How human experience changes things

Fascinating story about a doctor who dealt with a spinal injury and how that changed his view on health care.

One of the things that is rarely talked about in PR, yet which is so essential, is the degree to which executive management truly understands the business they are running. This ties back to the book Good to Great, and also ties in to vision and mission statements.

When executives and personnel are personally connected to their business - when they eat, breath and sleep the organization's mandate - PR is typically very easy as there will be a myriad of activities, projects and spokespersons for PR folks to mine to tell the organization's story.

However, when an organization is disjointed or silo'd, when people are merely clocking in and clocking out, the task for a PR person becomes extremely difficult because there is no over-arching 'spirit' or vision that underpins all activities. As a result, various aspects of an organization end up standing alone and making for a much less compelling story and it can be a challenging task to make disconnected functions of the business appear as though they are working together like a well-oiled machine.

For up-and-coming PR folks, the #1 thing you want to be on the look-out for in any organization you work for is a passionate CEO that truly understands the business they are in. This can be tricky, because as this story shows, everyone thinks they understand the business they are in - but as this CEO found out, he didn't 'truly' understand it until he experienced what patients experience.

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So I've now been using an e-cigarette (e-cig) for two months and thought I'd talk a bit about how I see the upcoming battle between Health Canada and e-cigs going. First though, let's do a quick overview of what exactly an e-cig is. Basically an e-cig vaporizes liquid that contains nicotine. The vapor is then inhaled. People who use e-cigs are called vapers (not smokers). Because the liquid is atomized (ie. vaporized), not burned the way tobacco is, vapers do not consider themselves 'smokers' in anyway. An e-cig is comprised of basically three components: The tank - this is the component that holds the juice (sometimes referred to as e-juice or e-liquid). The atomizer - this a coil and wick unit that atomizes the juice. When the coil is heated (from the battery) it atomizes the juice that has soaked into the wick. The battery - batteries for e-cigs come in various capacities (some last 8 hours, others 40+ hours, depending on their size). The ba...

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