage by Seena Sharp

March 18, 2021October 14, 2009 by Ellen Naylor

Seena Sharp’s book Competitive Intelligence Advantage has just been published. It explains why data is not intelligence, why competitor intelligence is a weak sibling to competitive intelligence, when to use it, how to find the most useful information and turn it into actual intelligence, and how to convincingly communicate findings. The true power of CI lies in its ability to reveal what’s happening outside your organization—to take off the blinders and show you the true competitive state of play. If you’re a senior-level executive or organizational leader—and aren’t tapping the power of CI for an external perspective on your customers and the marketplace—you’re giving your competitors the upper hand.

Real-time Collaborative Architectural Modeling Enhances Complex Product Development

March 18, 2021September 24, 2009 by Ellen Naylor

Bryan Moser spoke to our Denver PDMA group about the value of models such as the one his company, Global Project Design developed to forecast, optimize, allocate and measure coordination in complex product development projects. The key takeaway is that coordination is often way underestimated in these complex product development projects across multiple countries. It’s better to run the model earlier in the process, so as to re-schedule or re-work pieces to reduce the less productive coordination time. Choosing the best coordination architecture can lead to a 20% improvement in time/cost performance.