Brother, can you spare a leader?

Posted on February 26, 2009 | 0 Comments

Worried about your job? Or losing that client? Of course you are. We all are.

But, based upon the conferences, meetings and sundry soirees I’ve attended of late, far too many of us are hunkering down and not rocking the boat. I don’t hear the word ‘innovation’ being bandied about. I don’t hear the word ‘customer’ being uttered (unless it’s in relation to an agency’s client or a CMO’s senior management). And, I sure don’t hear the words “college kids” coming up in any conversation.

I attended one recent session where agency leaders were…

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A Few Thoughts About Influence

Posted on February 20, 2009 | 0 Comments

I spent an interesting morning last week with David Walker, former Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO. He served in those positions for ten years under both Democratic and Republican administrations, acting as a non-partisan watchdog over federal spending and entitlement programs. Now that he’s Chairman and CEO of the Peterson Foundation, headquartered in New York, he’s free to do what he wasn’t able to do in the Government Accountability Office: advocate for specific solutions, work pro-actively with grantees and other partners to build strong coalitions, and encourage the public through grassroots…

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And Then Along Came Madoff

Posted on February 20, 2009 | 0 Comments

In 2001, with the world reeling from media reports about the Enron scandal, many agreed it would have been tough to imagine the business world producing villains as classically Machiavellian as Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay ever again. They represented everything that could go wrong with capitalism—the up-or-out, deliver-numbers-at-all costs culture of Enron they created was viewed as a gruesome result of their frenzied profit-making and greed. Skilling barked infamous directives to former CFO Andy Fastow—"get me as much of that juice as you can"—to artificially inflate earnings and unapologetically dupe investors, analysts, employees, and the world…

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CCOs’ Role in Stimulus Money

Posted on February 17, 2009 | 0 Comments

Chief communication officers have a new challenge. They have to understand, explain and engage with the federal handouts.

No company is above or immune from effects of the political process now bubbling as the stimulus funds flow. In every state, company stakeholders—employees, investors, customers, suppliers, neighbors—will be impacted by political decisions agitated by many interests.

Governors are forming committees—or “czars”—to divvy up the billions in funding. Activist and community groups are early in the game. In Virginia, an aggressive grassroots approach to get input from residents, local government and community groups involves…

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Wall Street’s Values

Posted on February 09, 2009 | 5 Comments

Most of the commentary about excessive Wall Street bonuses has focused on incredible greed and political tone deafness, and those certainly were in play. But it strikes me that part of the issue may relate to values, or culture.

When The Authentic Enterprise advises that, to earn the trust of the public, a global enterprise must define and activate values in new ways, it doesn’t really specify what those values should be. But there’s an underlying assumption that, in order to generate trust, the values ought to be positive, admirable,…

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Managing Financial Climate Change

Posted on February 01, 2009 | 0 Comments

I was playing paddle tennis on a frigid cold Chicago night recently when my partner told me that five people on her immediate team at a leading Fortune 500 company were just laid off, in addition to senior executives of a partner company she’d been collaborating with closely for several years. The day before in the grocery store, another friend, looking glum, told me her husband had just lost what he thought was a “secure” executive position at another Fortune 500 company.

Not a day goes by without news of more layoffs, restructurings, and companies shuttering…

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