The Apple PR machine is on overdrive convincing the world that the team at Apple is up to the task of running the company without Steve Jobs. And they’re doing a pretty good job of it, in large part because they’ve weathered this crisis once before, and have the results to prove it. They’ve got the financial community on board, with supportive analyst quotes about the depth of management. And they even got a NYT story today with a headline that talks about Apple’s deep bench.

Yet an informal poll around the office today failed to yield a single member of our MWW Group news junkie team that could name a single member of theirs (other than Jobs) — even with all of the media attention around this news and the management team at Apple.

Has Jobs become so larger than life, that Apple just couldn’t be Apple without him? Is his “brand” too much of a good thing?

The tech sector is filled with iconic, branded leaders –Ellison, Jobs, Gates, Bezos. No first names, or companies, needed. Even in that crowd, the Jobs mystique is legendary – it’s hard to say whether the iPad, and its migration to an entire i-lifestyle, made Jobs cool again, or if it was the other way around. (Remember, he was actually ousted from Apple in the mid 1980s).

I think the question isn’t whether Jobs has been “over-branded.” Plenty of organizations have transitioned an iconic CEO – Welch at GE, Gates at Microsoft, Kelleher at Southwest Airlines – to name a few. All of these companies have retained strong, positive reputations. The question really is whether Apple has done enough to prepare for an eventual transition. Should members of their team have better name recognition outside of Wall Street, particularly since this is not Jobs’ first time taking a leave of absence for serious health issues?

It is my sincerest hope (and seemingly that of the Twitter-verse) that Jobs will return to the helm, fit as a fiddle. But even under the best of circumstances, he can’t stay forever.

To me the real question is whether Apple can “culture-ize” the Jobs mystique, so it can continue beyond his years of service, like Walt Disney. Or will it need to re-invent itself under the vision of a new leader, and become a new, equally successful Apple?

cwinters Executive Visibility Apple, CEO Succession Planning, Disney, GE, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Steve Jobs

Election Day is upon us. Pundits are talking around the clock about the weather, and who votes early; what a vote for a Republican really means (NObama), and Bill Clinton, still the most popular Democrat around, is calling this cycle a Fact Free Election.

This may not be the Democracy our founding fathers envisioned. But it’s the one we’ve got. It seems that in the Web 2.0 universe, lots of things are getting democratized. The consumer owns the brand. Citizen journalists change the reputations of people, places and governments with a Tweet. And leadership has been democratized…meaning that the power of the leader rests with the stakeholders’ willingness to follow.

The notion of democratization of leadership is at the heart of concepts that have spawned a plethora of leadership books and philosophies, with the concept of the servant leader being the most direct, obvious connection. And while many ascribe to notions like leadership is a privilege, leadership as service and give lip service to the notion of employees being the most important priority, few walk the talk more than Arkadi Kuhlman of ING Direct.

I’ve been hearing about Kuhlman from our ING account team for some time (ING Direct is an MWW Group client), and I heard Kuhlman speak for the first time at our World Business Forum panel. He lives up to the hype. He wowed me with his candor, and his willingness to say what other people are thinking, but keep to themselves in a down to earth style I haven’t seen since Gordon Bethune’s employee meetings at Continental Airlines where he told people, “The airline business is easy, you just have to get people where they want to go on time, with their underwear.”

Kuhlman has taken accountability and service to the employees to a whole new level. And he is asking his employees to vote on whether he should continue to serve. After 10 years at the helm, he wants to know if they are still on board with the Company’s vision, direction and more specifically, are they willing to follow him? Arkadi points out the shareholders are asked to affirm their confidence in leadership every year.
Boards of Directors get to “vote” on the CEO at every meeting – and they either stay the course or call Korn Ferry. But the employees don’t get a vote. Employees have as much of a vested interest in the Company as its shareholders, and in many ways more important. Simply put, it is up to the employees to deliver the performance that translates into financial results and shareholder value…shouldn’t they get a vote? Shouldn’t their vote count the most?

Employees affirming their confidence in leadership, whether formally or informally, is a powerful concept that could potentially transform Companies and cultures. It could be the talent war game changer. How many CEOs would have the guts to do it?

cwinters Executive Visibility Democracy, Election Day, ING Direct

After a series of horrific mining accidents in recent years, the world was glued to their televisions for the ultimate happy ending…the rescue of 33 copper and gold miners after 69 days trapped under ground, including initial days when they were all presumed dead.

Every one of these men is a hero. Their courage is the stuff that Hollywood can only dream of (and certainly will). But at a time when panic, and the instinct to survive, would easily pit one man against another, this group apparently behaved in a manner for the collective good. Under the leadership of their shift manager, 54-year-old Luis Urzua, 33 men whose lives were in the balance for almost two months, banded together so they would all survive.

We don’t know much about Luis Urzua, except that he thinks of himself as a miner, not a hero, a TV star or even a leader. We know that he kept order, even when he knew the crew was in for a much longer ordeal than most of them realized. We know that he stretched 2 days of food for 48 days. We also know that he was the last one out of the mine, and that he credited God, not himself, for the men having the will to resist the temptations that would have meant death for some, or all of them.

I doubt that whoever had the wisdom, or good luck, to hire Urzua could have predicted this scenario, or how he would perform. I doubt he read any of the leadership guru books on behaviors or philosophies of leadership. And it is unlikely that any training he received on the job could have prepared him for this incredible leadership task….he just had the “right stuff” for the job.

A recent MWW Group survey of leaders at the World Business Forum indicates that leaders are born, not made.

