By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Aug 21, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET  Click here to order Since I was recently part of a book on dealing effectively with crisis, this piece caught my attention.
AOL CEO brashly and brazenly fired an employee on a conference call last week. An audio of the firing was released to the internet embarrassing the CEO. He today apologized to everyone on the call (1000 employees) via email.
That is a start. But struck me as more of a CYA response than a genuine and heartfelt apology.
He may have had good reason for firing this individual. I don’t know. But if he truly wanted to apologize he should do so on the same (or more personal) medium where the behavior occurred. In this case, a conference call.
 An email is just slightly more personal than a text message.
Or classified ad making a declaration.
If Mr. Armstrong truly wanted to make a real apology that his employees could trust and use to reconsider their thoughts about last weeks’ inflammatory firing incident he could have dug a little deeper, been a little less public, and a little more personal than a blast email with a stock mea culpa.
Just my two cents.
By Rod Jetton, on Wed Aug 21, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET From The Daily Journal:
 Rod Jetton used to be one of the most powerful politicians in the state of Missouri.
In 2000, the Marble Hill Republican was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. In his second term he was chosen Speaker Pro Tempore, and on Jan. 5, 2005, he was sworn in as the 70th speaker of the House — the second youngest representative to do so.
Then, in 2009, everything began falling to pieces.
That year his nearly 20-year marriage ended in divorce and then, on Dec. 7, Jetton was charged with felony assault related to an incident that occurred on Nov. 15 of that year in which Jetton was alleged to have “recklessly caused serious physical injury” to an unnamed woman.
Following the arrest he closed Rod Jetton & Associate, a political consulting firm which catered to many high-profile clients, including Mitt Romney.
It was a stunning end to a political career that left Jetton’s life shattered. He was out of a job, divorced, separated from his three children and had few friends.
Click here to order Jetton has shared the humiliation and pain he experienced during his “dark night of the soul,” as well as the story of his redemption and rebuilding of his life in a recently published anthology titled “The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program To Survive Crisis.”
The book, edited by former Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller, offers a forum to 12 politicians who suffered defeat, disgrace and degradation, yet went on to create a new and more contented life for themselves.
Jetton has written the eighth step in surviving a crisis: “Own Your Mistakes, Take Responsibility and Sincerely Say ‘I’m Sorry.’”
“My predicament was largely my own doing,” says Jetton. “But it was taking responsibility for my mistakes that set me free.”
Jetton admits it was his strong work ethic that helped him to build a successful real estate agency, win a seat in the state House and ultimately become Speaker. It was putting everything into his work to the exclusion of everything else that he believes ultimately led to his downfall.
“The biggest mistake I made was not having balance in my life,” admits Jetton. “I worked too hard at politics and forgot about my family, friends, community … and sometimes, the whole reason I went to Jefferson City in the first place. I remember telling my ex-wife that when the first campaign was over I would be home more. Then the legislative session started and I said that after session I would be home more. Then I was gone working on redistricting, and when that was done, the next session started … and after that I was working night and day to win the majority. I told her once we won the majority I would be home more.”
Jetton says that nobody was happier than him when term limits ended his official position in 2008. He was tired of feeling responsible for fixing all the problems in the state and tired of getting beaten up in the press and fearing his political enemies. Jetton believed that as a private citizen he would be able to be work behind the scenes on his friends’ campaigns without being in the crosshairs himself.
“Unfortunately, my marriage was in bad shape by that time; and even though I was out of office, things continued to get worse,” he recalls. “In early 2009 we separated, and by October we were divorced.”
Jetton was a 42-year-old successful divorced man whose personal life wasn’t turning out as he’d planned.
“My dad was a Baptist preacher, and the best parents in the world had given me a perfect childhood,” he says. “I was a family values conservative Republican who was not supposed to have these types of problems. I won’t go into details, but my life was not reflecting the teaching my parents had taught me, nor was I being the example I wanted my kids to see.”
