Today’s latest social media tools, like Twitter and Facebook, have given the individual customer unprecedented power to take his or her grievance to the masses. One of my favorite such incidents in the last year involved musician Dave Carroll, who took on United Airlines for rejecting his damage claim after baggage handlers broke his guitar. In response, he wrote a humorous ditty called “United Breaks Guitars,” and posted a video of him performing the song on YouTube — which has received nearly nine million views to date.

United’s brand took a beating, and it is not alone. As Bernoff and Schadler point out, these types of single-customer social media firestorms are popping up all over the place, and corporate executives are scrambling to figure out how to effectively respond.

Granted, I am not suggesting that customers, who have a legitimate complaint against a business entity, lay down their new social media guns. On the contrary. I applaud the creative use of technology by a customer to hold a company’s feet to the fire — when a genuine wrong has occurred. But what I also applaud, and encourage, are companies which are beginning to embrace these same technology tools to tell their side of the story.

In a number of my past blog postings, I have called on executives and managers to empower employees to think more creatively, and incentivize them to take risks and to challenge corporate routine. And empowering employees to leverage the same social media tools at work as they use at home opens up a whole new front in cost-effective corporate communications, while better utilizing employee talent.

Of course, this type of empowerment is not without risk as the authors of “Empowered” note. It requires a clear set of internal ground rules that govern both management and employees. But if properly designed and executed, the benefits of engaging employees in leveraging social media will far outweigh the costs of not doing so.

If this is the case, chances are also high that you’re not getting as much from these meetings or events as you could be. You probably continue to use the same meeting template year after year, and put it in the category, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

It may not be “broke,” but ask yourself this question: Are your investments in these activities costing you more than they are giving back?

It’s time for some fresh thinking and a new template when it comes to your important corporate events and meetings. Attendees and participants should be provoked, engaged, challenged, and inspired. They should be exposed to leaders in their fields, as well as other high-value leaders and innovators. And, they should be put into environments and frames of mind that truly promote development and innovation.

For example, how about a quarterly “innovation” or “strategy” off-site meeting for 40 of your most promising mid-level managers from across the company? Host it in an offbeat and creative setting. Build the agenda around a relevant topic for your business. Bring in one or two inspiring thought leaders. Create some break-out group competition to drive meaningful meeting takeaways. Spotlight the best ideas. Top it off with an imaginative social component.

Create buzz around these events within your company so that other employees will want to attend future off-sites. This alone will give rise to higher personal performance, not to mention the idea generation that comes from the events themselves.

This is only one example. There’s many more where this came from. Let New Lantern help you get the most out of your corporate meetings and events in 2010.

According to Infoplease.com, “solstice” comes from the Latin word “solstitium,” which combines “sol” for the sun and “stitium” for stoppage. This means that during either the winter or summer solstice, the sun at midday appears to be in the same position for several days prior and after the solstice.

For centuries, cultures all over the globe have celebrated the Winter Solstice in a wide variety of ways. Yet, a common thread in many of these cultures is that the marking of the longest night brings with it the optimism of increasing amounts of daylight to come.

This year seems particularly fitting to note the passing of the Winter Solstice and what at times felt to be a very long night.

Here’s wishing all of you a safe and healthy holidays, and the hope of brighter days ahead in 2010.

Hewlett points out that flex time is a win-win in today’s economy since many workers will be happy to take less pay if their managers give them a more flexible work schedule. So not only could employers save money by embracing a flex time program, they could also get more out of their employees.

Flex time can come in a number of forms. For example, it may mean working four days a week for a total of 32 hours, and receiving 80% of the pay. Women are particularly attracted to flex time as Hewlett notes, since they are increasingly out-earning their husbands, while still facing domestic duties at home (e.g., as a mother).

A successful female employee and mother typically faces the dilemma of either quitting her job or living with the guilt of not spending more time with her kids at home while they are young. If the mother decides to leave her job, then the company loses out on the talent and investment in that employee. Flex time can potentially keep her at work, contributing to the company’s success, while possibly helping the company save money at the same time.

Ms. Hewlett is the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, author of nine non-fiction books on business, and winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize. She has taught at Cambridge, Columbia, and Princeton.

Her latest book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business is Down,” was released in October. Jeffrey Kindler, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer: “The right book at the right time. With skill and conviction, Hewlett provides new insight into motivating your top performers during tough times and preparing your organization for renewed innovation and growth.”

As we have discussed here in numerous blog posts over the last year, tough times are exactly when your company should invest in its best performers and mine all the talent your employees have to offer. This investment can come in the form of enhanced incentive rewards programs, imaginative leadership training, and other innovative programs to spur creative thinking and performance.

