This update on the collective bargaining agreement in the NFL caught my eye. I’ve had many a debate with my husband, a union lobbyist, about whether organized labor is really necessary in our modern workplace.

Unions were born out of a need to protect workers who could not protect and advocate for themselves in a time when job mobility was scarce and the notion of commuting the distances many of us commute would have been considered absurd. You lived in a steel town, a lumber town, an automotive town and if working conditions were bad at your local industry, you were SOL.

Even I would admit that situations exist where a union adds real value. Consider the safety training given to a crane operator from the union before operating a crane high above a busy city street. Or a workplace environment where uneducated workers with limited English are easy targets for abuse.

However, the NFL fails to qualify on either of those fronts or many others. These men make millions of dollars for playing a game and, depending on your team of choice, sometimes not even playing very well. They have the financial means to secure representation by a whole fleet of agents, professional legal advisors, medical experts, physical therapists, personal trainers, publicists, image consultants, and more. Do they real need representation to negotiate the terms of their collective employment? I don’t think so.

One party is noticeably lacking in representation in the discussions about player salaries, building new stadiums and deciding a number of games, and that’s us, the fans. Perhaps we’re the ones who need representation. After all, who gets left holding the bag in the form of sky high ticket prices, outrageously priced licensed apparel, and the requirement to buy the NFL Sunday Ticket to watch their favorite teams?

cwinters General Corporate NFL, NFLPA, Sunday Ticket, Unions

MWW Group is sponsoring a luncheon and panel discussion on Sustainable Leadership next week at the 2010 World Business Forum. As we’ve developed the content and panel topic, I’ve been reading and thinking about the topic of leadership pretty much around the clock. If you haven’t been down that aisle at the book store lately, there are hundreds, if not thousands of books that attempt to teach people how to be great leaders. Many of them enjoy 15 minutes of fame, some of them even endure.

So in addition to a stack of books on my credenza just waiting to be read (yes, I still like to hold an actual book in my hand … and do often judge books by their covers), I’ve been wondering how leaders become leaders. Can leadership be taught, yes or no? Or is it simply enhanced in individuals who are born to be leaders?

Are great leaders born or made? Can anyone be a leader? Or are those without natural leadership qualities destined to fail, no matter how hard they try?

These are great questions, and ones we’ll discuss next week with our panelists. Join the conversation and help shape the debate by participating in our survey – it takes less than a minute to answer the four questions. Or tune in to the live stream Tuesday at the special WBF2010 section on the MWW website and join the conversation via Twitter #wbf10.

cwinters General Corporate, MWW Group Leadership, World Business Forum

MWW Group is hosting a panel on leadership next month at World Business Forum 2010. To prepare for the panel, I’m reading everything I can find on leadership and thinking a lot about the topic.

I came across a list of the Ten Most Influential CEOs. It has the likely cast of characters – Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah, Inda Nooyi and Richard Branson – and a few you might not have expected – John Mackey (Whole Foods), Andrew Witty (GSK) and Mike Duke (Walmart).

It seems the formula for leadership boils down to a few simple qualities:

• Leaders are disruptive…and sometimes contrarian. Mike Duke made Walmart green – and he wasn’t talking about money. He changed (or at least diversified) the conversation about Walmart from labor issues, labor issues and labor issues to how the company is using its reach and influence to save the planet. Virgin’s Richard Branson has made a personal fortune by being disruptive. His latest focus? Finding new ways to fuel airplanes, and the world at the Carbon War Room. Steve Jobs is famous for his disruptiveness, and his temper. But who else can make the product you had to have under the Christmas tree this year obsolete by next Christmas? How many iPods do you have in a drawer?

• Leaders are nimble and open. John Mackey of Whole Foods is perhaps best known for his dismissal of global warming as hysteria. But did you know he became a vegan after a confrontation with an animal rights activist? That’s pretty open. And GSK’s Andrew Witty has made a name for himself by being open and urging the entire pharmaceutical industry to do the same, opening patent pools for HIV drugs.

• Leaders are fearless and take on the unsolvable problems. Oprah brought taboo topics – from incest to Dr. Oz’s health issue du jour – into the mainstream. Her latest campaign to make cars “No Phone Zones” is shining the light on the serious dangers of texting and driving. Bill Gates has declared that we will cure AIDS in Africa.

• Leaders put their money where their mouth is. After all, isn’t that what credibility is all about? Pepsi’s Inda Nooyi, who famously wore a sari on her first job interview because she couldn’t afford a suit, ties 50 percent of her personal bonus to diversity goals. John Mack of Morgan Stanley volunteered to forfeit his own bonus when the company’s performance declined, long before the Big Bank CEOs were paraded before Congress.

