Frankly, your creative place may not be a physical location. It could be a particular state of mind. It could be a certain mood, time of day, or the type of music that you are listening to at the time. It could be something you do such as driving or walking. Or it could be any combination of the above.

Every employee has at least one place that focuses the mind and puts them in a more inspired state. Not a state that will necessarily lead to a nuclear fusion breakthrough, or the next generation of computer chip. But it could be a state that helps them think through a more creative presentation, design a more environmentally-friendly container, improve the profitability of a company service offering, or find a more efficient way to process expense reports.

A company’s challenge is to help find those places for employees where they can be more innovative. Most companies insist that employees produce results in sterile environments under rigid conditions. Ask yourself this question: if you were using your own money to fund a composer to come up with a great score for your next blockbuster movie, would you insist that he or she do it between 9 to 5 on a Tuesday in the small conference room down the hall? I don’t think so.

I realize that organizations may not have the flexibility or the resources to put their employees into their most creative physical spaces. But with a little bit of ingenuity, leadership, and guts to try something different, they could clearly get employees to a better place or frame of mind.

Let New Lantern help your company find its creative place. It could be the beginning of a more beautiful and productive relationship between you and your employees.

(Back by popular demand, the above posting appeared originally in April 2009.)

Nothing says November like the feel of wearing a wool sweater from L.L. Bean.

I’ve been a fan of L.L. Bean’s no-frills, long-lasting clothing products for over 30 years. They are comfortable, affordable, and always get the job done.

If I had a dollar for every “Blucher Moc” moccasin shoe that L.L. Bean has sold over the years, I would, well, have a lot of dollars. The shoe is timeless and iconic, and the product description today was the same 30 years ago: “The handsewn upper conforms to your foot for a fit that only gets better with time. Traditional rubber sole has channel grooves to provide traction on wet surfaces.” Current retail price: $69 a pair.

If it ain’t broke, keep selling it. Or something like that.

L.L. Bean owes its success not only to great products, but to great customer service. Year after year, L.L. Bean ranks among America’s top 10 companies for customer service according to the National Retail Federation, based on written surveys of over 9,000 shoppers.

The company was founded in 1912 by Leon Leonwood Bean in Freeport, Maine — a place that knows something about the importance of keeping warm and dry. Today, L.L. Bean’s flagship store and campus is still in Freeport on the original site where Bean opened his retail business.

Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the 200,000-square-foot flagship store draws nearly three million visitors each year.

Next year marks L.L. Bean’s 100th anniversary. Few companies on the planet survive long enough to celebrate this milestone, much less one that is still at the top of its game. The company’s annual sales now top $1.5 billion.

L.L. Bean wrote the book on succeeding as a mail-order business, and decades later was able to successfully pivot to capitalize on the e-commerce revolution. Like its famed Blucher Moc, L.L. Bean has been able to effectively adapt and conform “for a fit that only gets better with time.”

Yet, L.L. Bean’s current President, Chris McCormick, knows that the company’s success will continue to rely on its commitment to putting the customer first: “It goes back to L.L.’s Golden Rule of treating customers like human beings.”

That’s using the old bean from which we all can learn.

Yet there is something about the current debt ceiling debate that makes me think that there is much more at stake in this discussion than the usual Democratic and Republican skirmishes. The threshold question that confronts every American is whether our country should continue to ramp up historic and seemingly unsustainable debt, or should we take a meat axe to scores of federal programs that so many Americans have come to rely upon.

I’ll not use this blog to pontificate on my own personal political bias on this question, but I will say this: our country’s leaders need to find a way to talk to one another and work this out. I’m hoping for less hot rhetoric and finger-pointing and more substantive discussion and responsible leadership.

Whether it’s in a board room, a corporate conference room, a manager’s office, or in the Cabinet Room, heated and anger-toned debate serves no interests. I’ll put my money any day on the cool and level-headed executive or political leader than the hot-headed, barb-thrower.

Shareholders deserve this sort of cool-headed responsibility from corporate executives, and the American citizens deserve the same out of their elected or appointed government leaders.

While telework programs are not the panacea for all workplace ills, they can serve as one important tool for motivating certain employees, increasing work-life balance, and increasing retention rates of top performers.

There is one challenge, however, that managers need to address as today’s employees spend more time working remotely from home or from other distant offices: maintaining the sense of team.

High-performing individual contributors can serve as a huge asset for any organization. Yet, the value of this asset is greatly diminished if these contributors are not effectively collaborating with team members toward a common business objective.

