Harry Klein's blog

Dear Continental Airlines and Express Jet:

I read the stories about your stranding of 47 passengers on the tarmac for 6 hours with utter and complete astonishment.

("Nightmare as 47 Stuck on Tarmac for 6 Hours" and "47 spend 'nightmare' 9 hours in ground plane".)

Some 20+ years ago, while trying to explain and communicate the link between the act of practicing a musical instrument and creative freedom, I developed the following process path:

Structure. Discipline. Creativity. Freedom.

Structure creates discipline - a framework brings the abstract closer to reality and enables us to focus on the tangible.

Discipline doesn’t mean rigidity - discipline is too often associated with severity or punishment. All discipline means really means is having the wherewithal to do the right thing most/all the time.

Chris Brogan asked on Twitter "how will you drive business for your company over the next three months?"

Our answer:

Marketing Excellence 3.0: talk less, listen more. It's the experience. Still need to get face-to-face. Process is not to be feared.

Learn more about Marketing Excellence 3.0.

Today's Zappos/Amazon deal makes a lot of sense.

Tony Hsieh and Jeff Bezos are as passionate about taking care of customers and thinking long-term as you can find in any business. Can't wait to see what customer-facing innovations they come up with as partners.

In an effort to get closer to customers, GM CEO Fritz Henderson is launching an online suggestion box called "Tell Fritz". Visitors can enter up to 255 characters per suggestion.

It will certainly be interesting to watch GM use "crowdsourcing" to help define its future.

I like this move as well as their other efforts to be open and accessible post-bailout and bankruptcy. The questions are does anyone care and is it too little too late?

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