I can think of plenty of iconic leaders who didn’t make this list … Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Lee Iacocca (showing my age, I guess). While your list of leaders may be different, I’ll bet they all have these qualities.

cwinters Executive Visibility Apple, Morgan Stanley, Pepsi, Walmart, Whole Foods, World Business Forum

How do you create an environment for great ideas? Look no further than your nearby coffee shop, says author Steven Johnson in an inspiring lecture delivered earlier this year at the TEDGlobal 2010 conference in Oxford, England and posted recently on the TED Blog.

It’s been that way since 1650, Johnson says, when London coffeehouses offered a fertile environment for the ideas, discussion and debate that sparked the Enlightenment. Johnson offers a series of compelling anecdotes, from Newton to Darwin to today’s high-velocity Internet, about the evolution of idea and makes the case that share a common thread of connectivity. “That’s how innovation happens,” he concludes. “Chance favors the connected mind.”

Johnson’s lecture can be most instructive to today’s leaders. One of the primary functions of leadership is to create and foster an environment that enables people to think freely. Some companies encourage, pay and reward employees to follow ideas that spark their passion. It’s likely that these topics will be discussed when MWW Group hosts a panel on leadership next month at World Business Forum 2010.

So if you’ve ever wondered where those eureka moments of great ideas come from, take a look around the next time you’re waiting for your triple-tall Americano. This may be the place.

bsilver General Corporate Leadership, Ted Global, The Enlightenment, World Business Forum

I read this piece recently in the New York Times’ Corner Office column about a tech CEO and how he learned to manage. He started as a 20-something engineer who worked 100 hours a week. He expected a lot from his people, including 100 hours of work per week, and screamed at them if they didn’t live up to his expectations.

This all changed when he became a wrestling coach and learned the management attributes that have shaped his approach to his companies. The list is simple. Have discipline. Want to win. Be GREAT at one thing. All of these translate into his approach at DoubleClick and now FindtheBest.com.

If you work in a PR firm and this sounds like your first boss, you are not alone. This is like a Mad Lib of management stories and holds true in any industry. Exceptionally bright, enormously hard working young people are promoted quickly through the ranks for being great at what they do.

They suddenly find themselves in a new role – manager. They’ve never had a great manager and they don’t know how to do it. They can’t understand the people who are not as self-motivated as they are. This goes on until something happens, usually a line of people at the door of the HR department.

Something has to spark a change. For Kevin O’Connor, it was wrestling. For me, it was becoming a Brownie leader, an ultimate test in patience. For others, it may be great coaching from a mentor or a book that changed their views.

I hear a lot about our transition to a knowledge economy. This will require better managers, but more importantly, people who are more than just managers – people who are true leaders.

cwinters Executive Visibility Brownies, DoubleClick, FindtheBest.com, Mad Libs

When I was growing up, my Dad was a serial entrepreneur….some of his ideas succeeded, others were failures. But he was always thinking about his next big thing. This piece in the NYT makes the case that entrepreneurs are just a little bit crazy…or as they say, just crazy enough. There was many a day, especially in the teen years, where we said, “Our Dad is Crazy.”

But once you get past this premise of manic entrepreneurialism, this piece talks a lot about the entrepreneur’s need for storytelling. For bringing his vision to life. It even says that reading this story is like judging a song only by its lyrics – because to hear this entrepreneur speak is to believe.

This founder of scvngr believes he is going to build a “game layer” over the world. And he’s made venture capitalists believe, too. He must be a heck of a storyteller. (He’s also passionate, hard working and singularly committed to his idea.)

Will scvngr succeed? Who knows, but it makes for a great story.

cwinters General Corporate, Uncategorized scvngr

The new season of Undercover Boss is about to begin, and each of the CEOs involved this season penned a piece for Fortune about what they learned. You may recall that when the show launched, my position was that great leaders don’t need a show to work shoulder to shoulder with their front line employees, and they don’t need to go undercover.

The pieces in Fortune underscore my position. The learnings and observations are exactly what you would expect from a forced, performance for TV based experience…this job is harder than I thought (as my 10-year old would say – DUH); these employees have great ideas (DUH again); I don’t have the proper training to be a line chef/NASCAR pit crew/lettuce harvester.

