When Steve Jobs gets on stage to introduce the latest innovations from Apple, the presentation you see is very well rehearsed. Jobs and his team fully understand just how critical Jobs himself is to the Apple brand, and they correctly take that very seriously.

Apple's understanding of that brand, and the means by which they grow and cultivate its cult status, makes last week's run-in with a "casual fan" on the Macworld floor all the more perplexing. Jobs, of all people, should know that his brand isn't allowed to take a public break.

If this encounter had truly been with a random fan, the damage likely could have been contained. Unfortunately, Jobs blew off a very prominent blogger, steps away from one of the tech world's most popular bloggers who happened to have a video camera at the ready.

The result? A story well out of proportion with the news itself, but incredibly damaging to Jobs and Apple nonetheless.

Jobs has a reputation for occasional cantankerousness, which is too bad. Small moments can irreparably damage a carefully-crafted, well-considered brand. It's a good reminder for all of us - for ourselves, our employees and our own brands.

I'm clearly going to be quite late to the Twitter game, but here goes. Click here if you want to follow me.

My initial fear and apprehension about Twitter was purely time-based. I can see Twitter sucking up a LOT of time, without the level of ROI I would hope for.

That said, I've seen Twitter evolve into a more interesting means of active and relevant social networking, beyond the high-frequency-posting early adopters and into a group of business network associates that simply want to stay in touch, share information, and occasionally ask each other questions.

We'll see.

Want to read more, but just don't have the time? Let someone else read for you!

It's not crazy. There are a number of tools, most online and many for free, where basically someone else does the "heavy lifting" of reading everything, summarizing what's most important and prescient for you.

In just a few minutes, you can read five daily newspapers.

In just four pages, you can read and entire business book.

In a single screen, you can consume a week's worth of a dozen blogs.

Don't believe me?

- Today's Papers: This feature of Slate has been around for years, but is still among my favorites. Every morning, seven days a week, a Slate staffer reads the five top daily newspapers (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times) and then summarizes what those papers consider news for the day. The column is chock full of links to allow you to read full articles if you want. But this feature alone is the single more valuable tool I've found to keep myself abreast of national, political and world news - all in just a couple minutes each morning.

- The Wall Street Journal's Morning Brief email: Available for subscribers only, this morning email (every day except Sunday) gives a real-time, morning-of summary of what's become news since the print edition went to press the night before. Even more interesting is the bottom-half of the email, which summaries (and links to) news stories from a wide, wide variety of other publications. It's a great way to catch up on interesting news from corners of the publishing world I rarely get to personally, and it takes less than a minute to scan each day.

- ExecuBooks: For just over a dollar a week, this service offers an archive of hundreds of popular business books covering a wide range of topics, all summarized down to 3-4 pages. Most good business books are based on a handful of strong ideas, then fill pages of copy with examples, analysis, the author's further opinion, etc. There's on reason why you can't capture that one strong idea in a couple summarized pages, then move on. Each week, ExecuBooks (a feature of a service called aheadSpace) adds another new release to their library. Summaries are available in various formats for easy reading on the go, or print-outs via PDF for your commute.

- "Best of the Best" Summaries from Blogs: Many blogs feature regular "links" posts, which summaries their take on great related blogging from across the blogosphere. I regularly count on these bloggers to do the heavy-lifting and deep-reading for me, then just scan their summaries for stories I might want to read more about. Blogs in general are a great way to allow other people (with more time) to do your reading for you, but these "best of" posts are like a lightning-round. Some blogs with particularly good summaries are MicroPersuasion (for media/marketing/PR news), LifeHacker (for productivity best practices) and WiseBread (for great personal finance advice).

What have I missed? What services and tools do you count on to summarize news and important information for you? Please share your ideas and suggestions in the comments!

About four years ago, a vacant lot in northeast Bellevue, Washington was turned into a new Whole Foods. This, for better or worse, was a stone's throw away from the building in which I was working at the time.

Very quickly, Whole Foods became a lunch destination almost every day. Never mind that we quickly dubbed it "whole paycheck" for it's crazy prices (sandwich and soup for $14 wasn't unusual). We went anyway.

Jackie wrote yesterday about her week-long experience at Whole Foods, and described how much of the experience is more than just shopping for groceries.

It's theater. It's fun. It's Disneyland for foodies.

Gotta tell ya, I don't go to Safeway just to "look around." But I've done that at Whole Foods.