Also, there are immeasurable benefits that derive from a strong sense of team that cannot be overstated. Visibility to other team members and their accomplishments tend to increase the game of other teammates. Competition breeds increased performance. Case and point: a sprinter running the 100-yard dash against one or more competitors will almost always clock faster times compared to running the sprint alone.

Fellow team members also learn from one another in important ways. An employee that might excel in one aspect of her role can serve as a good role model for other team members – if there is visibility to these winning traits.

So how do you overcome the obstacle of geographic distance when at least some members of your team are working remotely?

First, leverage all the new collaboration and technology tools to increase your team’s “visibility” to one another. Thanks to fast, inexpensive broadband today at both work and home, relatively high quality VoIP (online) conference calls – including real-time document sharing and video – are easily within reach for your organization. Granted, these technologies are still no substitute for face-to-face collaboration, but they can play a critical role to the team experience.

Second, build regular face-to-face meetings and events into your annual budgets. Utilize existing office space or, better yet, a thought-provoking venue to spur creativity, team cohesion, and a more memorable experience. I’m not talking about a windowless, subterranean hotel conference room. Instead, seek out unique offsite meeting spaces such as an artist’s studio, a museum space, or conference room at a professional sports facility.

Third, include a fun, non-work event in every offsite retreat. It can be a team-building exercise; an informal round-table discussion or reception with a leading innovator; a nice dinner at a hot, new restaurant; or an inspirational training session. The point is to create synergies and chemistry within the team through shared experiences.

In short, use today’s telework and virtual office programs to reduce overall costs while increasing individual employee productivity — but not at the expense of eroding the team dynamic. Bring your team together at regular intervals that suit your company’s needs, and put them in intensive, idea-inducing environments.

You’ll soon find yourself building a winning team, which will take your company to virtually any new height.

With this one short line, Scheider and the characters played by a young Richard Dreyfuss and the late Robert Shaw capture the moment perfectly. They realize that the challenge before them is much larger than the size of their original game plan.

Each year, many companies and their management teams, experience similar types of eye-opening events as they find themselves responding to a sudden man-made or natural disaster. Think BP, Toyota, AIG, GM or the many companies in Japan currently affected by the recent earthquake and tsunami. Less notable companies also experience this sort of wake-up call as they watch a major customer walk away or find themselves scrambling to recover in the wake of a company misstep or scandal.

It is in these moments that company executives and managers are tested. Some companies successfully brave these storms and, as a result, come out stronger and more focused. Others, however, capsize and reach for the aid of a bargain-basement buyer or a bankruptcy raft.

Admittedly, there is no fail-safe way to plan for these unexpected events. But there are ways in which you can appreciably better your chances for survival with the right sort of training and preparation.

Don’t wait until your near-death moment to find out if your company is prepared to look into the jaws of catastrophe and survive. Put in place the right-sized game plans that will effectively respond to both big and small events that could serve to push your boat off course or potentially take you down.

Too many companies unfortunately promote an environment that embraces this fear. It starts with managers who fear that their direct reports might actually outshine them with a creative or ingenious idea. These fearful managers exist at the lowest levels of the company, at the highest levels of the company, and every level in between.

There are also structural factors that promote innovation-killing fear in a company. “We’re the Office of Corporate Strategy.” “We’re the Office of Innovation.” “We’re the Office of the CEO.” Or, “We’re the number one product group for the company.” “You stick to your day job, and let us worry about the company’s new ideas or innovation strategy.” Sound familiar?

These are also the same companies which many times find themselves slipping from first, to second, to way back in the pack, while younger, hungrier, and more fearless companies eat their lunch.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Start by leveraging the laws of statistics. Challenge every single person in your organization to stretch his or her thinking. Promote a culture that holds to this axiom: no idea is a bad idea. Of course, you’ll need to point out that only a few ideas will be worthy of pursuing. Yet, your odds of finding a pearl are increased as you open up a larger number of oyster shells.

Try it. You have nothing to fear, but fear itself.

For an annual fee of $79, Amazon.com customers can get free two-day guaranteed delivery on any product it sells. Customers who sign up for the Prime program tend to increase their purchases on Amazon. One customer cited by Stone increased her Amazon buying from 82 items in 2009 to 150 items in 2010 as a result of the Prime program. Even if she finds an item on a competitor’s web site, she’ll come back to Amazon to purchase it so she gets the free delivery.

Analysts point to the Prime program as one of the main factors for Amazon’s 30 percent increase in sales during the recession, while other retailers suffered. That’s why competitors like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target have recently followed suit with their own free shipping promotions.

So you’re probably thinking that it was some high-priced management or marketing consulting firm, which helped Amazon come up with its best-in-class loyalty program. Au contraire.