It will require a management team who is willing to embrace change, e.g., how and when employees work — in short, a team willing to flex different muscles. I’m guessing you’ll like how the results will look on you and your company.

As business executives across the globe seek to chart an improved course in the wake of this past year’s economic meltdown, I call your attention to a new book on leadership that may serve as a helpful guidepost — Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass).

Love Leadership is written by John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, America’s first nonprofit social investment banking organization. The book debuted at #8 on the “CEO Reads Top 10 Best Seller List,” and has been featured in Business Week and the Washington Post.

At the age of 26 in 1992, Bryant started Operation HOPE in Los Angeles in response to the LA riots based on the premise that his community needed a “hand-up not a hand-out.” Operation HOPE seeks to “eradicate poverty in our lifetime” through financial literacy education of inner-city and under-served children and adults.

Bryant himself grew up in Compton and South Central Los Angeles, CA and was homeless for six months at the age of 18. It is this humble background that Bryant has drawn upon to make him one of the most charismatic and successful philanthropic-business leaders of our time.

Bryant has advised the last three Presidents on the importance of financial literacy as one of the most effective tools to address poverty. Bryant is a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum, where he spoke at WEF’s closing session in Davos, Switzerland in February 2009. Operation HOPE’s major partners include a Who’s Who of global corporations, such as: Wells Fargo, Toyota, Microsoft, E-Trade, ING, and Citigroup.

David Gergen, former senior White House advisor to four Presidents and now Director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, describes Bryant this way: “I have watched John Hope Bryant dazzle audiences from Harvard to the World Economic Forum. Now he pours his compassion and charisma into the pages of this book, delivering a powerful message about rediscovering our humanity.”

According to Don McGrath, Chairman of Bancwest Corporation: “In this book, he (Bryant) gives us a recipe for personal success driven by a simple notion: treating others with respect and dignity creates true long-term success. This message and his strategies for living it couldn’t be more timely as we address the failures of leadership that created today’s financial crisis.”

In Love Leadership, Bryant lays out his “Five Laws of Love-Based Leadership” — Loss Creates Leaders, Fear Fails, Love Makes Money, Vulnerability is Power, and Giving is Getting. As he puts it, “Leaders give, followers take. Giving inspires loyalty, attracts good people, confers peace of mind, and lies at the core of true wealth.”

Business leaders who understand and deploy these principles are most likely to succeed. Leadership based on fear is a short-term tactic that produces unreliable results, and can serve to damage the organization over time. Conversely, employees who are appreciated and respected will perform at a higher level under all conditions over the near- and long-terms.

Leaders who embrace the principles of caring and respect, will indeed love the results.

John Hope Bryant

When I stopped into my local Starbucks this morning to get my usual tall cup of Joe, I found a store buzzing with a new entrant in its coffee line-up – instant coffee.

I must admit I was skeptical. Instant coffee? After all these years of treating my taste buds to the full-throated flavor of my Starbucks favorite blends such as Verona, Estima, and Sumatra, how can I take instant coffee seriously? The last innovation I witnessed in instant coffee was the “freeze-dried” branding of Taster’s Choice in the 1970s, which was a must-have for every college dorm room. Today, that same freeze-dried brew tastes a little too freezer-burned to me, with all due respect to Nescafe.

Yet, my coffee snobbery this morning quickly gave way to curiosity (and the notion of something free), and so I tried Starbucks’ new “VIA Ready Brew” (aka, instant coffee), which they were handing out in Dixie-like cups. And to my surprise, I liked it. Now, I will admit that it’s not quite in the league of my favorite fresh-ground brew I’m accustomed to, but it’s remarkably good considering it is, well, instant.

Give Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz credit, it’s a pretty gutsy move. This is the same guy who swam against the tide years ago, and proceeded to build a corporate empire one cup at a time — when most everyone else at the time was saying, “you can’t get rich selling coffee.”

Today Starbucks has more than 5,000 stores in over 40 countries. Sure, it had to close a few stores over the last year and dial back some prices in light of the bad economic times. But its stock is up 75% in the last 6 months. I like that math.

So stay tuned. Will Starbucks’ gamble on instant coffee pay off? Wall Street didn’t seem too impressed given SBUX closed down over one percent today, despite its big instant coffee roll-out.

But I don’t count Starbucks out, and for this reason. Its success to date is not simply the result of great coffee and market savvy. It also has something to do with how management runs the company and how they treat their employees (or “partners” as they are called). Starbucks routinely gets some of the highest marks in corporate America in terms of employee satisfaction, and “best places to work.”

