Awards or Rewards

The favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Picture this weekend is "The Artist." That is fine recognition, but let's look at it another way:
The film has grossed $61 million worldwide so far. The number one grosser of 2011, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," earned $1.33 billion -- about 21 times as much as "The Artist."
Similarly, the 1977 Oscar went to Annie Hall, which earned $38.3 million over time. The first "Star Wars" was released the same year, and that has earned $797 million, nearly 20 times as much. Furthermore, "Star Wars" changed the dynamics of the film industry, both in how films are made and how they are marketed.
When we measure our own efforts, what are our yardsticks? Are we looking for applause, financial payback, fundamental change, or what?
Any measure you choose can be the right one, but be honest about the value.

On Creating Our Legacies

Watching "Sunday Morning" on CBS this morning was a haunting experience, as two stories unintentionally, coincidentally and accidentally juxtaposed  to make me think about our mortality and our legacies. 

The first piece was predictable. Today we mourn the death of Whitney Houston and ponder her life, both over its entirety and in the most recent years. I made sure to catch the show early. I guessed from the news the night before that the show would be devoting time to her, and there it all was: The MTV-era clips that would conveniently serve to chronicle her rapid rise in the 1980s. The snippets of her soaring vocals that seem extra-human at times. (My God, could a person really sing that beautifully AND so powerfully?) The accounts of her troubled times, including her marriage to the sure-to-be-vilified Bobby Brown, and her descent into drugs and alcohol. The diminishing of her prodigious talents, marked most recently by her inability to scale the record charts again and a humiliating concert in which she could not remember her lyrics or hit the notes that were once so effortless. It was all there, all so sad.
But the second segment threw me for a loop because, rather than a tragic and definite end, it was a hardship in progress that we will be able to witness sadly. The popular country-pop singer Glen Campbell is on his last tour. These are not his final performances because he is retiring willingly, but because he is receding from the world around him. At age 75, Mr. Campbell has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. While Mr. Campbell, like Ms. Houston, also lived a wild and woolly and sometimes reckless life, it is this wretched disease that is bringing him down.
Fortunately, as the segment showed, Mr. Campbell is not on the last legs of his journey alone. Several of his children are there, performing with him, gently guiding him to the stage, but most importantly, helping the man maintain his dignity in front of the audiences that have come to say goodbye. The results are mixed. He launches into his familiar and highly expert guitar riffs, as though his fingers are acting independently of his psyche. Teleprompters help him remember his once-familiar lyrics. But then he will launch enthusiastically into a song that he has just finished, and he stands revealed, solitary in his own perceptions and ultimately depending on the kindness of friends, fans and family to exit the embarrassment gracefully. 
Ms. Houston's fate seemed predetermined by a life on overdrive. Even her singing was white hot, seldom nuanced. Deep down, you could somehow sense that it would be impossible to maintain both the intensity of her performances and, later, of her life choices. On "Sunday Morning," commentator and music critic Bill Flanagan asked compassionately that "Whitney Houston be allowed to rest in peace." As an admirer, he is naturally afraid of the onslaught of salacious news that is sure to arise from a variety of sources, such as her autopsy, eyewitness reports of her increasingly erratic behavior, and more. Of course, Ms. Houston's reputation will not be spared, and given our 'breaking news" culture and social media overload, it is naive to think otherwise.
Still, as I look at Glen Campbell in his final days, I am reminded that we can have much more control over our legacies than we often allow. It is wise to remember that every act, every word uttered, every kindness offered all stand as testimonies to who we are. Tweets, Facebook posts and, yes, even blogs like this one are ephemeral. Resumes may be impressive, but they are only paper; people are much more likely to remember us for things that are more substantive, whether it is as monumental as a building or a bridge, or as accessible as a pathway or a garden. We have opportunities to change the lives around us and leave people with a material contribution, a piece of advice and maybe even a song. 
David Bowie once pointed out that he was lucky to have been afforded so many years in his career to make an impact, while the great blues artist Robert Johnson lived only to age 27, his reputation resting largely on one recording. I think that is great advice, which resonates so much more clearly to me as I get older: We get only so much time and only so many opportunities, so let's choose our actions wisely.

