There is no more important business leadership responsibility than telling your organization's story often and well. Effective leadership communication creates understanding, changes minds, charges people with purpose, increases productivity, sharpens sales presentations, generates new possibilities and moves organizations forward.
Question, Create, Apply, Measure.
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When you contract with Brian Faulkner
for a communication project, you should anticipate a tangible contribution to the long-term success of your enterprise. Create belief. Inspire commitment. Explain competitive advantage. Attract more qualified customers. Keep them. Those are the objectives. Pure & simple.
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"I can't remember when I've felt better about paying a man!"
- VP, Durham Chamber of Commerce regarding development campaign -
Writing for Business Leaders:
CEO Meeting Keynote Speech:
Saw a movie recently that captures perfectly the idea I want to get across today. It was about a man named Preston Tucker. He was an imagineer who reached out and grabbed the future by the shirt collar and shook it. He boldly designed his vision of tomorrow -- not in some fancy office building but in a beat-up old barn in back of his house in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
It was just after World War II. Tucker was convinced that America was hungry not just for cars, which hadn't been produced since 1942, but a new kind of car. A safe car. A fast car. A fuel-efficient car. A car that could stop on a dime. A car that could knock your eyes out!
So he set out to design and build one. He set out to invent the future. The car Tucker built was incredible. Nobody had ever seen (or imagined) anything like it. It was built low to the ground and shaped like a torpedo. It had a windshield wide as a picture window that was designed to pop out in a crash, saving the driver and passenger from popping it out with their heads. It had a third headlight in the center, which pivoted for a better view of the road as the car turned. The engine was in the rear. It was fuel-injected and had a double transaxle. It wasn't clunky looking like most other post-war cars -- and wasn't slow.
The Tucker Torpedo could go 120 miles an hour and had handling and endurance to match. A prototype Tucker had run around a test track for 24 hours and got 25 miles per gallon. When the prototype was rolled at 95 mph to prove how safe it was, the driver walked away from the wreck and the car was driven away after one tire change. The windshield popped out -- as planned.
People loved the Torpedo and wanted to buy them (priced at $2,000, when the average new car cost $1,250). Crowds surrounded the car everywhere Tucker went. His future seemed assured. But commercially, the Tucker was a failure. Preston Tucker's dream to design and manufacture the finest automobile ever made died, not because he couldn't ... (continued)
© Brian E. Faulkner
CEO Meeting Keynote Speech:
Saw a movie recently that captures perfectly the idea I want to get across today. It was about a man named Preston Tucker. He was an imagineer who reached out and grabbed the future by the shirt collar and shook it. He boldly designed his vision of tomorrow -- not in some fancy office building but in a beat-up old barn in back of his house in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
It was just after World War II. Tucker was convinced that America was hungry not just for cars, which hadn't been produced since 1942, but a new kind of car. A safe car. A fast car. A fuel-efficient car. A car that could stop on a dime. A car that could knock your eyes out!
So he set out to design and build one. He set out to invent the future. The car Tucker built was incredible. Nobody had ever seen (or imagined) anything like it. It was built low to the ground and shaped like a torpedo. It had a windshield wide as a picture window that was designed to pop out in a crash, saving the driver and passenger from popping it out with their heads. It had a third headlight in the center, which pivoted for a better view of the road as the car turned. The engine was in the rear. It was fuel-injected and had a double transaxle. It wasn't clunky looking like most other post-war cars -- and wasn't slow.
The Tucker Torpedo could go 120 miles an hour and had handling and endurance to match. A prototype Tucker had run around a test track for 24 hours and got 25 miles per gallon. When the prototype was rolled at 95 mph to prove how safe it was, the driver walked away from the wreck and the car was driven away after one tire change. The windshield popped out -- as planned.
People loved the Torpedo and wanted to buy them (priced at $2,000, when the average new car cost $1,250). Crowds surrounded the car everywhere Tucker went. His future seemed assured. But commercially, the Tucker was a failure. Preston Tucker's dream to design and manufacture the finest automobile ever made died, not because he couldn't ... (continued)
© Brian E. Faulkner
Image © Brian E. Faulkner
Annual Meeting Video Centerpiece:
Imagine … a world that works perfectly, where all your dreams come true. Where the sky is always blue and the sun always shines. Where everything stays clean and in perfect order. That world … does not exist!
Instead, we’ve got a world of many moving parts: markets, businesses, products, people and challenges. A world that moves at the speed of change and is unforgiving to those who can’t keep up. A world filled with dirty wares and greasy equipment, where clean is only temporary. A world of opportunity.
And that’s where we come in. We are the ones who make things happen. We are the gears that mesh. We are the well-oiled machine that keeps things cleaner … safer … healthier. We are EcoLab. And we are everywhere it matters.
We are the support that helps deliver customer satisfaction. We are peace of mind for our customers. We are the efficient teams and people of excellence who delivery quality … down the road ... and around the world.
We are the people who change the game, who stay ahead of our competitors. We are the innovators, creating solutions for our customers’ needs … today’s and tomorrow’s. We are the solution that saves time, energy, money -- even headaches. Solutions that help keep our customers’ operations cleaner … safer ... healthier. From the front of the house to the back of the house -- and everywhere in between.
