ClearPurpose

The Public Relations Handbook, edited by Robert L. Dilenschneider, teaches everything you need to know about public relations (PR) in the digital, post-pandemic world. Nineteen different contributors provide seventeen chapters. The first five chapters outline basic concepts applicable across the field. The next six chapters cover six specific sub-disciplines (government relations, investor relations, media relations, social media, internal communications, and crisis communications). The final six chapters deal with the unique requirements of PR in different settings (private families, higher education, China, Japan, Canada, and Europe).

The Public Relations Handbook is not for everyone. It is exactly what its name implies. This is a handbook for those involved in PR, especially at large companies. It could be used as the text for a college course on public relations since it provides a solid introduction to every facet of the profession. It also could be a very helpful guide for executives working closely with their PR teams, and I could see value in the communications department giving it as a gift to anyone newly identified as a spokesperson for their company to help them understand the nuances of communicating with different audiences. 

However, I imagine it is most valuable residing on the shelf of PR practitioners. When you’ve spent the past few years focused on media relations and your boss asks you to help with investor relations, you can turn to that chapter in the handbook and remind yourself of the basics. When your company is expanding into Japan, the corresponding chapter in the handbook can inform you of the unique needs for PR in that country.

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Over the past couple of weeks I’ve introduced the topic of an entrepreneur’s transition from founder to CEO. I identified eight sub-roles that a leader must master as their startup begins to rapidly scale, but before jumping into each of those roles, I thought it would be helpful to give an example. The story of Joseph in the Bible gives us an example of a gifted young man who developed a capability, and when he gained significant backing, needed to significantly scale that capability rapidly. What can we learn from his story that is applicable to entrepreneurs today?

Joseph isn’t specifically identified as a businessman, but we do see him establishing a means by which he could serve others, conducting transactions that created value for those he served and financial gain from his work. Joseph scaled his scope from serving the limited needs of a few prisoners, to providing for an entire nation. He scaled his horizon from focusing on the day-to-day, to planning out the next 14 years. He built processes around long-term planting, harvesting, and distribution cycles. And he scaled the organization to be a nationwide hierarchy of workers gathering and then distributing food.

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As a startup founder making the transition to CEO of a scaling enterprise you will focus on expanding your skills and learning new tools to master your expanded responsibilities. As you do, it is critical that you do so with an understanding that the scale of your activities is also changing.

Four of the most important dimensions in which your leadership must scale are:

• Scope
• Horizon
• Cycle
• Staff

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Entrepreneurship guru Steve Blank defined a startup as “a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” He defined an enterprise as “a permanent organization designed to execute a repeatable and scalable business model.” Many of us have been blessed to live, at different times, in each of those worlds, and yet the transition from one to the other can be hard.

One of the most common times people come to me for help is when they sense that they are in the midst of that transition. In short, their primary job title is changing from “founder” to “CEO”. The signals that indicate this change is happening can vary, but using Blank’s definitions, it’s when the company believes that they’ve found a business model that they can scale and they are ready to invest in scaling it. 

Managing this transition can be hard, but it definitely needs to be thoughtful. Being CEO requires different skills, uses different tools, and has different measures of success than those for being a founder. If you’re going through that transition, today I’m starting a series of articles that I hope will help you be intentional about thinking differently, learning new skills, and applying new tools to drive the success of your business. 

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In The Culture Code, author Daniel Coyle explains the factors that enable powerful group cultures to accomplish amazing things. The book is structured around the three skills that successful groups master: Building Safety (generating bonds of belonging and identity), Sharing Vulnerability (learning habits of mutual risk that drive trusting cooperation), and Establishing Purpose (creating shared goals and values). Throughout, the author uses stories from specific high performing groups (Navy SEALS, Pixar, Google, WIPRO, the San Antonio Spurs, Zappos, KIPP Infinity charter school, Gramercy Tavern, the Upright Citizens Band, IDEO, Bell Labs, and others) to uncover the ways in which these teams developed these skills and then generalizes those observations into approaches organizations can take to similarly gain these skills. 

The Culture Code is one of those books that’s is rich in storytelling which leads to deep lessons. While culture is notoriously difficult to change, the author represents the building blocks of healthy culture as skills that can be learned. He provides practical guidance for specific things that can be changed to instill safety, vulnerability, and purpose into how organizations operate. If you are starting a new company, or if you desire to improve the health of your organization, The Culture Code can provide insights and instructions to help you.

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Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban has just announced the launch of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company: “We started this company as an effort to disrupt the drug industry and to do our best to end ridiculous drug prices.” That’s no small task, so in the article linked below I explore the strategic frameworks behind the business. 

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God Owns My Business tells the story of Stanley Tam’s two businesses — a silver reclamation business and a plastic products company, and how he was called to first make God his senior partner and then hand ownership of both companies over to God. God has blessed both businesses with tremendous financial success, but more importantly, has taught Tam how to operate those businesses in a way that is loving to neighbors and honoring to God. Tam is generous to share those lessons with us through this and other books he has written.

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Exponential by Jeff Rosenblum practices what it preaches. The book is about how brand advertising is changing. The author refers to an advertising revolution that is replacing the traditional one-way broadcast/interruption model with a relational model that empowers consumers through the entire customer journey. This model is purpose-driven, embraces transparency, relies heavily on inspirational content, and generates irrational enthusiasm so that customers literally ignore the competition. The author practices all of these methods in Exponential to draw the reader in and win them over to his model for building a brand.

I really enjoyed Exponential. While it provides very few practical lessons or tools, the stories engagingly teach how the world is changing and how the reader can be more effective in building and selling their big ideas in this new world. If you are a marketing professional, I strongly recommend Exponential to challenge how you think and act. Even if you’re not in marketing, if you seek to influence others, I believe that you will benefit from what this book has to teach you.

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VisuALS won’t be celebrating its 5 year anniversary in April. The founding members chose to dissolve the business effective December 31, 2021. Despite the best efforts of the management team, a series of unfortunate events convinced us that there wasn’t a viable path forward for the business. 

When that reality became clear, I think all of us involved in the business felt a sense of loss, even a sense of failure. We certainly failed to provide a financial return for our investors. However, as my wife reminded me, Janice Phelps would never let us call VisuALS a failure, and neither would the many other families touched by VisuALS. The company’s mission was to “Love our neighbors by restoring independence, dignity and hope through affordable assistive technology solutions.” The company lived that loving mission from beginning to end.

But we want even more families to be blessed by the VisuALS technology. Therefore, we are working towards open sourcing the VisuALS software. Doing so will allow anyone to download the software for free. Open sourcing VisuALS will also enable developers around the world to continue to enhance the software and provide new and improved capabilities. We believe that the VisuALS mission can outlive the company.

Read the full story here.

When I went to college, I chose to study engineering because my brain was wired that way. I started my career as a software engineer, designing and implementing algorithms by applying a logical step-by-step problem solving approach. I think this structured approach to getting things done has served me well in my career as a strategy executive, entrepreneur, and consultant. When I was looking for a book to help me learn more about corporate culture, the title and description of Robert Richman’s book seemed perfectly suited to me. 

However, despite the title, I’m probably not the target audience for The Culture Blueprint. Rather than a structured approach to culture building, Richman favors a more touchy-feely approach to culture. His definition of culture is literally that “culture is a feeling” and much of the book is full of good ideas for how to manage interpersonal relationships in order to engage everyone in co-creating a winning culture.

The Culture Blueprint is full of ideas, some of which may be helpful to you. It’s probably not the best reference for someone wanting to understand the process of building and strengthening company culture, but is an easy read that can be done in bite-sized pieces to provide encouragement and inspiration.

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