Note: I am indeed a big admirer of Whitney Houston, so I would like to direct you to this tribute to her that has already popped up on YouTube. God bless her.

Get Started in Social Media through "The Social Media Strategist" by Christopher Barger

The social media are not even a decade old, as Christopher Barger points out in his book, The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out (McGraw-Hill). They are now part of any complete communication program and, simultaneously, a mythology has grown around them. Barger’s book serves as a worthy introduction to newcomers, covering a wide array of issues.

Barger lists several necessary steps to creating a winning social media program. Some examples: Find an executive champion in the organization to support your cause. Understand which part of the organization will own social media (marketing? IT? Human resources). Hire a strong social media evangelist who also has business savvy. Create well-defined metrics and use the right tools to measure them.

Barger is a realist who recognizes much of the hype around social media. Chief among them is the notion of transparency (defined here as ingenuousness in communication and accountability). Unlike so many others, he does not underestimate the inherent risks of such openness, writing, “As a PR rep for a major national brand has told me, ‘Our execs know that the critics are out there on the Web; they just don’t think we should provide them a platform to bash us.’”

Instead, Barger’s book is practical, advising the reader how to overcome many of the barriers a corporate program might face. He writes, “If you haven’t been inside a company or organization — if you don’t know corporate culture and bureaucracy, or have no experience navigating internal minefields — then you don’t know how to make social media work inside a company.” He suggests ways to gain effective internal converts to social media while also building the most strategic internal infrastructure. He also generously mentions many other social media consultants and thought leaders, which the reader may follow in the future to keep up with the most current philosophies.

Notably, Barger advises organizations that use social media to become content publishers, rather than just republishers of others’ information. He reminds social media practitioners to think about the content they publish in terms of its relevance to its audience.  “If you create great content, the social Web will do the work for you,”   he says. He also reminds the reader that the social media are two-way. Therefore, we should do our best to interact with the audience, letting them set the tone for a conversation. (Barger points out that social media have replaced the old “letters of compliant” from customers.)

In the latter part of book, Barger veers into philosophies of overall communication, such as events and media relations. I found that, rather than diluting the social media message of his book, he placed placing social media into its proper context as but one part of an overall program. One part that resonated particularly strongly with me was his advice on how social media can support crisis communication, and he does so with several well-chosen examples of PR disasters.

In general, I found this book important as a primer for the large number of people who are getting into social media for the first time.  As an early adopter of social media, I wish I had this advice. Barger helps communication professionals tap into the wisdom of the people who have worked in these media for a while with a comprehensive and easy-to-read handbook.

Academy Awards remind us: Stories Still Key to Reaching People

An aging film star falls only to rise again. A boy connects with the father he lost on September 11. A baseball manager makes his team more competitive in the most counter-intuitive way. And African American working women illuminate their lives simply by telling their stories.
Those are the stories of, respectively, The Artist, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help and Moneyball – all films that were nominated as Best Picture at the 84th Annual Academy Awards, and they remind us how much we learn and remember from stories.

Of course, intuitively, we all know the importance of stories. After all, don’t we ask for stories when we are children? And when many summers pass, we are happy to share stories with children and others. We revel in stories, as they make facts and theories more personal, more relatable. We often tell of success through rags to riches tales. Also, think back to Hurricane Katrina. Most of us were not interested in how fast the winds were blowing at that time or the hour when the levees broke. No, we paid most of our attention to the individual accounts of how everyday people were affected by the storm.

We also want a story to unspool, with a beginning, a middle and an end that ties it together. Ernest Hemingway once famously wrote the story with just six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It is said that Hemingway declared it his best work. But really, are we satisfied with that? Where are the characters, the setting, the plot line?