As Howard Schultz puts it, “We realize our people are the cornerstone of our success, and we know that their ideas, commitment and connection to our customers are truly the essential elements in the Starbucks Experience.”

Happy and satisfied employees lead to greater productivity and greater innovations. And companies that get this important point, and live by it, will generally prosper.

In fact, prosperity has been known to have a very distinctive aroma. It smells like a great cup of instant coffee.

It wasn’t so much the bargain that attracted me to the Weidman piece, but the fanciful cat itself. As an admitted cat lover (I have four), I of course liked the subject. But as an art enthusiast, I also liked the way you feel when you look at Weidman’s cat – it makes you smile.

Dummy Cat is a signature piece of Weidman’s, who today at age 87 has left quite a mark on the art, graphic design, and animation worlds over the last six decades. He began his career in the 1950s as an animator for the famed Hanna-Barbera studio in Los Angeles. He soon began working for himself, and in the decades that followed, created a unique and iconic style.

In December 2008, Gingko Press published The Whimsical Work of David Weidman – and Also Some Serious Ones. According to the publisher’s press release, Weidman’s “staggering body of work is as modern and visually stunning as it was forty years ago,” and added, “he never stopped experimenting as an artist.”

There is a lesson here for all of us, particularly those who are managing today’s businesses during trying economic times. Managers should resist the urge to hunker down, withdraw, and play it safe. Now is exactly the time to take a page from Weidman’s animated book – to re-double efforts, and challenge employees to create and to “experiment.”

You should also add “whimsy” to your corporate vocabulary. Nurture and celebrate those within your organization who turn dreams and fancy into innovative products and services – and in doing so, enable your business to grow and thrive.

A corporate culture reflects an organization’s character, its values and the vision of its management. The culture serves as an unseen GPS for employees, customers, and partners – signaling who you are as a company and how you do business.

Too many companies place a glossy mission or values statement on their website, but don’t work to build a corporate culture that truly lives up to the words.

Senior management cannot impose a desired corporate culture on an organization. It must be earned and built brick-by-brick. Management must create a culture that treats employees as the company’s single best asset. Employees need to know that performance will be measured and appropriately rewarded. Conversely, they need to know that underperformance has its consequences. And employees need to know that the same performance yardstick will be used fairly throughout the entire organization.

A culture that places loyalty to management over performance is a company abusing the shareholders’ trust. Likewise, a culture that tolerates — or worse yet – rewards an attitude that says, “all I need to do is keep my head down, go along with the flow, and not cause any waves,” is doomed to failure.

Jump-start your corporate culture starting today. Let employees know that their talents and value to the company matter. Provide a vision and a clearly defined set of goals for which all employees will share responsibility in achieving. Let employees know that risk-taking, an entrepreneurial spirit, and challenging the status quo are strongly encouraged. And make it clear that a strong sense of ethics is an integral part of your company’s DNA.

If you are able to do the above, your corporate culture will change for the better, your future will be brighter, and shareholders will happily reap the benefits.

With the current 8.5 percent unemployment rate, and pay freezes or cuts for much of the remaining 91.5 percent of the nation’s workers, there is no better time for companies to embrace creative pay-for-performance programs.

The current state of the economy is undoubtedly making even the best employees anxious. And anxiety breeds under-performance, which can exacerbate your company’s already mounting challenges. Freezing employee salaries doesn’t mean that you can’t reward over-achievers with other perks and pay incentives. Cash bonuses, stock grants, and highly desirable professional development opportunities are fair game and can provide the necessary catalyst for top employees while encouraging under-performers to step up their game.

You can also use the current economic situation as an opportunity to revamp your overall compensation structure. Does your current pay structure fully differentiate between your performers and laggards? Is your current pay plan designed to pay past performance rather than spur improved future performance? Does your current plan truly encourage innovative thinking and risk-taking or does it simply encourage loyalty to the boss?

Here’s a thought: Instead of simply freezing every employee’s salary this year, how about increasing the salaries of the top-performing 20 percent while lowering the salaries of the bottom 20 percent? Your total salary expenditures would remain flat, but your overall corporate performance would surely increase.

Turn adversity into an inspiring opportunity to make the necessary upgrades to your compensation program that will result in performance 2.0 for your company or organization.

The article highlights top companies which are finding ways to spur innovation by taking employees out of their comfort zones, creating new ways to compensate employees for greater achievement, breaking down traditional organizational barriers for increased performance, and leveraging the latest Web 2.0 social networking and wiki tools to enhance collaboration.

New Lantern is a business innovation consulting firm that is perfectly situated to help your company or organization change its game in all of these areas and more.