The other day, my brother and I were talking about a long-running
weekly television show that features a round table of sports reporters. Each week they recap the top stories from the past seven days and offer their opinions on these stories. Neither of us could understand why the show was still on the air.

“No one wants to wait a week to hear what these guys have to say about stories we already know!” he said.

He’s absolutely right - we don’t.

And although this particular show deals with the world of sports, it has become true of all news. No one waits until Sunday to find out what happened this week. “News you may have missed” no longer makes any sense.We didn’t miss it. It was on our computer moments after it happened. It was delivered to our phone while we were in the grocery store. We don’t need anyone to bundle it up for us and deliver it long after it happened.

Of course it wasn’t always this way and shows like this made sense. Growing up, I waited for the evening paper to be delivered to my house five nights a week and a little earlier on Saturday. The evening news on television was merely video to support the stories I had read in my daily newspaper, but rarely anything new. Back then, we were used to getting our news a day after it happened, sometimes later. Shows that offered a more in-depth look at the top stories of the week were interesting because we hadn’t heard it all before.

But times have changed. Today we not only want the information immediately, we want access to more information, more interaction. We watch shows like HBO’s 24/7 and hear what players say on the bench, on the ice and in their hotel rooms. We live chat with news reporters as they’re on the air and follow their tweets to learn what they’re thinking about the story they told us seconds earlier.

The community newspaper that comes out twice a week is viewed as laughably slow. Company newsletters that publish weekly or monthly badly miss their employees who wanted their information long before then. Worse yet, they complain that the company has kept them in the dark and withheld information they were anxious to receive.

Weekly and monthly meetings, once the staple of effective organizations, are replaced by ad hoc collaboration and debriefing that occurs in real time (and in many organizations, constantly). Blogs, wikis and intranets are updated as information becomes available, not around the predetermined publishing timelines of yesterday.

If we’re responsible for sharing information within our organizations, with our customers, or with an audience of any kind, we need to understand the new expectation.

No one is going to wait until Sunday.

Last week at the Wilfrid Laurier University Careers in Communications event, I gave a presentation to a group of students about the benefits of IABC membership.

As always, it was a pleasure to be back on campus (though I’m still struggling with the Career Centre building being on the other side of King Street!), connecting with students and giving them advice that I hoped they could use.

I told them that IABC is a wonderful organization for people looking to grow as communicators, who wish to connect with others in the field and stay current with the latest tools and techniques in the world of communications.

I shared a list of IABC membership benefits that I thought would be most important to a student or young professional:

• Job bank (great for uncovering the hidden job market)
• Professional development (local, national and international sessions)
• Networking and volunteering (great for finding mentors and making a contribution)
• CW Magazine (learning from the successes of over 15,000 members)
• Print and online resources

And of course I mentioned that student members receive all this and more for a fraction of the cost of regular membership!

In closing, I told the students that perhaps the two most important actions they could take for their career success are:

1. Making helpful connections and
2. Constantly upgrading their skills and knowledge

For a career in communications, I can’t think of a better way to accomplish both goals than to become an active member in IABC. You’ll note I said “active” and also that this advice isn’t limited to student members.

In the Q&A session, the students asked the panelists about the value of continuing their education beyond their undergraduate degrees and whether there is a right or wrong time to do a post graduate program. They asked about LinkedIn and how best to use it as a tool to find jobs which led to a discussion about the need we all have to manage our “digital footprints” and control our online brand.

I was impressed by the student turnout and their engagement during the panel discussion and networking that followed the event. These students and others like them are the future of our industry and I think we have a lot to look forward to when they’re out of school and working in our organizations.

Something tells me they will also make great IABC members.

Minutes into the game on Saturday, I knew our beloved Team White was in trouble. A series of defensive miscues led to Team Black attackers swarming our net before burying their first goal. They would score the next 17 before the game was half over. (No score is kept, this is an estimate).

It was a scene that has become all too familiar this season. I had expected a much better effort after last week’s humiliating 43-0 drubbing at the hands of Team Maroon, but it seems our boys have accepted their place as the worst team in the Hespeler “CHIP” House League for kids aged 5 and 6.

What happened to this team that held such promise in September? How did the season slip away? Why is CHIP spelled with all caps? Where had it all gone wrong?

A significant amount of blame must be placed on the players. The kid who wears the red pants has the skills to dominate this league, but spends most of his time lying on the ice, pretending to be hurt. The kid who wears the ridiculously oversized goalie shirt is a speed demon, but hasn’t created the consistent offence you would expect from a player with his skills and a giant shirt. The kid with the stickers all over his helmet is a game breaker, to be sure, but where has he been when we’ve needed him? No really, I haven’t seen him in a few weeks – is he away?

Good goaltending can take you a long way in CHIP House League, but none of our nine players who take turns playing the position have had any success stopping the puck. The kid who lies down, across the goal line has been our best, but how long before a rival team exploits his unorthodox style? Perhaps the very idea of alternating goalies every shift has been our downfall.