Whether we are speaking to large groups, a smaller department of only a few people, or one on one with a direct report, we can use stories to our advantage if we follow these tips:

• Maintain your audiences’ curiosity. The most-popular books and movies have stories that keep us wanting more. Your first step is NOT to start with the phrase, “I’m going to tell you a story.” That can be an instant turn-off. Instead, lead your listeners into it sneakily. Similarly, don’t telegraph the endings with an obvious outcome (e.g., the hero gets the girl, the disease is miraculously cured), or else your listeners will quit on you before you are finished.
• Know what you want your audience to feel in the end. It is said that we can evoke certain specific responses: think, feel, do (something!), persuade, inspire or entertain. Before you either craft or use a story, understand which of these responses you wish to evoke.
• Do not make yourself the hero of your story. Too self serving, and therefore, very off-putting.
• Don’t tell your audience, take them. Use your body, your place on the stage and your voice to bring your audience into the story. As a Toastmaster colleague once advised me, “BE the speech!”
• Make sure there is a point in the end. Psychologists tells us that the process behind the concocting of narratives is similar to that of learning. Create a payoff.

In this video, Story Time, to a group of fellow speakers, I incorporated the elements above.  Take a moment to view it to understand how they all worked together.

After the Oscars have been handed out, think back to how this year’s winners got their awards. Also, remember the past winners. When you think back to the tales of a down-and-out Philadelphia boxer, a stuttering monarch, a doomed luxury liner, or the decades of a mobster family, you will remember that the story is paramount.

The Day a Prophet Passed

December 31, 2011 marks 30 years since media guru Marshall McLuhan died, a victim of a final stroke after suffering from a series of them. How kind the intervening years have been to him. At the time of his death, he was viewed in his native Canada as somewhat of an embarrassment, but today he is an oracle, having essentially foreseen Facebook Amazon, Twitter, the iPhone and other modern media. In the words of a New York Times article published this past summer to mark McLuhan's centenary, "Instead of being viewed as an academic fraud, McLuhan is now widely celebrated as the man who prophesied both the Internet and its impact on society." Indeed, Professor B. W. Powe of Toronto's York University, and one of the organizers of a weeklong series of memorial events in that city, said this: “We read the 21st-century media through his eyes.”

Quite a turnaround for one man, though not unusual. As with most social visionaries, McLuhan challenged tightly held beliefs, and most people are afraid to let go of such ideas. His vocabulary was also new and alien. He introduced us to his definitions of "hot" and "cold" media: Hot media, such as print and the cinema, are sharp in definition, filled with data, exclusively visual and verbal. He also asserted that these media were psychologically damaging and low in audience participation. Other hot media, according to McLuhan, were photography, competitive spectator sports and radio. Moreover, he said that hot media make people think logically and independently rather than naturally and communally. McLuhan preferred "cool" media, noting that while they are low in information, they also challenge their users by forcing them to fill in the "missing" information. He saw the telephone, modern painting and, most significantly, television as cool media because they are oral-auditory, tactile and visceral. McLuhan believed that these media would be a unifying force, putting modern "back into the tribal or oral pattern with its seamless web of kinship and interdependence." These behaviors would, in turn, create his "global village," a term that he coined

As with many prophets, McLuhan's revolutionary ideas were not regarded kindly in his own time. A Time magazine review of his book Understanding Media  -- regarded today as the seminal work on the effect of media in the modern world and which contained many of the concepts described above -- called the book "pseudo science." Yet years later, when Time published their obituary of McLuhan, the magazine stated that "his writing was clumsy, his thoughts badly organized, and even he complained that he had trouble understanding his ideas. But...when he died last week in Toronto at the age of 69, Marshall McLuhan was recognized as one of the most influential thinkers of the '60s. Some of his insights into the nature of television and the electronic age became conventional wisdom." 

One of McLuhan's prime principles was that “we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” Can we doubt that statement today, given how we interact through Web 2.0? We make "friends" through Facebook, we reveal our innermost thoughts through our blogs, we make spectacles of ourselves through YouTube, and we have learned to communicate succinctly in just 140 characters through our Twitter accounts.

