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.

If your organization still believes that the only way to reach mass audiences is through traditional, mainstream media, then think again. Citizen journalists - those scrappy individualists who contribute articles, camera phone pictures, and new ideas to their community - are more than a trend. They are an evolution of the media landscape.

And just to bring home the point, the Knight News Challenge is offering $5 million dollars “for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news.”

“The Foundation plans to invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for bold community news experiments.”

Has anyone handed your local newspaper $25 million to experiment with journalism in your community? I didn’t think so.

Citizen Journalists. Professional firms, political campaigns, and non-profits had best get to know them.

With the bounty of e-newsletters that fill our inboxes every day, it’s easy to overlook them. It’s also easy to hate them. But rarely do we take the time to forward them to clients or friends who may be interested in the topic presented. Before forwarding, however, take a moment to delete the unsubscribe link from the bottom. We’ve seen all too many clients of our own who have lost valuable subscribers after the subscriber forwarded their e-mail on to someone else, only to have that person click the Unsubscribe link.

So while it’s a great practice to forward e-newsletters just to let people know you are thinking about them, be sure they don’t get the chance to cut you off from those subscriptions you do enjoy.

McKinsey Quarterly has published a terrific survey of companies around the globe and how they are using digital marketing.

“A McKinsey survey of marketing executives from around the world shows that in marketing, things are starting to change: companies are moving online across the spectrum of marketing activities, from building awareness to after-sales service, and they see online tools as an important and effective component of their marketing strategies.”

Read the article here (registration requred). We’ll have more insights based on their survey results and our own experiences soon, but suffice it to say, digital marketing has come of age as an important strategy, it’s just a matter of keeping professionals up-to-date on the changes.

We have so many political clients, that I couldn’t help but post this rather unusual tidbit.

Politics may not take a brain surgeon, but analyzing why people are conservative or liberal takes neuroscience.

According to a study released Sunday that actually compared the brainwaves of conservatives and liberals, “Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances.”

The study goes on to suggest that:

“Whether that is good or bad, of course, depends on one’s perspective: one could interpret the results to mean that liberals are nimble-minded and conservatives rigid and stubborn.

“Or one could, with equal justice, conclude that wishy-washy liberals don’t stick to their guns, while conservatives and steadfast and loyal.”

I’m really excited to announce the launch of a new portfolio feature, Flat Creek Stories (found here), on our main website. We called it Flat Creek Stories because the results of the creative, strategic services we offer are more than a portfolio. They are our stories, and help tell the stories of our clients.

We’ve had the opportunity to bring to life many exciting stories over the last few years. From the classic stories of swanky Washington, DC events to heartfelt tales of championing a cause, Flat Creek has a few memoirs from integrating the marketing capabilities that today’s professional firm needs.

There’s only a few to start, but we’ll add more soon. I realize it’s not the flashy-est portfolio around, but it tells about what we do and why we do it. And at the end of the day, I believe helping our clients tell their stories is what we do best.