A recap of recent blog posts and news from the digital marketing agency Flat Creek.

When it comes to atypical, insightful management advice, I typically turn to Jim Collins. But for a marketing guy, what Seth Godin serves up is crystal clear. In an information economy and especially in a creative industry, is there possibly a more important asset than our people?

“As soon as management starts conflating people with tasks, they’ve  guaranteed that the organization is going to get stuck. Probably soon. A better plan: rotate your people and continually reward and promote and challenge them. Make a big deal when someone makes the case for shutting down her task. Make it really clear through your actions that tasks come and go, but good people stay.”

Just a quick tidbit with a profound quote all professionals should consider:

“The natural state of communication is misunderstanding.”

The quote is from Larry Wilson and the hat tip goes to Kevin Stirtz, who has more context on AllBusiness.com.

Raise your hand if you have a Facebook and/or MySpace profile. Anyone here on LinkedIn? Have you ever commented on a blog?

If so, you’re part of a changing dynamic in how we communicate that very few PR professionals understand. At Flat Creek, we work to integrate communications messages across various channels, insisting that our clients focus on delivering an outstanding service or product as the basis for a good reputation. The product, the audience, and the goal are what matter most from a PR perspective.

Richard Edelman, the well-regarded president and CEO of the global PR firm which goes by his name, shares this sentiment in a recent post about how corporations must adapt their communications efforts in order to maintain some sort of brand integrity. His full post can be found here, but I’ve listed a few notable lines below:

“My central thesis is that corporations can’t buy reputation or brand loyalty any more. These are earned through performance over the long-term.”

“In this changed environment, I believe that PR can adapt as well as, if not faster, than any other communications discipline… Our aim is to educate when possible, build bridges when necessary, and respect the new market-based conversations always.”

“The new reality for communications is the sphere of cross reference, in which information moves unpredictably among equal stakeholders. Conversations now occur spontaneously, in peer-to-peer discussion, with individuals creating their own webs of trust including people like themselves.”

KEY NOTE: “PR is simply a reflection of reality, well presented perhaps but based on fact and behavior.”

National Journal has a great article today about a new process for drafting legislation:

“The standard method for writing a bill would have had [Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.] and his aides calling in consumer groups, telecommunications lobbyists, and technology experts to hash out the details. Instead, Durbin reached out to the editors of two online political blogs so that he could hear directly from their readers.”

While the article (found here) is an interesting anecdote about the impact of the Internet on Capitol Hill, there are several deeper questions that come to mind from my perspective as a digital PR practitioner. How did Durbin and his staff decide which blogs to reach out to? Who was posting comments to his posts? Did any organizations with a stake in rural broadband access get wind of his efforts and e-mail their supporters to get involved with the conversation?

If Members of Congress are reaching out to Internet users directly, how is your organization positioned to have a prominent voice in the virtual policy debates of the future?

There are several options, most of which begin with active monitoring of the blogosphere and having the ability to mobilize supporters quickly. Contact us and we can talk more about positioning your clients, organization, or message in order to be a part of the online legislative process.

Members of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) originally uploaded by zerohour1971

You hear a lot of politicians tell us the way to win the War on Terror is to just increase the size of our military’s special forces and then turn them loose on the terrorists. That’s nonsense.

Special forces are an elite group because they are a cut above the rest. If it were so easy to just cook up some more special forces, I’m sure the Pentagon would have happily done that by now.

No, elite organizations are not easy to build and hard to expand. So how does an organization become elite? If we look at the military example, there are at least two clear factors that contribute to their elite-ness: 1) top notch individuals and 2) top notch training.

The individuals who make up the U.S. Special Forces are not superheroes, but they are incredibly intelligent, capable (some may even say crazy) soldiers who push themselves to incredible extremes for the sake of preserving our freedoms. Likewise, the top performers in any company are the most intelligent, hardest working, and best problem solvers in the workforce. By being disciplined enough to pull together those people in an organization, you create the foundation for an elite organization.

But equally important is training. Let me ask you - when was the last time your team gathered for a staff meeting and asked a “What if?” question? What if this client asks us to do X? What if our competition goes in another direction?

Do you know how you would respond, as an organization? Do you know how you would overcome the obstacles?

We need to ask ourselves hypotheticals as individuals and organizations to be prepared. That exact situation we war-game may never happen, but the exercise of thinking ahead and planning a response will help any career, any organization, any nation.

Special Forces know what to do in the field because they have been trained for it. National championship football teams know how to beat their opponents because they have trained for it. Peyton Manning is a good athlete, but an incredible strategist. He studies hours and hours of film to get the elite edge.

Do you study your opponents? Do you practice your tactics? Too often we rush to solve a problem we have not prepared for with half-baked answers that are rarely adequate. Instead we should focus on training and discipline, giving our top performers the tools to execute in extraordinary ways.

We work in a competitive marketplace. In order to gain that competitive edge, we need to think ahead and train for hypotheticals. It is one step toward being an elite organization.