PR blunders are almost always due to a bad decision upstream, not the reaction to them. You could say DPS’s recent decision to offer a southern style lunch of fried chicken and collard greens in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad decision. You could say a lot worse.

They said it was well intentioned so let’s give them that. Looking at this with a light most favorable, how do you think it possibly could have gone down? Maybe I’m naive, but I’m having a hard time imagining there wasn’t at least one person who raised a concern.

Don’t you think that someone – anyone – just had to have wondered aloud “I wonder if this might come across as stereotyping?” Why didn’t anyone listen to this voice?

The mother who brought the menu to our attention called this “a teaching moment.” Indeed. As a starting place, before DPS tackles cultural sensitivity issues which at this point seem depressingly out of their reach, I suggest DPS should learn a basic public relations principle:

When in doubt – when there’s a sliver of a doubt – don’t do it. Just don’t.

Did DPS even weigh an alternative? If they did, what were they afraid of? Bad press as a result of not offering a special menu in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

Exactly opposite of athletes and musicians, working professionals spend 99% of their time executing and 1% of their time practicing. It’s hard to find places in business to practice. So when you do, you have to take advantage of them.

It’s not surprising to see Tiger Woods recognize the need to get out in front of stories during a crises. He’s a smart guy. He proves it in this article, where he comments aabout Michael Vick back in 2007:

If you made that big a mistake, you got to come out and just be contrite, be honest, and just tell the public ‘I was wrong’…I think waiting a long time got a lot of people polarized.”

So he knew, just like most of know, how to manage in a crises. But knowing isn’t the thing. Executing is. And he of all people should know that effective execution requires practice.

“People say that drugs enhance your personality. Yes, but… what if you’re an asshole?”

So to be discovered on Google I should be consistent. Be a one-note blogger. Write myopic web copy.

Yes, but… what if I’m multitudinous? What if the value I add to clients and the world is an ability to connect and align seemingly disparate data points into a cohesive and effective strategy that uncovers efficiencies and new ideas? What if I see branding as much about leadership as marketing? What if I find as much professional inspiration from Walt Whitman as Seth Godin?

I don’t want to be known for what Google says I’m known for. I don’t like how it evaluates people and their value. A good yellow pages. Not a good relationship builder.

We are large. We contain multitudes. Sign me up for references and conversations.

That’s my context, anyway. Not the right approach for all brands and clients. (Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.)

Ed Stein, EdSteinInk.com, reprinted with permission

If the current dialog about health care reform can teach us anything, it highlights the importance of figuring out our values.

We all know the importance of inside-out strategic planning (and brand development, for those who consider them separate). The enterprise values, vision, and mission (brand) should be a collective exercise. Involve as many people as possible. Hold retreats, perform exercises, play games, put the words of participants on giant sticky notes. Transform the more insightful quotes into pictures on the graphical strategy map. Include verbatims in the final deliverable. Stage-gate the process by communicating back to the larger enterprise during development.

And we’ve all seen the process devolve and the gears grind. Collaboration turns into open season across units: operations launch scuds at market verticals, marketing challenges revenue models. Anyone can write copy — wordsmith-ing hijacks strategy.

Then at some point getting the damn thing done trumps involvement. Can we just move on already? I’ve got work to do.

How to avoid this in strategy and brand development? It’s probably in the values.

I was lucky enough to work with ethicist and educator Dr. Buie Seawell* for many years. An important mentor for me in many ways, Buie was the first to introduce me to Values Based Leadership, a term coined by another colleague, thought leadership guru Dr. James O’Toole in his seminal book (I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with O’Toole a few times as well). Values Based Leadership was a centerpiece of the brand I was charged with developing, providing me the opportunity to dig into it a bit.

And when you dig into it, you find more than a little in common with branding. In fact I’ve often made the claim that Values Based Leadership is really the first treatise on branding. Marketing folks, in my opinion, have re-branded concepts from leadership scholars like O’Toole.