In fact, it was Amazon software engineer, Charlie Ward, who first cooked up the free shipping idea via an internal web-based corporate suggestion box. Credit then goes to CEO Jeffrey Bezos and Amazon board member, Bing Gordon, for taking the idea and running with it.

In numerous blog posts over the last two years, we have made the point here at New Lantern that a company’s own employees are its single best resource. Your employees possess the talent and creativity that could in fact lead to your organization’s next blockbuster product or service.

I bet there are dozens of Charlie Wards who sit in your company at this very moment. And most likely, they are getting paid for doing a specific task, like writing software code, but are given no incentive for thinking up creative approaches that fall either inside or outside their bailiwicks.

This is an opportunity lost indeed. You owe it to your shareholders to leverage every bit of talent and creativity that exists within your company. Promote creativity and innovation across every part of the company, and at every level.

Incentivize your employees to not only think outside the box, but to forget there is a box in the first place. And seek to identify and nurture these talents via innovative training and other cost-effective, cutting-edge methods.

In doing so, I predict you’ll soon create a shareholder loyalty program that will be second to none.

It was back on August 5th when the copper mine in Copiapo, Chile collapsed, leaving 33 men trapped 2,300 feet below the earth’s surface. Seventeen days passed before rescuers received any sign of life, when the eighth test bore drill came back to the surface with notes attached to the drill bit stating that 33 miners were indeed alive.

At that point, the world rallied to help Chilean officials and mine experts craft complex plans to rescue the miners. Three drill plans — A, B, and C — were launched using different drilling technologies in an effort to reach the miners with a shaft just large enough for their escape. Meanwhile, medicine, liquid food, and oxygen were sent nearly half a mile down via the tiny bore hole as the three drilling rigs worked for weeks around the clock.

NASA developed and built a special transport cylinder to bring the miners to the surface that was a mere 21 inches in diameter inside. Some miners, who had lost over 20 pounds during the first 17 days, were later put on a special diet to ensure that each could fit into the slender rescue tube. Miners were also put on an exercise regimen to minimize muscle atrophy. Mental health experts were consulted on how to engage the miners in certain routines to address the severe mental stress from the ordeal.

In the end, it was the “Plan B” drill that finally reached the small refuge area on October 9th where the miners were located. The “Plan B” drill used a special drill bit from a Pennsylvania company with a hammering mechanism never before used by the Chilean mining industry.

The Chilean government, including its President and its Mining Minister, deserve a lot of credit for the unprecedented rescue. Against enormous odds, they put together a plan of action that embraced both the known and the unknown, while giving themselves necessary contingencies. They also were willing to accept critical input, assistance, and know-how from around the globe, yet remained in control of one of the most complex and intensive rescue operations in history. They proceeded to relentlessly pursue their plan, and 33 lives were saved as a result.

It is a tribute to human ingenuity and the human ideal. When lives are at stake, I marvel at what humans can do when working together.

Corporate executives can learn from this survival phenomenon. The last two years have brought near-death experiences to many companies around the globe. Those companies whose managers and employees rally together, stay focused, and design necessary contingencies are more apt to come out of their hole alive.

It ultimately just might be your “Plan B” that saves your company.

In watching the weather reports today, which show three to four hurricanes lined up in the Atlantic heading toward the eastern coast of the United States, I am reminded of one of the more memorable lines in American cinema.

In the 1990 “Die Hard 2: Die Harder,” the actor and former U.S. Senator, Fred Thompson, plays the Chief of Air Operations at Washington Dulles Airport and utters the great metaphorical line, “stack ‘em, pack ‘em, and rack ‘em.” With this line, he gives the order to his air traffic control staff to keep all incoming aircraft in a holding pattern until hijackers are no longer controlling the airport. The intent is to buy time until Bruce Willis (John McClane) can save the day.

So when I saw the colorful, eye-popping flight path this week on our television screens of the incoming hurricanes and tropical storms — Earl, Fiona, and Gaston, I thought of Fred Thompson’s 20-year-old line and the image of the jetliners lined up over the dark skies of Dulles Airport.

Whether it’s turbulence as a result of Mother Nature or man-made disasters, companies are best served by executives and managers who are able to keep their cool and focus in response to both seen and unforeseen events. These necessary attributes can only come through experience, effective training, and a corporate culture that values and cultivates them.

When crisis strikes, do not bet the company on managers knowing what to do. Spend time and resource to make sure they have the tools and know-how at the ready.

Have a safe and restful upcoming Labor Day weekend.

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.