Then things went from bad to worse for Jetton.
“After spending the night with a lady I had reconnected with on Facebook, I was charged with felony assault,” he says. “The press, along with my enemies, had a heyday. I immediately shut down my consulting business. Soon after that I was notified that I was a target of a federal grand jury investigation surrounding my handling of a bill in the 2005 legislative session.”
And what was the most difficult moment he had to face?
“It was having to tell my dad what happened,” says Jetton. “He has always been a tough man who lived what he believed, but he loved me and stuck with me through all this.”
At the lowest point of his life, Jetton says things began to turn around. He was never convicted in the assault case and the grand jury suspended their investigation into the ethics allegation and never charged him with a crime. He slowly began to gain back the respect he lost from his bad choices.
“I’m thankful for all the successes I was a part of,” says Jetton. “I’m also grateful for all the kind people I met along the way who helped and encouraged me. But I wish I would have worked less and stayed home more; been more forgiving and not gotten bitter at my opponents; been less prideful, less judgmental and more understanding. Plus, I wish I had lived the personal life I believed, instead of being such a hypocrite. Of course, I can’t change the past. I can only look to the future and focus on learning from my mistakes.”
This time Jetton says his life has a new foundation and purpose … and it’s not politics. He credits his personal faith in Jesus Christ for turning his life around.
“Each morning I wake up and thank God for the day,” he says. “I spend more time with my family and stay connected with my friends. I have a lovely new wife, a great job and a contentment I never knew in my first 42 years of life.”
He says that sooner or later everyone is going to make a mistake and do something stupid that they’ll regret.
“It happens to celebrities, business leaders and athletes, but it also happens to parents, kids and everyday people,” says Jetton. “Anyone who has made a mistake that becomes public has a problem. How you deal with it will either make it a bigger problem or put it in the rearview mirror.”
He says a cautionary tale can be found in the scandal that enveloped New York Congressman Anthony Weiner when illicit pictures of him appeared on the Internet after he had been sending them to his followers on Twitter.
“Weiner’s immediate response was to deny culpability,” says Jetton. “Once he was caught in the lie, he was soon forced out of office.”
Now looking to return to public service, Weiner has admitted he sent additional tweets to other women even after he admitted his transgressions, apologized to his wife and resigned from Congress.
“He obviously didn’t learn his lesson the first time,” says Jetton. “I’m glad I did.”
By Jason Atkinson, on Wed Aug 21, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
By Jason Grill, on Tue Aug 20, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET From Missouri.com:
A few months ago, we announced that we were searching for the top 10 consultants across all industries. We are excited to announce that we’ve found the consultants who have actively utilized their expertise, leadership, and talent to build companies that achieve success by helping their clients reach — and exceed — their goals.
The “Top 10 Consultants” is a list of today’s leading consultants whose expertise spans from startups to big businesses across industries ranging from mobile to entertainment. They allow their passion to fuel their creativity and excitement, and their dedication to their industries makes each of the individuals some of the most sought-after experts in their respective fields.
1. Rameet Chawla: Founder of Fueled, an award-winning design and development company based in New York and London, Rameet Chawla is also the founder of the Fueled Collective, a co-working space comprised of over 25 startups in downtown Manhattan. Combining a decade of experience building Web and mobile applications with his innate sense of style, Chawla has created apps for a wide range of industry clients from high-end fashion brands to successful tech startups. Always up for a challenge, Chawla is passionate about building and being involved in disruptive technology ventures.
 2. George Cogan: Partner of Bain & Company’s Silicon Valley office and the head of Bain’s global technology practice, George Cogan has more than 12 years of management consulting experience. He has led major client relationships in strategy development and organization restructuring for numerous international corporations. His broad range of expertise focuses on technology-driven businesses, including semiconductor components, computer hardware, storage and other peripherals, several software segments, information services, and telecommunications. His functional expertise includes corporate and divisional strategy, marketing strategy, new product and new business development, sales force and channel effectiveness, customer loyalty, and organizational design.