Case in point.

cwinters Executive Visibility Chile Mine Rescue, Leadership

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

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

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

Over the past 20 years, I’ve done countless crisis audits and managed more crisis issues than I care to count, and I’m still fascinated how clients define a crisis. Traditional scenarios – manufacturing issues, product recalls, and physical events such as explosions, fires and crashes – have been in sharp focus during our summer of automobile recalls and oil spills.

Terrorism and natural disasters joined the list following 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina, and occasionally I hear about investigative journalism or Attorney General activism. One client even listed CEO kidnapping as his biggest fear.

But events of this past week should give us all pause and remind us that a crisis is anything that threatens a company’s reputation or undermines the trust and confidence of your stakeholders.

At Hewlett-Packard, allegations of sexual harassment forced the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd despite solid company performance during his tenure. Now some news reports suggest the claim was baseless, citing a “breach of trust” related to improper expense reporting to conceal the Hurd’s relationship with a company contractor. (In some circles, that would be called fraud, or theft – but that, along with Larry Ellison’s comments about the HP Board, may be another post for another day). And at Sara Lee, Brenda Barnes voluntarily stepped down after a medical leave of absence.

CEO illness, litigation, investigative journalism, and sometimes corporate or executive malfeasance – all of these things can generate a crisis. And all of them warrant a response, regardless of whether a company and its leaders decide on the response or whether it is decided for them.

My advice to clients: As you think about your own organization’s crisis protocols, are you prepared for the kinds of Crisis 2.0 issues that are making headlines? Is your crisis response team prepared to deal with the multitude of issues that could trigger a breach of confidence, and are they prepared to do it in the lightning speed now necessary due to social media?

If the answer is no, it’s time to refresh, reboot or otherwise re-align your crisis plan. Someone’s job may depend on it.

cwinters Crisis Communications, Executive Visibility CEO communications, Crisis Communications, HP

I read this piece in HBR last week about the role of the CEO in creating and advancing culture. And I agree wholeheartedly with much of what Robbins says about the CEO’s involvement being the single biggest driver of culture, particularly for entrepreneurial organizations.

But I don’t agree at ALL with his premise that once formed, cultures can’t be changed.

I do a lot of work with companies in turnaround mode….where loss of culture or change of culture is often a key factor in the decline of a business….and where changing culture positively enables the success and in some cases, the very future of the organization.

If you read about the textbook turnarounds – Continental Airlines, Nissan, ODSI – all credit culture change as critical drivers of their success.

I often say that the CEO is like the Jedi Master of Reputation. The same is true for culture.

cwinters Employee Engagement, Executive Visibility, General Corporate CEO communications, Company Culture, Continental Airlines, Nissan, ODSI, Turnaround

After the level of expectation and coverage around the BP announcement of a new CEO, the actual announcement may seem somewhat anti-climactic. I can imagine the commentary now:

BP’s board of directors felt it was time to effect a transition (gasp), and they’ve selected an American CEO in an effort to repair their image (imagine that). And Mr. Hayward seemingly gets his wish….and gets his life back.

Leadership transitions always present a unique set of challenges and priorities for those of us in the communications and reputation management business. And sudden or abrupt changes can create chaos…like the night I spent in Bethlehem searching for video crews when Bethlehem Steel changed CEO’s shortly before filing for Chapter 11, requiring an entirely new set of communications toolkits, employee videos (with subtitles) and letters to all constituencies because the new CEO had a new point of view and message.

But leadership transitions in the wake of a crisis can be a really positive thing – an opportunity to create a “fresh start” or at least mark a BC (before new CEO) and AD (after new direction) for a company struggling to preserve, protect or rebuild reputation.

It’s sort of like the first day of school…a new teacher, who (in theory) doesn’t know that you were the class clown, the brain or the homework slacker…you can (at least partially) reinvent yourself…if you change your behavior. A fresh start can be a reputation reboot….if the right changes are made to support the new leader and the new message.

BP is facing a massive loss of trust…one that that they earned by their actions and their inactions in the wake of the Gulf spill. I talked to Ad Age about this very topic…and I am optimistic that a new leader will mark the beginning of a new era for BP. But like most of you, I plan to wait and see what comes next.

cwinters Crisis Communications, Executive Visibility, General Corporate Bethlehem Steel, BP, CEO transitions, Tony Hayward

I went to a networking meeting today where journalists spoke about the state of business in New Jersey. When the floor was opened for Q&A, the conversation immediately turned to how to get your Company in the news. After the session, some members of the group approached me to ask about crisis management and how to put a positive “SPIN” on bad news.

Ahhh, the inevitable SPIN DOCTOR implication.

Let me say for the record, I am NOT in favor of SPIN. The best counselors in public relations may not agree on much, but we agree on this…you can’t “spin” negative news. I am actually astonished about this continued misperception in light of all of the discussion on trust and transparency.

And really, isn’t that what all of the hype about the Steve Jobs press conference is about? He didn’t follow the “rule book” and appear contrite and apologetic, then follow up with some attempt to put a positive spin on the fact that the iPhone drops calls every time you touch it? (A common complaint for previous versions of the iPhone, BTW.)

Authenticity is the buzzword of the day…that is what Steve Jobs gave us. Who he really is. He is not happy that the iPhone isn’t performing. He shouldn’t be whistling zip-a-dee-doo-da – this isn’t the iPad launch.

What did Jobs do?

He acknowledged that the new iPhone isn’t perfect. That he isn’t perfect. That Apple isn’t perfect. And promised to work to make customers happy, even offering a few possible solutions.

Isn’t that the transparent, authentic response we claim to want?

Mickey Mantle once said, “You never have to wait long, or look far, to be reminded of how thin the line is between being a hero or a goat.”

Maybe Steve Jobs isn’t either one of those things.

cwinters Executive Visibility, General Corporate Apple, Authenticity, iPhone, Spin