In the end, branding is really about aligning the values of stakeholders. Internal, external. For purposes of talent management strategies, for purposes of selling something by adding value. To empower internal brand ambassadors, to facilitate external buzz through respect for your customers. To guide discussions and build your reputation in an aligned, focused way.

Among the more important things I took away from my time with Buie is an enterprise, unit, or team that’s interested in leading with aligned values has to agree on their values before moving forward with strategic (or brand) planning. Nothing is more important. Hard to dedicate yourself to, but primal.

The first reason is the most obvious: How can you possibly align values if you don’t know what they are?

The second reason is a bit more subtle, but illustrates the utilitarian reason for discovering and articulating values. Buie used to cite a research study that found, despite the hours and days enterprises spend in coming to an agreement about their core values, the same set of values bubble to the top almost every time. (The point of the study is that it isn’t necessarily the outcome of such exercises that matters, but rather the collaborative process.)

In the top five of every company’s list is almost always Trust. Differently articulated and manifested, but primal to the core values of almost every enterprise. In my opinion, this is at the crux of why strategic and brand development can devolve, and why discovering core values has a utility beyond the altruistic.***

At some point an enterprise simply has to trust those who are charged with certain areas of the execution if they want to move forward. Operations has to let go of markets. Marketing has to let go of financial logic. The copywriter has to be trusted with the wordsmithing.

Seems to me that the health care debate (such as it is) is devolving because it’s running into these two problems: we’ve skipped the dialog about our values (thus we can’t figure out how to align them) and we haven’t developed the trust necessary to feel good about the decisions that are about to be made.

I wonder what the town hall meetings would have looked like if there were no strategy or tactics on the table. Instead, what would the dialog have looked like if we spent our time asking questions like Should all people, regardless of past behavior or plain ol’ bad luck, have the same access to care? Do we value profit as the impartial equalizer of our society, even when profit is derived from disease? And at what point in the process—if at all—do we trust those we empower to represent us in going about the work of making values-aligned decisions?

Then figure out how to go about addressing the problem.

Another important point that Buie left with me: Values Based Leadership is time consuming business. It sacrifices efficiency for sustainability. Put in the time to do it collaboratively and you’ve a better shot at an enduring strategy (brand) because you aren’t setting it, you’re discovering it. Leave it up to a smaller group and you’ll get it done quicker, but you risk loosing the engagement and buy-in of the stakeholders responsible for executing it.

I’m sure we’ve all seen down-and-dirty, small-group strategy and branding work well in situations where values are articulated and trust is established and nurtured. It can (and does) work in the right contexts. And with a little luck.

But have we established our values enough for the strategies and tactics of health care reform to succeed? And are we ready to trust our representatives?

What about the strategy and brand planning within your or your client’s enterprise?

The past few weeks have been powerful. I’ve reconnected with two long-lost friends. One’s a guitarist I met while attending Berklee College of Music, the other a magazine editor I worked with for a short stint in my career.

The guitarist moved back to Israel, the editor moved a few blocks away from me. The guitarist I found on Facebook, the editor I found at the neighborhood frozen custard shop.

International, hyperlocal. The reach of social media, the power of sugar and cream.

Two very different people with whom I shared important times during transitional periods in my life. I learned important lessons from both of them. And the lessons connect.

The guitarist taught me about the importance of technique. That you have to work to get it, that it never comes easy, that it isn’t the end but rather a means to an end, and that you must have it to be great. I’ll forever admire his technique, his work ethic, and his steadfast focus.

The editor taught me about forgiveness. That bad decisions happen and we’ve all made them. And if someone owns it, demonstrates how they’ve learned from it and will change (demonstrating attrition is not enough), then we all have a responsibility to forgive. I’ll forever be thankful to her for forgiving me once, and instilling in me the responsibility to forgive others.