 3. Joey Coleman: Joey Coleman is the chief experience composer at Design Symphony, a customer experience branding firm that specializes in creating unique, attention-grabbing customer experiences. He has been a lead consultant for clients that range from individual entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses to non-profits, government entities, and Fortune 500 companies. For over a decade, Coleman has worked with clients that include NASA, Hyatt Hotels, and Zappos. Joey is a recognized expert in customer experience design, an award-winning speaker at national and international conferences, and has taught business and creativity courses at both the college and graduate school levels.
 4. Jason Fisher: Jason Zone Fisher has spent his entire life in the entertainment industry. At the age of 9, Jason landed the lead child role in the Cleveland Play House’s production of “Conversations with My Father.” After a number of other theatrical and film roles, Jason co-hosted two-time Emmy-nominated “Browns Blitz” on NBC. Moving forward with his passion, Jason went on to found his own production company: In-The-Zone Productions. He directed, wrote, and produced “Swing State,” his feature documentary film directorial debut. Jason’s experience in the entertainment industry has made him a sought-after consultant for major brands such as Gillette, Nestle’s Butterfinger, Esurance, Progressive, and Skype.
 5. Matthew Goldfarb: Matthew Goldfarb is a professional copywriter who has spent the past 12 years creating award-winning ad campaigns for some of the largest companies in the world. His experience spans conceptual and long-form copywriting to TV, print, interactive, and integrated copywriting. As founder and chief renegade officer, Goldfarb is now bringing his expertise toCorporate Renegade, a company that aims to make its small business owner and entrepreneur clients stand out.
 6. Michael Goldstein: Michael Goldstein is the founder of Exhilarator, a startup accelerator that helps consumer Internet startups get traction and funding. He has founded five businesses and sold three, including DealPal to XL Marketing in 2010 and Magazine-of-the-Month to Magazines.com in 2004. As a serial entrepreneur with 15 years of experience, Michael’s focus is on e-commerce, online content, and subscription businesses. He has a passion for growing startups, and he has been involved with multiple startup businesses as a consultant and mentor.
 7. Jason Grill: Television analyst for Fox 4 WDAF in Kansas City, a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, and founder, producer, and host of the “Entrepreneur KC Show” on KMBZ Business Channel, Jason Grill is a true entrepreneur. He is a member of the advisory board of Neighbor.ly, SquareOffs, and the Partnership for Technology Innovation. Jason offers his consulting expertise in publications such as The Huffington Post, Politico, KC Business, Politix and The Recovering Politician. As an expert consultant, Jason has worked in the White House for a senior advisor to former Vice President Al Gore and an advisor to former President Bill Clinton.
Read the rest of…
Jason Grill: Top Ten Consultants
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Aug 20, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET Click here to purchase. You know you want to,
At bookstore now and just passed by section selling all things “50 Shades of Grey.”
I am intrigued but walk in by.
And there are a lot of us in this category that the publisher is missing out on selling to.
I am at an age where I would probably buy and read “25 Shades of Grey.”
And “13 Shades of Grey” would be a no-brainer.
But I just don’t have the energy or curiousity do bother with 50 of anything.
No matter how tantalizing.
By Artur Davis, on Tue Aug 20, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET The counter-attack on NBC’s Hillary Clinton miniseries will end up, like most of the pseudo fights in the culture wars, paying dividends for every faction in the dispute. Republicans will stoke their base with this newest evidence that powerful media elites harbor a liberal bias; NBC will end up reaping as many as 40-50 million viewers for two nights of television, the kind of ratings bonanza that is supposedly a thing of the past for non football events; and Hillary’s status as a political heavyweight is enhanced. Everybody not aligned with Joe Biden’s or Cory Booker’s presidential ambitions ends up winning.