Once again, we are currently reminded of the power of the media in our politics. And I do not mean our primary Presidential politics. No, the "global village" that McLuhan foresaw also has global politics. Time scoffed yet again when McLuhan stated in Understanding Media that "Had TV occurred on a large scale during Hitler's reign, he would have vanished quickly." No, the Old Professor was on target, as we have seen Twitter and Facebook cut through censorship and propaganda to produce an Arab Spring or rally for the rights of the disenfranchised. And here in this country, presidential front runners fall back almost immediately as they wilt under the glare of the media spotlight. That durability under scrutiny seems to determine winners more than any other obstacle. Some partisans may complain that Barrack Obama did not face any real scrutiny during his primary campaign, but come on; I was viewing fresh footage of his pastor, the incendiary Rev. Jeremiah Wright, every morning, whether through the network news or the Internet. And will Mitt Romney, seemingly made of asbestos and impervious to the heat of battle, win his party's nomination because no medium will be able to lay a finger on him long enough to count him out as they have so many others? We'll see.

When McLuhan made his pronouncements more than 40 years ago, some listened while many others dismissed them as nonsense. He stated that media are "not neutral; instead they have an effect on people." Today, as we study the effects of television on what we buy, who we elect and how we learn, and as we study how video games and the Internet are affecting the linearity of our thinking, his theories are easily echoed. Yet because they are so commonsense and commonplace, we forget their origins. However, we learned similar lessons from Einstein, whose ideas were so advanced that they were also ineffable because no suitable language existed to express them. (How does one explain E=MC squared?)


The global village did not exist when Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase. But somehow he emerged from his intellectual rabbit hole to glimpse it, and then he wrote many books and essays to prepare us for it. Let's stay aware of the power we possess through our media, which have indeed become our extensions and have united us (and conformed us) in ways that only he seemed to imagine.

Three Signs That Your Organization May Be Too Insular (Lessons from Penn State)

While much of the nation is horrified by the recent scandals at Penn State University, they are not surprising in certain ways. Many of the characteristics that the university exhibited in the years leading up to these disclosures are not unique. We have seen them in other embarrassed  institutions, such as the Catholic Church, the military in the U.S. and around the world, many large urban police departments, and others. Do you recognize yourself, your company or your organization in the following practices? If not, you may be so far out of touch with reality that you are setting yourself up for a fall from grace similar to Penn State’s.

MISTAKING YOUR EXCELLENCE IN ONE SUBJECT AREA AS OMNIPOTENCE. Robert A. Mundell, who won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economics, appeared on Late Night with David Letterman one night to read “Top Ten Ways My Life Has Changed Since Winning The Nobel Prize.” The first change (number 10) he cited was that he “can end almost any argument by asking, ‘And did you ever win a Nobel Prize?’” It’s funny, but also true. Once you are applauded as a subject expert, it is easy to think all your opinions and actions are beyond reproach. But
really, does being rich automatically make you an expert in all things economic? (Similar to Mundell, I have heard titans of industry give this retort to challenging questions:
“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”) Similarly, Penn State’s success on the gridiron may have led the school’s officials to believe that either they were not accountable for their actions or that they could do no wrong.

A company that is highly successful making widgets may still have a poor accounting system, leaving their very existence in jeopardy. Similarly, making that one widget well does not mean that the manufacturer is guaranteed success in other areas. Witness the companies that ventured outside their core competencies and failed notably. There is a reason
that the King James Bible states that “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Just because you’re good, stay humble and put a check on yourself.

YOU ARE ORGANIZED TO SHIELD YOUR LEADERS FROM UNPLEASANT TRUTHS. Evidence of this shortcoming can be found in the way that Penn State’s top officials did not know of the true nature of the violations against children on the campus. (By the time that word-of-mouth about an assault in the locker room meandered to the president’s office through “Whisper Down the Lane,” it had devolved from a “rape” to “horseplay.”) Do your top leaders understand how, for example, poor expense reporting may affect the bottom line? If not, it
might be good to open up at least a bit.

YOU HAVE NO OUTSIDE INFLUENCES OR OVERSIGHT. It appears that Penn State officials, including school president Graham Spanier, did not venture outside the university when they
uncovered wrongdoing. Rather than go to the police, they tried investigated the perpetrator themselves. And as we have been saying since Watergate, the cover-up was worse than
the crime. How do you govern? Do you or your organization ever ask for outside opinions, or have you become your own frame of reference? Going further, is your company hiring
from outside its inner circle? There are reasons we have Affirmative Action in this country, and one is to promote diversity of thought rather than  monolithic mindsets.

