I unfortunately had to spend most of the month in Washington, DC suffering through the hottest June on record. Washington has had 18 days over 90 degrees this month with lots of humidity to boot, resulting in heat indices well over 100 degrees. And the few days of the month I was in New York, it wasn’t much better.

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.

Nothing says “spring” to me like the fresh blooms of the Forsythia shrub. Its small, yellow starbursts of flowers are among the first signs of color in mid-March in many parts of the United States. And given the recent cold, harsh winter, this year’s Forsythia blooms are a feast for the eyes indeed.

Forsythia is both the genus and the common name for this spring-flowering shrub. There are 11 species of Forsythia, which are also native to Asia and Europe. It is named after the Scottish botanist, William Forsyth.

For the remaining 50 weeks of the year, Forsythia shrubs are frankly unremarkable and tend to blend into the neighborhoods and parks where they commonly are found. Yet, come March, when the temperature and conditions are just right, this genus of shrub magically transforms itself overnight.

Plants like the Forsythia serve an important purpose. They indicate that a change for the better is at hand. They lift the mood and spirit. And they remind us that every plant or person has a valuable role to play if put in the right conditions, nurtured appropriately, and situated for the greatest benefit.

Look for the exceptional in what may otherwise appear unexceptional. Actively cultivate Forsythias and a wide variety of other flora within your organization. By doing so, you can turn a run-of-the-mill roadside nursery into a sustainable and highly productive garden.

As a child growing up in the 1960s and early 70s in Tehran, I spent most of my summers vacationing at the Caspian Sea with my family and other relatives.

During the day, my sister, cousins and I would spend hours riding our bikes up and down the seashore and nearby neighborhood streets, soaking up the sun and salt-filled air. In the evenings, we would go to bed early exhausted from the day’s activities, as my parents, aunts and uncles played cards and told stories late into the night. And the kids would get up early the next morning and start it all again.

On many days, we would occupy our time by putting on plays and skits, where our parents served as the audience. I always insisted on being the director, so I could tell the other six or seven kids what to do and say.

It was truly an idyllic time, which now seems very far away on so many levels.

I often think back on my summers at the Caspian Sea, as I did last night as I watched the 82nd Annual Academy Awards show, when they named Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director for her work on “The Hurt Locker,” which also won Best Picture.

Notably, Bigelow is the first woman to win the Oscar’s coveted Best Director award. More notable is that she won it for directing a war movie. Most notable, she won up against a highly competitive field of other gifted directors, one of which included her former husband, James Cameron.

Cameron, who was nominated for his directing work for “Avatar,” is no stranger to this Oscar category, having received the Best Director award for “Titanic” in 1997. But last night was Bigelow’s night, and she deserved every moment of the recognition. In all, “Hurt Locker” took home six Oscars for its gripping depiction of life on the fronts lines of the Iraq War for a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team.

A director is responsible for taking the written word of a screenplay and bringing it to life on film, from every camera angle, in how an actor portrays a given role, and how a scene ultimately helps tell the story.

You cannot overstate the importance of the director’s role to a film or a play. More broadly, the same can be said for directing an organization or business. Good directing comes from years of hard work, knowing the business, risk-taking, effective training, learning from mistakes, and learning from other successful directors or leaders.

The best director is one who is able to pull the talent and an award-worthy performance from each team member. Such an idyllic moment will likely lead to your company’s own next blockbuster and plenty of precious memories down the road.

Last summer, I wrote a two-part blog, “It’s Time to Embrace Teleworking” (Part 1 and Part 2). Out of New Lantern’s 54 blog postings over the last 14 months, we have not once returned to the same exact topic — until now thanks to recent events.

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.

Chances are your company will host a number of off-site or on-site meetings in 2010 aimed at driving corporate strategy development and execution; employee, manager, or executive training and development; or engagement with customers, partners or other individuals important to your business.

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.

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.