Wherever you live and wherever our customers work, we are there, with local solutions to local challenges -- everywhere there’s dirt and grease and grime with an attitude! We are there today and building tomorrow, challenge by challenge, solution by solution, idea by idea. Everywhere it matters.
We are the partners that let our customers know that everything’ is OK … or not, assuring compliance and helping protect them with a new dimension in performance information technology.
We are global, sharing ideas from every region around the world -- ideas that circulate and grow, ideas that morph and change and merge to the pulse of customer need. Ideas that work … (continued)
Imagine … a world that works perfectly, where all your dreams come true. Where the sky is always blue and the sun always shines. Where everything stays clean and in perfect order. That world … does not exist!
Instead, we’ve got a world of many moving parts: markets, businesses, products, people and challenges. A world that moves at the speed of change and is unforgiving to those who can’t keep up. A world filled with dirty wares and greasy equipment, where clean is only temporary. A world of opportunity.
And that’s where we come in. We are the ones who make things happen. We are the gears that mesh. We are the well-oiled machine that keeps things cleaner … safer … healthier. We are EcoLab. And we are everywhere it matters.
We are the support that helps deliver customer satisfaction. We are peace of mind for our customers. We are the efficient teams and people of excellence who delivery quality … down the road ... and around the world.
We are the people who change the game, who stay ahead of our competitors. We are the innovators, creating solutions for our customers’ needs … today’s and tomorrow’s. We are the solution that saves time, energy, money -- even headaches. Solutions that help keep our customers’ operations cleaner … safer ... healthier. From the front of the house to the back of the house -- and everywhere in between.
Wherever you live and wherever our customers work, we are there, with local solutions to local challenges -- everywhere there’s dirt and grease and grime with an attitude! We are there today and building tomorrow, challenge by challenge, solution by solution, idea by idea. Everywhere it matters.
We are the partners that let our customers know that everything’ is OK … or not, assuring compliance and helping protect them with a new dimension in performance information technology.
We are global, sharing ideas from every region around the world -- ideas that circulate and grow, ideas that morph and change and merge to the pulse of customer need. Ideas that work … (continued)
Fashion-Related Product Presentation
It is often called singular and remote, unattainably elegant. Yet at the same time "fashion" must be attainable, must relate to the real world, to "real" people. For very practical reasons, fashion bases its long-term survival on (and in tension with) mass appeal. It is called at once to be set apart and universal, to exist within the rarified atmosphere of haute couture but live as well within the broader society that shapes and defines what it deems "fashionable" for that mood and time.
Fashion, therefore, is in constant revolution -- and not only in the salons of Paris and Milan and showrooms of New York. For decades, cutting-edge style has been shaped just as often in the streets as in the design houses along Seventh Avenue.
We are entering the fashion business at the right time, at the right place and with the right designer as our retailers upscale their presentations in the face of increasing consumer demand for quality and exclusivity. At the same time, designers like Bill Blass are looking to broaden their markets to meet growing consumer demand ... (continued)
© Brian E. Faulkner
It is often called singular and remote, unattainably elegant. Yet at the same time "fashion" must be attainable, must relate to the real world, to "real" people. For very practical reasons, fashion bases its long-term survival on (and in tension with) mass appeal. It is called at once to be set apart and universal, to exist within the rarified atmosphere of haute couture but live as well within the broader society that shapes and defines what it deems "fashionable" for that mood and time.
Fashion, therefore, is in constant revolution -- and not only in the salons of Paris and Milan and showrooms of New York. For decades, cutting-edge style has been shaped just as often in the streets as in the design houses along Seventh Avenue.
We are entering the fashion business at the right time, at the right place and with the right designer as our retailers upscale their presentations in the face of increasing consumer demand for quality and exclusivity. At the same time, designers like Bill Blass are looking to broaden their markets to meet growing consumer demand ... (continued)
© Brian E. Faulkner
Image © Brian E. Faulkner
Client Speech: Stretching the Quality Envelope
The idea of quality is not easy to get your head around. As Phillip Crosby once said, "Quality has much in common with sex. Everyone is for it." Professor Phaedrus, a character in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, put it this way: "I think there is such a thing as Quality, but that as soon as you try to define it, something goes haywire. You just can't do it."
Trying to put your finger on a precise definition of quality is like trying to grasp an eel - or viewing art; you know what you like but that doesn't make it art. As James Burke suggests in The Day The Universe Changed, "The Problem is that what we know changes, and so do we."
And, that ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of our opportunity. Constant flux suggests that quality is a moving target, which makes even the most effective approach to quality management constantly fall short by definition ... (continued)
© Brian E. Faulkner
The idea of quality is not easy to get your head around. As Phillip Crosby once said, "Quality has much in common with sex. Everyone is for it." Professor Phaedrus, a character in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, put it this way: "I think there is such a thing as Quality, but that as soon as you try to define it, something goes haywire. You just can't do it."
Trying to put your finger on a precise definition of quality is like trying to grasp an eel - or viewing art; you know what you like but that doesn't make it art. As James Burke suggests in The Day The Universe Changed, "The Problem is that what we know changes, and so do we."
And, that ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of our opportunity. Constant flux suggests that quality is a moving target, which makes even the most effective approach to quality management constantly fall short by definition ... (continued)
© Brian E. Faulkner