One of the designer contestants who will appear on the show this season will be April Johnston, a 2010 graduate of SCAD’s School of Fashion. At 21, Johnston will be the youngest of the 17 contestants.

SCAD is the Savannah College of Art and Design, which is headquartered in Savannah, Georgia, with campuses also in Atlanta, Hong Kong, and Lacoste, France.

I profiled SCAD in a blog posting in February 2009. As one of the top art and design schools on the globe, I am a big fan and supporter of SCAD’s.

If past “Project Runway” shows are any guide, April Johnston will undoubtedly face stiff competition, as well as stiff critiques from the show’s honcho and former super model, Heidi Klum. Fashion industry luminaries Tim Gunn, Michael Kors, and Nina Garcia round out the panel of judges.

What Johnston will have going for her is the world-class education and training she received at SCAD. That, along with some natural talent, will hopefully serve her well throughout the competition.

The Dean of Fashion at SCAD, Michael Fink, handicaps Johnston’s chances this way, “If her provocative and powerful senior collection is any indication, we’re confident she’ll create some exciting and intriguing clothes.”

We will soon see whether or not that’s the case.

Your employees hold the keys to your company’s success and how well you measure up to the competition. But you’ll need to create a corporate culture that will nurture employee talent, and stimulate creativity and innovation.

New Lantern has the type of “provocative and powerful” services that could tap into the scads of talent that already exists within your employees. This, in turn, could put you on the path to your own award-winning season.

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.

While the global warming theory appears to have lost some of its steam of late, if June 2010 in DC is any indication, then the planet is in for a heap of trouble. Where’s Al Gore when you need him? (Answer: He’s preoccupied with his divorce and other tabloid rumors.)

Maybe there’s a silver lining with all this heat.

As long as it’s this hot, many of us will choose to stay indoors – in the cool of our office buildings — and not on the golf course, the tennis court, or at the baseball game. And as long as we’re in our offices, we might as well spend part of that time thinking about how our respective businesses can be more productive and innovative during the second half of the year.

So use this time wisely. Pull together your management team, challenge them to take a fresh look at the next six months, and come up with a game plan that could move the dial in each business and function across your organization.

Better yet, treat your team to an inspiring offsite meeting or innovation workshop, in a nice air-conditioned space, where thought-provoking speakers and thought-enhancing surroundings might spur more creative thinking.

That sounds like a pretty cool idea to me.

A couple of weekends ago, my husband and I were out running errands when the “The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert came on the car radio. I must admit that I’m a relatively recent convert to country music. I don’t like all country music, but I do tend to like the newer country songs, and their sweet, melodic sounds and the real stories that they tell.

After the first few lines of the “The House,” we were pulled in. I turned up the radio and we just sat quietly in the car as it played. And then when it was over we searched several other country stations to see if we could hear it again.

It’s a simple song that tells a powerful story. The song is about a woman who is in search of herself. So she decides to go back to the house she grew up in and ask the current owners if she could just walk around the house and take it all in “one last time.” She goes on to say that she had hoped that her coming back “to touch this place” in some way would help heal some of the “brokenness” in her life.

She pleads with the owners, “If I could just come in, I swear I’ll leave. Won’t take nothing but a memory, from the house that built me.”

The lyrics took me back to my time as a kid and the house where I grew up. I could see my back yard, the trees I climbed, our kitchen, and my beautiful mom at 30 years old making lunch for my sister and me.

Born in Lindale, TX in 1983, Miranda Lambert is not yet 30 herself. “The House That Built Me” was released in March of this year on Lambert’s Revolution album, which won Best Album of the Year at last month’s Academy of Country Music Awards, where she also won Top Female Vocalist of the Year. “The House That Built Me” was co-written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin.

The most successful artists and innovators listen more to their hearts than to their heads. The most successful companies and the executives who run them usually listen to both.

An employee who is motivated and passionate by what she does and the company she works for will always outperform an employee who is simply going through the motions.

Use your company to build something special and enduring, and you’ll in turn help build employees who will want to stay with your company — or at least want to return some day.