Mark Wilson and Mark Doorley of Villanova University’s ethics program write in an editorial, “As we try to understand what happened and what failed to happen at Penn State, we must ask broader questions about all our institutions. Do they cultivate a capacity to act on behalf of others, no matter what their role or status? Or do they reward inaction and loyalty to procedure, and so unwittingly lay the groundwork for complacency and complicity with evil?” Indeed, such introspective questions will help keep us and our organizations honest, in more ways than one.

Magic Johnson: The 20th Anniversary of Positive Thinking

Magic Johnson,
Still Vital Today

One generation knew exactly where they were when they learned of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My peers know where we were when we learned of the death of President Kennedy. Likewise, I know exactly where I was on November 7, 1991. I was head of public relations and communications at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and one of my employees came into my office and said, "There will be a press conference in an hour. Magic Johnson has AIDS."

Of course, that was part of the misunderstanding at the time. Johnson did not have AIDS. Rather, he would announce that he was HIV-positive. But the feeling was the same, that this was the announcement of a death sentence.

Or was it? When the press conference took place, Johnson was... well he was Magic. He was as calm, composed and charismatic as ever. He announced he would be retiring from the game, and that he "would be a happy man." To the rest of us, it sounded like whistling past the graveyard. We all knew better. We knew the time would come when the HIV virus would overtake him and lay waste to that magnificent body and dominating spirit.

Except it didn't.

On this 20th anniversary of that announcement, Magic Johnson is still with us. He returned to basketball for a brief time, and now the ex-basketball star is a highly successful businessperson, having built coffee shops, movie houses and housing developments. He is also an analyst for the game that transformed him and which he helped transform in turn.  Mostly, he is the living embodiment of defiant success over adversity. He is a symbol of living with HIV, the first of many who have gone on to do so. (The magazine Entertainment Weekly used to have an annual feature in which they paid tribute to the performers lost to AIDS in the previous year. Amazingly and gratefully, that has long been discontinued.)

Yes, his money gave Magic Johnson extraordinary access to more medication and treatment than others would normally have. But Johnson has other extraordinary capabilities that mere money cannot bestow: a spirit and can-do attitude that made him believe the unbelievable. That he could beat the scourge of his era and make us believe that others could beat it, too. So on this anniversary, let's think beyond Magic Johnson and consider those seemingly impossible things we can accomplish if we believe we can, just as Magic declared that he "would be a happy man."

Bernie Madoff Reminds Us of the Need for Open Communication and Ethics

There is a revival of interest in Bernie Madoff now that the eminent TV program 60 Minutes profiled his family (Oct. 30, 2011). It is a reminder to us all about the value of reputation. I give a speech on branding. I ask my audience if they could imagine the image that their own name would conjure. I then list the following names and show their pictures:

• Mohandas Gandhi
• Mother Theresa
• Martin Luther King
• Hitler!

The flinch at that last name is palpable, especially after the admiration and good will expressed for the others. (Stop and think: When was the last time you heard a reputable family name their son “Adolph?")
Peter Drucker noted that "ethics stays in the prefaces of the average business books." Consider the long line of lies told by a famous oil company when it had a massive spill off the Louisiana coast. The company listed lists otters, sea lions, seals, and walruses as "sensitive biological species" that deserve protection in the Gulf of Mexico. However, there are no otters, sea lions, seals, or walruses in the Gulf of Mexico. They listed emergency phone numbers for mammal specialist offices in Florida and Louisiana that were no longer in service. And their spokespeople proudly stated in their disaster plans that, "under the worst-case spill scenario," it could skim, vacuum, or otherwise remove as many as 20 million gallons of oil a day. In fact, they captured only about 630,000 gallons a day.
Even the best companies often obfuscate in their annual reports. Some may say that "We performed well in a difficult economy," rather than say, "We didn't make our numbers this again again."  Or they may state that "We have a healthy backlog," rather that "Our manufacturing inefficiencies keep us from meeting our delivery goals."
Conducting business in a socially responsible way is, in the end, a sound business practice in and of itself. It allows you to attract the best employees. It helps create an atmosphere in which quality products are produced because your people will proudly stand behind them. Trust helps maintain good relations with people and institutions such as your employees, your shareholders, the media and the local community. Your word becomes your bond, as good as a contract. But most important, it is the best branding possible. After all, if you can't be trusted to keep your story straight, why should your customer trust your products or services? So I encourage all business people to build their trust in the following ways, as I have helped my clients in my role as a professional communicator:

• Inform your employees of the state of your business regularly through face-to-face meetings and publications.
• Issue press releases and meet with members of the local media so that they learn to trust your word.
• Address members of your community and build relationships with your elected representatives.

"I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it," said Will Rogers. The name "Madoff" is now a synonym for "swindler," and all financial planners now operate under a cloud of suspicion.  Indeed, the hell through which Bernie Madoff put his family, his employees, his customers, and even his colleagues is an argument for both ethics and transparency.

When Your Job is to Get a Job

A friend recently noted how he was not focused on his job hunt, which I could understand, as I have been out of work myself at times. But when I asked how he spent his day, he described mowing the lawn, picking up the kids and things like this. Here are the points I shared with him:

• Your job every day is to get a job, when you are out of work. Treat that goal with the same urgency you would  paid employment. You normally wouldn't leave the office to mow the law, defrost meat for dinner, watch TV, etc.
• Get into a routine as you would every day if you were paid full time by someone else. Start at 8. Or 9. End at 5.
• Get up every morning, shower and dress for your "job" (which is <repeat after me> to get a job). This will help you feel refreshed and more energized about the task at hand.
• Put in your eight hours or more at your "job." Sure, you can take a break, stretch your legs, get a cup of coffee, but stick to it.
• Network as often as possible. Set up meetings with people who can help you find what you are looking for. This is part of the "job."
• When you have finished your work for the day, stop. Unwind. Get dinner ready. Watch some news. Wait, the news is depressing, especially when they get around to reporting the unemployment rate. So watch Comedy Central or The Three Stooges instead.
• Review your day with someone else, such as a significant other or a friend. This will help reinforce that you actually accomplished something that day. And if upon review, it turns out you weren't all that productive? Well, reread the first bullet above, and implement tomorrow. It will be another day.

Awards Mean Little to Those We Serve

The president of the nation of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize, but she isstruggling to be re-elected.

The Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees were long the odds-on favorites to face each other in the  2011 World Series, having won the most games in National and American leagues, respectively. But most teams are home after losing in the first rounds of their playoffs.

In 2010, the movie The King's Speech was number one at the Academy Awards... and 18th at the box office.

Do you see a pattern here? Despite what we often say when we promote ourselves in conversations, press releases and the like, there is often little connection between our laurels and our sales (except for people who receive awards for sales, but that's apparent).

I know I have a little section of my resume carved out for my awards. That's because I was advised to do so to generate interest. And truth be told (and please don't spread this around; it's just between us), there are many other communicators to whom I look up who have not won any awards. In the end, it is our output that matters.

Consider these little tidbits: John Wayne was one of the biggest moneymakers in film history (and is still one of the most popular film stars in the world today, decades after his death!), and he did not win an Academy Award until near the end of his career. Ernie Banks, Mr. Cubs, is one of the most revered baseball players in the history of the game, yet he never won a World Series or even appeared in one. And Graham Greene, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, Bertolt Brecht, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Franz Kafka and Henrik Ibsen are listed among the greatest writers of the 20th century, yet they are also distinguished by never having won the Nobel Prize in literature.

In the end, these folks were distinguished by what they accomplished, not by the citations they accepted, and by what they overcame, not that they were overlooked. Periodically, we should also take comfort in our own personal inventories. A highly successful sales rep once put it to me this way: "I want rewards, not awards." Customers, clients and our other stakeholders ultimately feel the same way.