The coaches too must accept their share of the blame. We knew going into this season that we would have a young team and the decision to go with a system where all five players chase the puck wherever it may go must be questioned.

Coaches in CHIP House League are judged on wins and losses (and our record is atrocious), but more than that, they will be judged by the character of their team. Successful teams play for the name on the front of their jerseys (in our case Hespeler Minor Hockey Association) and not the name on the back (“Hockey Moms” as well as “Stop”), but such is not the case with Team White. The talent of red pants, huge jersey and sticker helmet cannot overcome this lack of focus, this lack of character.

And although this has nothing to do with how the kids have played, the coach emailed us 24 hours before our first practice and swears up and down that he emailed us before that and that we didn’t get his email. But you didn’t coach. You just didn’t.

After the game on Saturday, as I helped my son take off his skates, one of the coaches yelled out, “Good game boys! You worked really hard.” The really short kid who seems to wear only the top half of number 7 asked his dad if he could go to McDonald’s. Nearby, another boy wore a hat that looked a bit like an animal head. If ever there was a country club atmosphere, this was it.

I for one expect more from Team White. So too does the dad who stands in front of the door when the players are ready to come off and thinks it’s funny not to open it. And what of the grandmother who had so many questions about when the team pictures would be ready? Don’t you think she wants more from this team? And the dad who drives too fast in the parking lot or the mom who looks a lot like Michael Jackson? You’re damn right they do. They deserve better than this effort.

This has been a tough season for all of us and we all hope there’s some chance it can turn around.

The way they’re playing now, you’d swear they were only kids.

Last night at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium, the Kitchener Rangers faced the Sudbury Wolves in OHL hockey action. As always on a Friday night, every seat was filled and the building was buzzing.

Though no one would have noticed, a man with an 11-day moustache and a brutal head cold led his six- year-old son up the stairs, to the very last row of seats in the building. It was the first time the father had ever taken his son to watch a hockey game.

We were sitting next to a very young couple, their baby and a portable car seat beside them on the floor. A father and his son, who looked like veterans of Friday night hockey games, sat on the other side of us. I hoped they would all tolerate some coughing and a bit of seat kicking from the two jokers in the neighbouring seats.

My son became thirsty immediately, so we left our seats in search of water and the popcorn “with lots of butter” he had asked for all week long. Returning to our seats, I was surprised to realize that the baby beside us was a very lifelike doll! The young couple was either practicing to be parents or perhaps were the strangest people in the building that night.

After a nice Remembrance Day ceremony and the singing of the national anthem, the game began. In the first minute of play, my son turned to me and said, “Daddy, this is boring.” He either expected players to shoot out of cannons while a laser show lit up the air or he was testing me and I highly suspected the latter. I chose to ignore the comment and my son settled in and seemed to enjoy the action on the ice.

The Rangers scored the game’s first goal on a power play and my son covered his ears when the crowd roared. The noise had obviously overwhelmed the “baby” who awoke from its sleep and its mother was now feeding it a bottle, all of which I pretended not to notice.

I had asked my son to see if he could make the water bottle last the entire game, but midway through the first period I saw it was nearly gone and I couldn’t help but think the popcorn was at least partially to blame.

He asked me during the second period if he could get a souvenir and I told him that the program I purchased on the way in was his souvenir, but he was clearly unimpressed. I realized then that the program hadn’t been a great idea and told him we could see what else was available between periods.

At the souvenir store a Kitchener Rangers flag caught his eye and we returned to our seats so he could wave it in every direction, nearly hitting people and lifelike dolls on all sides of us. The flag had to be confiscated, but flag waving was replaced by a hearty cheer of “Let’s go Rangers!” from my son that, surprisingly, didn’t catch on in our section.

The Rangers won 4-3 and we left happy. My son couldn’t stop talking about the game or the experience on the drive home and it made me smile.

Years from now, we can refer to the program and say we saw players like Matia Marcantuoni before they played in the NHL and I’ll remind him that Ryan Murphy, perhaps the most talented player on the team, had been out with an injury that night.

I doubt my son will remember any of the details of his first Rangers game, but he’ll remember that we went together. I’ll remember that I had a horrible cold that under any other circumstance would have caused me to cancel my plans. But as long as I was breathing, I wasn’t going to cancel that game. It just meant too much to miss.

To both of us.

Eight days into into Movember and I thought I should provide a quick update on my experience so far.

My moustache is growing in nicely, although to assume there is anything nice about it might be a stretch. I’ve attempted to go with a conservative looking stache, but have already been told that I look a bit like Freddie Mercury, a look I was not necessarily going for.

My kids are having a great time watching the moustache grow and telling their friends why I’m doing it. My son has taken to calling me “Moustache Man” and delights in telling people that because it’s the month of November, but I’m growing a moustache, that it’s actually MO-vember, followed by hilarious laughter. I wonder if six year olds everywhere are getting this much enjoyment out of Movember?

Walking into work on Monday was very interesting. Coworkers went out of their way to see how the moustache looked on me, most of them laughing immediately. Despite what I thought was plenty of advance warning, one still recoiled in horror when she saw me and I worry that I may have actually offended her with my appearance.