In the book, Pink makes the case that money can only motivate employees up to a point. In fact, he cites studies and real-life examples that support the notion that incentive bonuses actually result in less creative and innovative thinking.

Granted, Pink notes that good performance starts with employees who feel like they are fairly compensated. Beyond that, he contends that employees will in fact use higher levels of initiative, problem-solving, and creativity in response to traditional, non-monetary competitive forces.

In a speech at a TED conference at Oxford, England last summer, Pink previewed some of his thinking that went into “Drive.” He cited a 2005 study by MIT conducted for the Federal Reserve that found that “as long as the task involved mechanical skill, bonuses worked as would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance.” However, “once the task called for an even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance.”

Pink also wrote “A Whole New Mind” in 2006, which makes the case for more right-brain thinking (e.g., inventiveness and creativity), noting “the workplace terrain is changing yet again, and power will inevitably shift to people who possess strong right-brain qualities.” This is an interesting proposition (and a correct one in my opinion) considering it is coming from a trained left-brain-thinking lawyer.

Given today’s level of global competition and the fragile economy, companies would be well-advised to look differently at how they try to motivate employees. Based on my own experience in managing executive compensation programs at large multinational companies, companies are far too quick to assume that traditional carrots like higher bonuses and larger stock grants will result in higher levels of performance.

These compensation tools are important for retaining your most promising employees. Yet, when used alone, they may in fact be stunting – not inducing – higher levels of innovation, risk-taking, and problem-solving.

Companies that seek to promote a motivating corporate culture, a competitive work environment, and ample levels of recognition for excellence will ultimately be in the best position to elicit the innovation “drive” needed from employees to beat the competition.

If your company to date has been cool to lukewarm on the topic of teleworking, you need only to look to the real-life response to the back-to-back snowstorms along much of the East Coast last week as your best proof point to take a new look. Thousands of companies from Virginia to Massachusetts were shut down after communities were hit by two to three feet of snow. Hundreds of thousands of employees were affected, who found themselves captive in their own homes for most of the week.

Yet, much of the work of many of these companies continued thanks to modern day connectivity, fast and inexpensive personal computers, broadband at home, smartphones, Blackberrys, and iPhones. The breadth and scale of this level of productivity from one’s home would not have been possible 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago.

Even the U.S. Government enjoyed the benefits of teleworking last week. For example, according to a spokesperson at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, “the trademark side of the agency reported production at 85 percent of normal levels on Monday and Tuesday, when the government was officially closed,” as reported in the Washington Post on February 11.

Admittedly, teleworking is not for every employee or every position, as I noted in my June 2009 blog post. But I would venture to say that almost every business can find a way to better utilize technologies so that at least some employees can work from home during part of the work week.

Employees are happier when they are not wasting one to two hours a day sitting in traffic during their commutes, or standing on a crowded subway or bus. Employees are happier when they are in comfortable and more inspiring surroundings. They are also happier when they are not chained to their desk five days a week because it makes the boss feel better. And happier employees are more innovative and productive. Period. Full stop.

Your company should take a fresh look at teleworking. Managers should embrace today’s technologies and push aside yesterday’s biases against working from home. If so, I predict brighter skies will soon be in your future.

You can trust me on this one, I wouldn’t snow you.

One of my favorite all-time sketches from Saturday Night Live is “More Cowbell” with guest host Christopher Walken, which aired on April 8, 2000.

In the sketch, Walken plays fictional music producer Bruce Dickinson. The scene is set in a recording studio, and Walken tells the 1970s Blue Öyster Cult band, played by Will Farrell and other male members of the SNL cast, to start at the top on the song, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” Farrell is on cowbell, and as soon as the song starts, he is whamming away at the cowbell with a drumstick.

About 30 seconds into the song, Walken bursts into the studio from the control room shouting, “wait, wait!” He then proceeds to tell the band to try it again from the top, and says, “I could’ve used a little more cowbell.”

The band starts again with Farrell beating the cowbell even louder this time, while dramatically moving around the room as his tight sweater rides up his abdomen exposing his white, fat, hairy belly. Once again, Walken rushes back into the room and cuts the band off mid-song, telling Farrell, “I gotta have more cowbell.” And Farrell complies.