But rather than dwell on the lines that a network crosses in promoting a potential candidate’s image when its news division will regularly be making coverage judgments about that candidate, and vetting tips and storylines that could weaken the bet its entertainment division is placing, Republicans would do better to remember why those lines are being crossed. Putting partisan blinders aside, it has infinitely more to do with the television industry’s single mindedness about money than any cheerleading agenda. And the nature of the popularity that makes NBC confident that a Clinton miniseries will pay off ought to stress Republicans considerably more than what questions an NBC moderator would pose during a Republican debate.
This is the Hillary threat in its broadest context: she is for a generation of professional women, the most conspicuous example of an exquisitely successful balance between motherhood, marriage, and career; for consumers of the last twenty years worth of political/celebrity culture, the Clintons are on a very short list of figures in this era whose reputation has survived so long and actually prospered (maybe Oprah, Buffett and Gates) ; and the resilience inside that survival is the kind of narrative that props up the self help-fixated space in our psychology that knows no class, gender, racial or ideological boundaries. Note that not one line of that portfolio has anything to do with her emerging childcare platform, her just rolled out proposal to undo voting restrictions, or her stewardship of the massive infrastructure that is the State Department, or any of the other standard policy components of a candidacy that her putative 2016 rivals are laboring to assemble right now.
 Put another way, NBC is not so much creating a phenomenon around Hillary Clinton: it is preparing to make money from the phenomenon that already exists. And since the mythology that makes Hillary worthy of a commercial gamble is completely separated from her politics, conventional campaign attacks—politics as usual—will struggle to diminish that foundation. That’s not to say that 2016 is destined to be a coronation, but that certain casual assumptions about a Hillary race shouldn’t be as glibly tossed off as they are some in GOP consultant circles—namely that Obama fatigue will damage her, that she has already blown one presidential opportunity, or that the appetite for something novel will undercut her as it did in 2008.
Every one of those intuitions about Clinton’s vulnerability seems sound enough until they roll up against one undeniable fact: five years ago, her brand wasn’t strong enough that a network (and let us not forget a big screen movie in development) would have even considered betting its capital on her. The Hillary of 2008 was too wrapped in the psychodrama of her husband’s adventures, too polarizing, too retrograde to justify that kind of high stakes wager. For whatever combination of reasons, from one more bout of redemption by serving the president who defeated her, to the possibility that after the last four years, experience and bipartisan appeal seem valuable again, the Hillary of the present is decidedly more formidable: ultimately, she has reversed the disintegration over time concept that erodes most brands, a sizable achievement given our chronically weak attention span.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: Fear Hillary!
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Aug 19, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET I am a proud Kentuckian.
Proud to be from my beautiful state.
Proud mostly of my people—my fellow Kentuckians.
Who are some of the kindest, wisest, plain-talking, commonsensical, and just downright decent human beings you could ever hope to meet.
One shining example, if you please:
From The Huffington Post:
Whenever Stephen Colbert debuts one of his “People Who Are Destroying America”segments, you know you’re about to meet someone wonderful. It’s the brilliance of “The Colbert Report” that anything labelled as horrible or destructive is actually something that restores your faith in humanity.
Wednesday’s subject of Colbert’s fake ire was no exception. In fact, the story of Mayor Johnny Cummings of Vicco, Ky. and the people of his town is so heartwarming you might want to plan a visit there. If you recall, Vicco made headlines in January for being one of the smallest towns in America to pass a non-discrimination law. Naturally, this development sent chills down the spine of “Stephen Colbert”… not to be confused with Stephen Colbert.
While the segment offers plenty of laughs, we challenge you to watch the last moment without tearing up a little bit.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Aug 16, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET Whenever I use Priceline.com, I am usually fairly satisfied with the outcome.
But lately I’ve started to worry that William Shatner isn’t as intimidating as he used to be.
The Kung Fu punch pose isn’t as daunting as it once was.
I would feel better about using Priceline.com if he had a sidekick.