In my professional world I’ve connected these lessons to the recent high-profile marcom gaffs and the discussions that have followed. Mistakes from the likes of Cayne, Ballmer and Judge seem to me to be a function of sub-par technique. Business executives certainly know better, but sometimes they just don’t have the chops to execute correctly.

And it happens to all of us. So we should be able to forgive a brand or a person every now and again if they’re willing to learn and change. I’d suggest that this is a lot more powerful than fanning the flames.

I’ll point once again to this seemingly simple post from @chrisbrogan. What makes it a gem is the last section: This Could Be You.

A guitarist taught me that it doesn’t have to be. An editor taught me what to do when it is.

And a community center in the middle of it. The gathering place for middle management to vent frustrations of Denver senior leadership, share stories of near mishaps, talk about home.

It was here, drinking beer and eating bar-b-queue, when a concept that’s been bouncing around in my head finally settled.

Months later back in Denver, I met with a friend who’s an executive coach. We were talking about marketing, branding, reputation management and how the best executed plans have little to do with good marketing, and everything to do with how well the marketing consultant understands the culture of business.

She said: “As a CEO once told me, culture eats strategy for lunch.”

There are no power point slides here in the community center-cum-bar. No memos. Top to bottom, with a bit of alcohol loosening the corporate line, Newmont employees talk about their larger purpose convincingly. They truly believe that the gold they’re mining is turning a nice profit, yes. But it’s lifting people out of poverty. It’s making a difference in people’s lives. And improving Ghana for the long term.

As he ordered another beer, the guy in charge of training told me:

“Our job is to work ourselves out of job. Ghanaians can do this. We’re teaching them to fish.”

It’s hard to find organizations with this kind of consistent messaging. It’s hard to pull off. Newmont is either really good at message control, or authentic.

When you’re anxious to go on a tour of an African mine site, sitting in a florescent lit room listening to presentations makes you a little jumpy and inattentive. Even so, when Jay Bastian started talking about the mowing operations at his mine, my ears perked up.

In a way, Randy Barnes and Jay Bastian’s relationship is a micro-reflection of Newmont Mining. Randy is the External Affairs Manager at Ahafo. Jay Bastian is the General Manager. Randy, citizenship and social affairs. Jay, operations. Randy, keep the peace. Jay, make the profits.

A few years ago, former Newmont CEO Wayne Murdy approached Scott McLagan — lead professor on this trip and director of Daniels’ executive programs — to help him change the culture at Newmont.

“We’re really good at operations,” Scott will tell you Wayne said. “We know what we’re doing behind the fence line. But I need our people to be spending more than half their time thinking outside the fence line.”

Academics call this focusing on your social license to operate. Newmont calls it profitability.

Newmont engaged Daniels to deliver custom corporate programs on team building, ethics, and sustainability. Multi-week programs, delivered multiple times over the course of several years for all management-level employees flown to Denver from around the world.

Daniels will have you believe that these programs contributed to Newmont’s cultural turnaround. A turnaround that resulted in Newmont’s media placements moving from arrests and water contamination in Indonesia to being placed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (the first and only mining company with such a listing).

As they say in PR, that’s much better ink.

It’s a turnaround that began by placing Newmont’s Environmental and Social Responsibility managers at the decision making table with operations. They’d have to work hard to align values. A risky proposition for a company (in an industry) that’s always been all about operations.

Jump back to Ahafo. Jay tells our group that it would easier and cheaper to not hire so many people at the Ahafo mine. They employ less people, he said, for much larger operations and more production at their Nevada, U.S. site.

“I could do mowing operations cheaper, faster, and at a higher quality with a tractor than I could hiring a dozen guys with machetes.”

Randy interrupts to remind us that it’s a payoff against being a good corporate citizen. A valued member of the community.

Jay looks at Randy as if to say “That’s nice. Can we get back to operations?”

I wonder how many Newmont shareholders, way back in the comfy environs of the west, have had the same sentiment.