These sanitized experiences, and even more sanitized accounts don’t do much for creating a culture or for advancing leadership. But there were two nuggets of wisdom worth sharing:

• Drop in unannounced…anything where the CEO is expected (like a TV taping, for instance) is scrubbed, prepped and designed to put a best foot forward. Drop in unannounced, these meetings will be much more informative. (From the Chairman and CEO of Chiquita Brands International)

• You have to stick around long enough for the employees to relax and start to talk to you. And you have to do it often enough that it becomes an ongoing conversation. (From the CEO of Great Wolf Lodge Resorts)

My take on the article, and the season, in a nutshell.

cwinters Executive Visibility Chiquita, FOrtune, Great Wolf Lodge Resorts, Leadership, NASCAR, Undercover Boss

Saw this great post today on Under30CEO about what PR people can learn from the VMAs. I particularly love the part about not being afraid of controversy. Controversial doesn’t equal being negative; having a point of view, which may or may not be contrarian, is a critical component in leadership. A client once asked for a thought leadership program, but was unwilling to voice an opinion. My advice to him: “Being a thought leader requires having thoughts, and sharing them.” In hindsight, that is pretty funny. I guess I won’t have to give that pep talk to Lady Gaga, Cher or the folks at MTV.

cwinters General Corporate Cher, Lady Gaga, MTV, VMAs

Have you heard about the Corn Refiners Association petitioning the FDA to change the name of high fructose corn syrup? Apparently, they think calling it corn sugar will help remove the stigma that high fructose corn syrup is unhealthy, despite links between HFCS’ metabolic effects and obesity. I guess their re-education campaign isn’t working so well, despite spending big bucks on TV ads and other attempts to change America’s point of view.

Sometimes name changes make sense. Companies grow via acquisition and have too many different operating names. A division of a Company becomes the leading brand, and the corporate entity wants to align itself with the marquis brand. The Company name no longer reflects the evolution of the business. (And even that can be questionable…like Radio Shack’s preference for “The Shack” ). Sometimes, a Company adopts the monikers that are used by its constituents rather than fight the uphill battle of constant name corrections – FedEx did it, Coca-Cola didn’t.

But changing a name to change perception? Seems like smoke and mirrors to me. And I think the public is smarter than that. Like when ValuJet crashed in the Everglades and changed its name to AirTran. Don’t you feel safer already? Does anyone really think that Altria is altruistic, and isn’t Philip Morris, the tobacco company?

I am sympathetic to the plight of the corn refiners…but I can’t help but think about the gag jokes (appropriately available for purchase at an online store called Stupid.com ) that my 5th grade son and his friends like so much – whoopee cushions, exploding cans of nuts and zapping packs of gum. Everyone gets the joke, but no one falls for it.

But who knows, maybe they will get lucky, like Accenture – who (according to legend) paid $100 million to develop a new name, then kept the employee nominated “accent on the future” name. At the time, it was panned as ridiculous corporate speak…until Arthur Anderson’s role in Enron became public. Maybe the corn manufacturers will get the last laugh with corn sugar…

cwinters General Corporate Accenture, AirTran, Altria, Coca-Cola, Corn Refiners Association, FedEx, Philip Morris, Radio Shack, ValuJet

This USA Today article and my colleague’s blog post earlier this week on KFC make cogent arguments about why and how KFC’s beloved founder became unrecognizable to the Facebook generation.

So KFC is embarking on a promotion to paint a new portrait of the Colonel, and otherwise revive the notion that their founder was a real person.

Seems to me that they are treating the symptoms, not the disease.

KFC comp store sales are down. They’ve had several failed attempts to “re-brand” themselves as healthy. (Anyone remember the skinless fried chicken debacle?) Then they went back to their deep fried roots and introduced the burger between fried chicken. They’ve also had moments of extreme popularity … remember when Oprah sent pretty much the whole world to KFC for free chicken?

What does any of this have to do with relative recognition of the Colonel? What makes them think that educating the next generation about the Colonel will do anything for them at all?

First, being a Colonel – even an honorary Kentucky Colonel – is no longer considered to be the ultimate honor. This generation equates military service with searching for fictional weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, not duty, honor, country. So that fascination seems played out.

Second, today’s iconic business founders do a lot more than just create a secret blend of spices. They create new industries, and if Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have their way, give their fortunes to charity.

I don’t see Burger King reinventing the King or Wendy’s bringing back Dave Thomas. The problem isn’t that this Generation doesn’t know the Colonel. The problem is that he isn’t relevant.

So when all is said and done, KFC will have new portraits of the Colonel painted with 11 herbs and spices mixed into the paint. But will it make anyone buy more chicken?

cwinters General Corporate Burger King, Colonel Sanders, KFC, Wendy's