Like Tonto to the Lone Ranger or Robin to Batman.
Maybe a tanned, rested and ready Mr Spock?
I think the right sidekick could help William Shatner (Captain Kirk) get an extra 10-15% off every deal he negotiates for us.
It’s time.
By Artur Davis, on Thu Aug 15, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET Yes, it is possible for Republicans to craft an appeal that is friendly to blue collar, downscale whites that does not amount to warmed over race-baiting. From this blog to thoughtful conservatives like Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat, the point has been made repeatedly that a pro working class message actually ought to bolster Republicans with blacks and Latinos, and that a renewed emphasis on upward mobility should resonate with whites as well as minorities caught in the tow of economic anxiety.
But to be fair about it, there is also a version of a white working class pitch that does looks pretty much exactly like thinly disguised backlash politics. It plays out when the argument against immigration reform transitions to warnings about alien cultures convoluting our national identity; when the GOP’s most conspicuous discretionary spending cuts would be food stamps; when virtually every complaint of racial discrimination is dismissed as professional activism or “divisiveness”; and when the outrage over government assistance seems most strident when the recipients are perceived (often wrongly) to be black or brown.
Therein, another dilemma for Republicans during this period of reevaluation: any serious strategy requires Republicans to go well beyond drop-bys on black radio stations or college campuses, or ratcheting up the ad budget for black publications, to the heavier lift of separating conservatism from its excesses. Outreach that moves voting numbers must consist of a conservative vision more interested in closing gaps and inequality than in widening those divisions.
In practical terms, that does not mean that Republicans abandon skepticism over programs that maximize their enrollment without making any dent in poverty or need. Certainly, it does not mean that Republicans ought to accept a stacked deck in which opposition to liberal priorities is conceded as turning back the clock of progress. But it should not be implausible for the conservative movement to get more comfortable denouncing its outliers, like Georgia’s anti-immigration provocateur, DA King, who is doing a pitch perfect imitation of a Latino baiting xenophobe even if he somehow isn’t one (because of his wealth and propensity for lavishing money attacking opponents, a riskier, therefore, more meaningful move than the distancing that happens every so many months from a character like Iowa’s immigrant bashing Rep. Steve King).
 Nor should it be so difficult for Republicans to start pairing controversial, but defensible stances with sensitivity toward certain minority fears. For example, enthusiasm for voter ID needs to be balanced with support for restoring rights for at least some released felons, namely non-violent ones who are reconnecting with their communities and showing a commitment to function as law abiding citizens. Rather than denigrating food stamps across the board, congressional Republicans ought to shift their aim toward entirely legitimate reform—like restructuring the earned income tax credit into a monthly draw that might, for low wage workers, replace food stamps—and the occasional misuse of nutrition assistance shouldn’t sound more morally offensive to conservatives than the payment of over a billion dollars in farm subsidies to landowners who have not planted a crop since the turn of the century.
And this is a point worth dwelling on for Republicans: it is not that the conservative agenda per se alienates minority voters, but that the impetus behind that agenda can seem so devoid of compassion and so distrustful of the vulnerable. And in the same vein, an electoral appeal intended to shore up Republicans with working class voters need not contribute to racial polarization, not unless it appears that the only low wage Americans who move the right are the ones who are white.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Aug 15, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET I have been an avid coffee drinker for three decades and when traveling I like to try different coffee shops and coffee brands.
What is my standard for determining if a new kind of coffee I haven’t tried before truly measures up?
Easy. …One simple test.
After the first deep gulp (or second sip) do I start to hear this song play in my head?
If the answer is “Yes,” the coffee brand has made the cut and gets placed alongside Cafe Buestelo, Heine Bros, Cafe Du Monde (which I relied on while studying for the bar exam) and other great coffees I favor.
If “no,” it gets filed alongside Sanka, Nescafe, Maxwell House and a few dozen others coffee brands that have tried but come up short for me personally.
|
|
