• Strong operational hydraulics
• Rewards for performance, not mediocrity
• Core values with teeth
• The right conversations
• Adventurous leaders in key positions
• Constant pressure versus heroic efforts

It uses a straightforward and useful checklist of questions you can ask yourself.

But the softie side of me also loves the ads that poke a little or jerk at the emotions. Because I spent a number of years in the advertising/marketing community  I believe I can view spots from the ad guy’s perspective and  from the perspective of the guy watching the game while eating a bowl of chili.

From both perspectives, I thought the Super Bowl ads last night were mediocre compared to previous years.  The Doritos adds were clever and reminded me that they were selling Doritos.  And I’m a sucker for the Clydesdales, especially when a dog brings a horse and steer together for a lifetime of friendship.  Ahhh! Get me another Bud, please.

Otherwise I didn’t see a lot of creativity and wonder if that’s not part of the conservative, risk-averse advertising we’ve been seeing in recent years, especially in the economic downturn. Most of the spots lacked clear selling propositions and failed to make the product or service the hero of the ad, as David Ogilvy importuned young copywriters years ago. The Intel ad for a processor got my vote for the most juvenile and most difficult to figure out.  There was so much noise around the message that it took two airings before I figured out that they were selling processors not robotic toys.

Memory Lane. I miss the great ad days I was part of.  The days of Ogilvy, Leo Burnett and Doyle Dane and Bernbach “Think Small” spots for the Beetle. Here from YouTube is the German version of the famous snow plow ad. For those who missed this great ad era, the tag line at the end is loosely translated as “Ever wonder what the snow plow driver drives to work?”  The spot almost needs no commentary.   http://www.youtube.com/user/beetlejuice150#p/search/1/cUnEbNgHFco

Let me know what you think.

Jim

“I just think it’s time to get something out,” he responded.

“And what do you hope to accomplish?” I asked.

“I think it’s about time to tell people things,” he said, getting somewhat impatient with my business-oriented line of questioning.  I’ve met many of these kinds of leaders over the years. They’re used to ordering up communication activities and receiving responses like, “And would you like fries with that?” 

But. I think it’s irresponsible to let people knowingly use communication management to drain value rather than add value.  So my objective is always to explain as best I can the role of good communication management, provide best practice options and then help the leader align the right solutions with the right problems.  If I think I’ve made a good case and the leader still disagrees, so be it. There’s a point at which my doctor can’t control what I eat so he can cajole all he wants.  But, in the end, it’s my decision, just as it’s the leader’s ultimate decision to follow a path I might not agree with.

In this case, I had an informed reason for pushing him. Focus groups that we’d conducted with his employees told us they were tired of leaders reporting to them about things that were inconsistent with what they were experiencing in their work-a-day world. “They make all these pronouncements but nothing happens,” employees told us.  “They don’t walk the talk.” 

I didn’t want to acquiesce to this leader because I knew if I said something like “that’s a really brilliant idea,” I’d be contributing to an existing problem and not helping him fix anything.   So I explained to himthat “event-related communication” such as a meeting, a webinar, a video needs to be consistent with communication that’s part of the “world of work.”  Meaning that what someone experiences at the event should be somewhat consistent with the experience that person has when she returns to work.  You don’t talk about becoming a world class (whatever that means) company in a video or at a webinar if you continually tolerate bureaucratic bungling and  incompetence throughout the enterprise.

I suggested an alternative approach that would align both the say communication and the do communication in such a way that the experience in the events and the world of work would become similar. In this way his credibility would be bolstered because people would see that he was making an effort to correct the say/do gap that the employees had told us about.

The blog is an outgrowth of The Leadership Report, a monthly electronic newsletter focused on improving organizational performance through strong leaders and passionate, turned-on people. The Report was an outgrowth of my book, The Leadership Solution, which was designed to help leaders improve performance by connecting people to strategy.

This blog represents a broader landscape. Rather than focusing on a couple of thematic subjects as I have in my book and the Report, I’ll address a wide range of topics connected to my world—a world of organizations, great and mediocre leaders, high performing and under-performing teams, loyal and pissed-off customers, clients looking to escape old ways and wanting to ask new questions—the world of consulting, speaking, conducting workshops and traveling via planes, trains and automobiles.

I’ll suggest new thinking and new books and articles that I view as worth your while. I’ll share best practices that may take you to new heights. We’ll cover a wide range of organization issues such as leadership, communication, involvement, goals and measurement, learning, work processes, people processes, business literacy, organization structure, open book management, rewards, recognition, six sigma, lean, engagement and more.

I’ll celebrate great leaders I know and work with and, without naming names, I’ll pick on the bizarre behavior of control freaks, organizational politicians, CYA afficionadoes, status quo guardians and those who exemplify The Peter Principle (people who’ve risen to their level of incompetence). These are people who serve as huge barriers organizational success. They represent organizational friction that needs to be eliminated for any organization to reach full potential.

Most of all, I want this to be an interactive forum. A best way to learn and grow is to share, toss ideas back and forth and grow them, then use them to make things better.

So welcome. Hang on. Let’s get going.