I’m laughing just thinking about the scene as a write this blog.

I must admit that I think about the “cowbell” sketch from time to time and Walken’s obsessive directive to the band. It usually occurs when I’m trying to meet a pressing deadline, get a corporate client to work harder to get more from their employees, coach an executive to take it to the next level, or simply try to finish the last grueling five minutes in my spin class. I hear the clang, clang, clang and Walken’s voice shouting in my head, “I gotta have more cowbell!”

“More cowbell” is my way of saying to dig deeper, work harder, and give it 100 percent – even when you think you’re already doing so. Great companies did not get great by giving it 90 percent. Great executives did not get to where they are by giving it their B game, and great innovators did not come up with leading edge breakthroughs by playing it safe.

The recent economic meltdown has forced many companies to reassess, regroup, and retool. The road back to sustained growth will be long. Yet, those companies which are obsessive about giving it 100 percent, and successful in encouraging their employees to do the same, will be best equipped to make this journey and ultimately reap the benefits.

So for all you Blue Öyster Cult fans, and Walken and Farrell fans, treat your company and your shareholders to some more cowbell this coming year.

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question.

Many of you who are reading this blog probably have your own personal Twitter and/or Facebook accounts. Your employer may also have its own Facebook page. And, your corporate communications department may already have someone tasked to monitor social media sites like Twitter for specific web chatter and trends that may impact your business.

If you’re not already doing these things, you should be. But even if you are, you would only be scratching the surface of what these new social media tools could be doing for your company.

According to About.com, the term “social media” includes the “various online technology tools that enable people to communicate easily via the internet to share information and resources. Social media can include text, audio, video, images, podcasts, and other multimedia communications.”

Of course, social media is not a panacea for companies; and neither was the advent of television and video starting in the 1960s. Yet, television provided an exciting new medium for companies to reach customers and the public through advertising. Those companies that moved early and effectively to take advantage of this new medium prospered. And video later provided companies productive ways to communicate internally and to train large numbers of employees in multiple locations in a cost-effective way.

Likewise, social media provides your company with new opportunities to communicate with customers and the public – in real time – like never before. Social media can also be utilized within your company as very effective collaboration tools. For example, managers within different parts of the company could use a customized internal website or “wiki” to trade best practice information. Employees could use it to provide real-time suggestions on process innovation, or ideas for new or improved products or services.

Social media tools are not your traditional “one-to-many” glossy corporate newsletters or large distribution emails from the CEO. Social media are instead “many-to-many” tools, which support the “democratization of knowledge and information” in a highly cost-effective manner according to Wikipedia.org – a poster child itself for many-to-many Web 2.0.

High benefit. Low cost. What’s not to like?

So add this to your New Year’s resolution list: get serious about new social media tools and put them to work for your company in 2010. New Lantern can help show you how, and I predict you’ll then be tweeting our praises.

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.

The honorees will join President Obama and the First Lady in the President’s box at the Kennedy Center tonight for the three-hour live tribute, which will later be aired in a two-hour show on CBS on December 29. Last night, the honorees and their families and friends, were feted at a State Department dinner, hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They will also attend a White House reception this evening prior to tonight’s show.

There are no shortage of annual award shows that pay tribute to the achievements of actors, directors, and musicians. Yet, the Kennedy Center Honors seems to stand apart. It seeks to honor a life-time of talent and accomplishment, not simply a snapshot of fame. The show also uniquely brings together on the red carpet the best that America has to offer from the arts and government.

I have attended six Kennedy Center Honors, and each was as distinctive as the inductees themselves and the remarkable stories told by the famous individuals who spoke on their behalf.

Former President John F. Kennedy said, “I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

The highest levels of business achievement, like that of the arts, are attained based on a compilation of successful work over an extended period of time – not merely the results of one quarter or one year. And it is the companies that are the most creative, the most innovative, and the most willing to invest in their best performing employees, which will most likely succeed and endure.

Make it a point to honor those employees who help make your company successful with a little red carpet treatment of your own.