The Rumor Tumor

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  CRM   Stakeholder Management  

It happens sometimes: changes in business environment and/or economic trends that provide opportunities or force organizations to rethink how they run their operations and make dramatic transformations.

Sometimes it's a merger, other times it's an acquisition. Call it what you will--consolidation, prospect, evolution, revolution, etc.--execs take this information and put a "spin" on it, pushing it on you and your associates like a car salesman during a President's Day promotion. Half-truths and occasionally half-lies run rampant--and so does the rumor mill.

The IT industry has been especially hard hit by change. One does not have to look deeply into one's Rolodex or Blackberry to see names of individuals who have been underemployed or unemployed for a considerable amount of time. Short-term contract work, which was at one time considered to be the saving grace for many highly sought and overworked IT staffers who wanted to shift into more exciting projects, is now considered "business as usual" for employers who don't want to pay for benefits and feel that talent can be acquired as easily as super-sizing your order at McDonald's.

Rational and Rationale

Shadowy meetings with closed doors involving high-level managers only. Receptionists and assistants chatting quietly to themselves and close compatriots. Exceptionally clean facilities. …

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