Sooner or later, every leader has to take a hard look at a product or service they offer and figure out whether it still deserves a place in the business. Usually, that means choosing one of three paths: doubling down on it, revamping it or moving on. 

Peter Drucker believed that last option deserves far more attention than it gets. He called it “planned abandonment” — the discipline of regularly letting go of what you’ve outgrown, or what’s become obsolete, so that you can free up time, talent and money for what’s next. As he saw it, the first step toward growth “is to decide what to abandon.” He even offered a simple question to guide that decision: If we weren’t already doing this, knowing what we know now, would we start it today?

When you’re looking for a product to solve a problem, where do you turn to research your options? Personally, I head straight to Reddit for honest, in-depth reviews and conversations about products I’m on the fence about. 

For marketers, the platform can be intimidating. Reddit users have little patience for brands that try to hijack conversations for promotional purposes, and when a product falls short, they’re rarely shy about saying so.

Try this sometime. Ask five people connected to your company what you do. It could be a recent hire, a longtime employee, your bookkeeper, a vendor you’ve worked with for years, or a customer who sends referrals your way. Then compare notes.

You’ll probably get five different answers, and none of them will be wrong, exactly. One person leads with the product, another with the price, another with a story from 2014 you stopped telling years ago. Each version has some element of truth to it, and together, they describe a company that’s hard to pin down.

I love using AI. It's become a valuable part of my daily workflow, helping me explore ideas, research questions and work through challenges. At Bark and Radiant, we have policies that guide how we use it, including how we handle confidential information.

But one thing deeply concerns me: how quickly people are giving AI platforms access to their email and other sensitive parts of their lives.

There are so many marketing teams out there with a clear vision and a real opportunity to grow, but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all.

As a business leader, you carry a lot. There are customers to serve, people to manage, ideas to develop, technology to oversee and marketing plans to write and execute. As your business grows, it can seem like your capacity starts to shrink.

I’m reading a book right now called Saving Eutychus, a book about keeping people awake when you’re speaking to them. One specific line has stayed with me this week: “The more you say, the less people will remember.”

I’ve seen this challenge throughout my years in communications. A company begins with a good idea for a campaign or a page on its website. Then the additions begin...

There’s a strange thing that can happen when you work with a brand long enough: you start to get tired of it. You’ve used the same colours, fonts and visual elements in your graphic design for years. You’ve said the same things and posted variations of the same ideas, over and over.

So you start thinking that maybe you should change things up. Before you do, consider how your audience feels. They’re seeing far less of your brand than you are.

I've started to see a growing trend in businesses. More and more senior leaders are using AI to produce internal materials, and they're genuinely pleased with the results. The documents look polished and professional, but anyone familiar with AI-generated writing can spot the signs.

One of the hardest things about social media is accepting that people probably aren’t paying as much attention to your brand as you think they are.

You can spend hours creating a post and writing the perfect caption. Then you publish it… and move on.

Your audience does too.