Their sense of theater isn't just in what's actively happening around you, either. Stand at the end of their meat department and you'll know what I mean. The miles of meat, game, fish and other protein-rich delights - it's just mesmerizing to look at. Throughout the store, their sense of theater is as much in the merchandising and presentation as anything else.

For each of our businesses and brands, there's functional and theatrical potential alike. Most of us live in the functional world - our product does this, it gives you X benefit, etc.

But how do you bring that same product to life? How do you make your customers and prospects want to be closer to it - to touch it, feel it, experience it?

Whole Foods is, essentially, selling the same products and services as Safeway and a variety of other "functional" supermarkets. Yet the experience is 180-degrees different.

Why can't the same happen for you?

For the past couple years, Advertising Age has ranked the top 150 marketing blogs from across the world. What I didn't know until this morning is that they actually rank 539 marketing blogs each year, based on a range of criteria related to the blog's estimated readership, inbound-outbound links, etc.

So, apparently, at least according to Advertising Age, this blog is currently ranked #441 in the world.

Think we can crack the top 400? Maybe I should worry about the top 440 first. Here's the immediate competition (currently ranked #440).

Not sure any of this means anything, but thank you for reading regardless. I never could have made it to 441st place without you.

In all seriousness, check out the very top of the Power 150 here. Some truly fantastic insights, served up free and daily.

The folks over at Sustainable Life Media have been gracious enough to let me write about green marketing best practices from time to time. This month's column focuses on several ways to make your media campaigns more environmentally-friendly, from start to finish.

Special thanks to Mark Jones and Hydrogen Advertising for their help with this.

Next month I'll tackle the idea of green product labels, and how the opportunity to align your products with a demanding "green" consumer is a double-edged sword.

The perils of misleading consumers into thinking your product or service is green (when it's not) are well-documented. It seems the rise in popularity of green products and environmentally-friendly marketing has been paralleled with growing consumer skepticism, and a distrust of green claims by mainstream and emerging companies alike.

Navigating that minefield is no easy task, but William Brent appears up for the challenge. Brent is senior vice president of Weber Shandwick's CleanTech practice, based in Seattle, where he manages a portfolio of clients focused on lessening the impact we have on the world around us.

I asked William to talk about green marketing, what it really means, and what lessons we've learned so far about how to do it well.

How would you define "green marketing?"
It depends how you mean it. The most literal interpretation would be as greening the processes of your company's marketing activities, such as making your direct mail more green (i.e. using recycled paper products, or reducing the size of marketing collateral to use less resources). Or doing a calculation on how much electricity your online ads use and offsetting them.

The other, probably more generally understood way to look at it would be - to put a green spin on your products when marketing them. But that's a recipe for disaster if your products aren't actually green. The worst thing a marketer can do is push a product as green when its not.

Ultimately, just as with any marketing, your position has to be defensible and your business and products have to deliver on whatever you're promising. It's not reinventing the wheel and many of the general rules of marketing apply.

How do green marketing strategies differ from traditional marketing? What's its value, and how do you measure it?
I would argue that the strategies don't differ considerably. Because its an area that tends to bring out strong emotional responses, and therefore increased scrutiny, the only area of strategy that's different, if you can call it that, is the need to be even more sure that you have thought through the entire supply chain/life cycle of the product and your business.

So in that sense, your marketing has to be reflected in your overall business operational processes, which makes green marketing different because it has to be fundamentally aligned to business practices.

How would you describe consumer interest in sustainability right now? Have consumers, in general, moved from awareness to action? If not, what will drive that?
There is a palette of green in the consumer world. You have the "dark green" consumer, all the way to the "light green" consumer, and every shade in between.

You also have the "green curious", who are still not quite green but interested in learning. Awareness is growing across the spectrum, but there has been a lack of good information about how consumers can easily do something meaningful and not disrupt their lives too much.

Gratefully there are a lot of things that consumers can do today that have a big impact but don't cause huge behavioral changes (the kiss of death). In part I think there is a generational gap and geographical gap when talking about drivers. I see a lot of bottom up change when it comes to generations. Kids influencing their parents, and parents in turn influencing their parents.

Then there's the usual dynamic of the two coasts leading, and then acting as a vice grip that squeezes the central part of the country. Ultimately, the recipe for success to create consumer action is providing monetary value (cost savings) without an increase in cost and without requiring a too fundamental change in behavior.

Can brands execute green marketing without making sustainable changes to their products and business practices, and get away with it?
Nope. Certainly, not beyond the short-term.