I passed another coworker in the hall and the only words spoken were, “Oh no.” I suspect this will not be the only time I’ll be hearing these words.

I had lunch with two coworkers and as we were getting ready to head back to our desks, they both said how distracting the moustache had been for the past hour. I suppose that’s a really good thing?

I’ve often heard people say that Movember is such a great cause. Of course they’re right, but I can’t help but wonder also if that’s not a way to avoid saying what they really think – that perhaps a moustache isn’t my best look?

I read in the original instructions that I’m responsible not only for growing a moustache, but also for grooming it. Aside from shaving it into shape, I haven’t done any grooming and don’t really know what I might need to do in the future. If tools of any sort are required, I certainly don’t have them and might find myself at a severe grooming disadvantage.

The best news is that I’ve had solid support from family and friends who have made very generous donations. I’m thankful that I have so many people in my life that care enough to support me as we raise money for cancer research.

If you’d like to support me by making a donation, here’s the link. And remember, it’s for a very good cause.

Thank you.

Sales organizations are fond of using something called a “sales funnel” to track all of the open opportunities of their sales teams. The idea is that you need a lot of potential opportunities at the wide end (or top) of the funnel because most of these will fall out (decide not to buy something), for one reason or another, before they get to the bottom. Only by filling the funnel with enough high quality prospects, the thinking goes, will there be a steady stream of buying customers at the bottom of the funnel.

It struck me today that maybe we can borrow this concept when we think of our own lives. Here are three ways a sales funnel is like a life funnel:

1. Quantity counts

Sales Funnel: Sales is often called “a numbers game,” meaning that with enough prospects in your funnel, you’re likely to end up hitting your sales targets.

Life Funnel: When you look at your own life, do you have enough experiences and activities that excite you or do you need to prospect until your funnel has enough to keep you happy?

2. Prospecting never ends...even when we’re busy

Sales Funnel: The successful salesperson is constantly prospecting for new business, especially when they’re about to lose prospects that fall out of the funnel and become buying customers. When business is good (and busiest!), the successful salesperson makes time for prospecting.

Life Funnel: Even if you’re content in your life at the moment, might you want to take on some new experiences that could turn into things that you really enjoy? Does the feeling of being “too busy” prevent you from looking for new opportunities? What happens when/if your current activities lose their appeal?

3. Quality counts too

Sales Funnel: The successful salesperson is honest about the possibility of each opportunity turning into a sale or falling out of the funnel. The smartest work those that have real potential and get the others to say “no” so they can remove them from the funnel.

Life Funnel: How many activities or experiences in your life funnel do you truly enjoy and how many are just taking up space because you haven’t had the courage to admit they don’t really fit in your life? Do you commit most of your time to the things that have the biggest impact on your happiness? Are you ready to remove things from your funnel that aren’t important and never will be?

When I think about my life funnel, I want to make sure I’m keeping it filled with the things that matter to me: my family, my health, my career, rewarding experiences and adventures, my 500 words. I need to make sure I’m prospecting to add more positive experiences, and at the same time I need to get rid of some things that are just taking up space in my funnel.

How about you?

A couple of days ago, I decided to participate in Movember, meaning I’m going to grow a moustache for the month of November, trying to raise as much sponsorship money as I can, all in the name of prostate cancer research.

Though I made my decision just a few days ago, I’ve known this was coming for an entire year. I started my current job midway through last November and noticed immediately that either my workplace really embraced Movember or I had somehow accepted a job in 1973. As I had missed half the growing season, no one invited me to take part, but I knew I would get the email this year, and I did.

I must admit that it wasn’t an easy decision. I’ve grown beards on vacations, that sometimes became goatees, and some of those lasted a few weeks after I had returned to work, but never have I grown a moustache. Of course there are men that look great with moustaches, but I highly suspect I’m not one of them and that my moustache may well make me look like a buffoon.

So, I took the question home with me and decided I’d ask the opinions of my two biggest fans - my kids. My son told me flat out that I should not do it. He told me that I look a lot better clean shaven, and then added that I look a lot better when I don’t wear my glasses. Before Honesty Hour had a chance to really take off, I thanked him for his opinion and quickly left the room.

My daughter was far more kind and seemed to like the idea. I asked her if I should grow something really wild and she said I shouldn’t, that it would make me look too mean. She said I’d look nice with a simple moustache and I felt like she put more thought into her answer than my son who was probably wondering why he hadn’t said something about my haircut.

My daughter then asked me why I would be growing a moustache and I told her that it was to raise money for cancer research.

“Oh, if it’s for cancer research, then you’ve got to do it, daddy!”

I realized at that moment that my daughter was completely right. Whether I look like Tom Selleck or Borat at the end of the month, it doesn’t matter a bit. This is a great cause and I’ve got to do it.

Our family, like nearly all families, has been touched by cancer and this is my very small way of trying to make a difference.

If you’d like to sponsor me, please click on this link.

Thank you.