It wouldn't look very good if a forestry company was reducing its internal paper use, or putting solar panels on the roof of its headquarters while still clear-cutting old growth forest. As someone worked or lived in China for 15 years, I still love to bring out the occasional idiom. As the Chinese say, a butcher does not want to be caught "Hanging a lamb's head but selling dog meat".

A new client comes to you and wants to "green" their marketing. What do you recommend?
First, if you haven't done an audit on your corporate marketing practices and identified ways to make them more green, I would recommend doing that.

Second, if you want to market brand, product, service or whatever as green, make sure they live up to the hype. If they don't meet an acceptable level on the green meter, and you're serious, you will have to retool, in which case you are not talking about marketing, but operation and then it's the CEO/COO, not the CMO. Having a reputable third party to assist in this transition is critical for success, both internally and externally.

I've been a Xobni beta user for just a week, but the new service has already saved me a considerable amount of time, and accelerated my productivity.

In a nutshell, it's a social networking tool and search engine specifically for your email. Based on seven days of use, the best feature by far is its ability to extract every attachment from individual email contacts into a simple sidebar.

Ever search aimlessly through archives and folders in Outlook, looking for a particular document draft, report or other attachment? With Xobni, those searches no longer exist.

I waited a couple months to be invited as a beta user, but you can sign up to join Xobni as well here.

I've set a goal of drinking eight glasses of water a day. Most days I don't quite get there, but instead end up somewhere between 4-6 glasses. But that's a lot more than I averaged last year.

I've also set a goal of reading through the entire Wall Street Journal every day. Most days I don't quite get there, or just skip over certain sections, or some days don't have time to read it at all. But by setting the goal, I'm reading the Journal far more frequently and deeply than I have in the past.

My point is this. Big, audacious goals don't really mean much unless you can break them down into meaningful, actionable, accessible, "little" goals.

This year, I have set goals of reaching and maintaining an ideal body weight, and running a marathon. There are several micro-habits I've chosen to help me achieve each, and drinking more water is one of them.

I also have specific but very aggressive professional goals for this year. Encouraging myself to do the little things, like more consistent reading of key publications, will help me get there.

What's your audacious goal this year, and what are the "little things" you're committed to to get there?

If you asked me to boil down two keys to a successful company, it would be discipline and communication. Each of these functions have multiple applications, but the successful leverage of each is critical to creating and maintaining momentum and growth in any business.

Few people understand this better than Verne Harnish, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and coach to some of the nation's fastest-growth companies. His book, seminars and coaching tools help companies narrow in on the few, critically important things that will fuel exponential growth, empowering those companies with a set of operational tools to achieve success.

If you're new to the Rockefeller Habits, start with my interview with Verne below. If you're thirsty for more, check out his Web site and read the book. Well worth the investment.


You have a 20-second elevator ride to describe The Rockefeller Habits. What are they?
A set of ageless disciplines for keeping everyone aligned, informed, and focused in growing a business. The results of using the habits are dramatic increases in revenue, profit, valuation, while decreasing the time it takes to manage the business so a leader can do more market facing activities.

What do successful, fast-growth companies have in common?
The right people in all functional areas; a focused and differentiated strategy, with a way to block competitors; a disciplined and mistake-free execution process; and they don't run out of cash!!

Why do many fast-growth companies stall in the middle of the hockey stick?
The business, industry, and/or market outgrows the executives running the business - they simply fail to "keep up" via learning and coaching - the best, including the likes of Goldman Sachs executives, receive extensive education and coaching.

How much of success is about execution, vs. strategy & opportunity? Will the right strategy direct itself, or do executives need to focus on tactics as well?
The right strategy can make up for average people and sloppy execution - and if that strategy also has a "catalytic mechanism" as Jim Collins describes in his Harvard Business Review article, then, yes, the strategy will direct itself in a way

You talk a lot about communication and meeting rhythm. Why is that so important?
If you want to move faster, you have to pulse faster. An effective daily meeting rhythm facilitates quicker learning and response. And as human beings, we need talk time to more fully engage our grey matter.

Who else has inspired you as a management guru?
Just look at the extensive faculty we've hosted for our Summits - its why we host them - it takes a village of gurus to educate executives of growth firms - Jim Collins, Seth Godin, Geoffrey Moore, Fred Reichheld, Robert Cialdini, Pat Lencioni, Neil Rackham, Jack Stack, Bob Bloom, Jim Gilmore, etc.

In addition to your book, what should fast-growth company executives be reading?
I have a top list of books, listed by function, on our My Gazelles section of our website - www.gazelles.com - and there are a half dozen key articles listed as well.