All of this is a huge duh. So why aren’t more companies concerned about credibility?

They give the word different definitions in different situations. They make it conditional. Like so many other aspects of corporate machinations, management often puts credibility into silos. When it comes to marketing, credibility means one thing. For manufacturing, credibility has another definition. For distribution it means something else. Same for customer service. Of course (and sadly), inside the company, among employees, credibility may have no meaning at all. It is an external-only message to be spun and manipulated into whatever fits this quarter’s earnings goals.

We believe that if we organize and plan our credibility into charts and PowerPoints and bulleted lists, we will have captured it and can store it for future use. But if you have to explain your credibility, you probably don’t have any. That is why real credibility is so sticky – and why manufactured credibility is so slippery.

I don’t have to get up in the morning and decide what my DNA will be today. It is an inherent part of me. It is woven into my fabric and built into my genetic coding. It is who I am. That is how credibility should be. You can’t put it on and wear it around and then take it off and wash it and wear another version tomorrow.

You don’t have to create credibility for your company any more than you have to create DNA in your body. You just have to find it and understand it and not screw it up. Credibility is a lot like breathing. In and of itself, it isn’t too exciting, but the simple act keeps you alive – and as such, it can be smothered.

Finding your credibility and making it sticky is not just the job of branding and marketing. It is everyone’s job, from the CEO to the regional manager to the person answering the phone in customer service. Credibility is not 9-5, it is 24/7 hard work.

Several years ago we worked with a transportation company. They had all kinds of mission statements and mantras and internal branding and external messaging. Far down the line fro the C-suite, one of the truck drivers, however, didn’t talk about his commitment to the mission statement; he lived it. He took care of his customers like they were members of his family. He would personally deliver an important package on his day off or at night. He even used his own vehicle once to bring a package to a customer stuck at the airport. He did what said – and he did a lot more. His passion was so obvious, his customers began to invite him to family functions and he became more than a delivery guy to their business. He was a problem solver. He made his company’s credibility stick to everyone he came in contact with.

He didn’t always follow the rules. He refused to fit in a corporate silo (and there were plenty inside this company). He didn’t sit in management meetings. He never gave a presentation. He didn’t talk about credibility. All he did was put proactive action to work solving customer’s problems. He never talked about the future. He was too busy delivering the now. He also outlasted several CEO’s.

Sometimes, credibility comes down from the company’s executives. Sometimes it comes up in a truck.

First, it’s really not complicated, or it shouldn’t be; it’s just difficult for many people to fully wrap their minds around. Part of innovation is common sense, and for some reason when some people get to work, they stop being consumers – as they are in their normal life – and start spewing the company line.

I will dispense with using Apple as an example because it’s just too obvious. There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been said a million times about the most innovative company in the world (as voted year after year by executives around the world).

It’s almost too easy to look at Google and Nike as innovators as well. GE and Target clearly fit that description as they have innovated their way to the top in several categories, as has Toyota, Starbucks, and Southwest Airlines. Even old standby, Warren Buffet, continues to innovate his way to the top of those Most Innovative Companies lists.

Granted, as of late, many of the innovative companies I have mentioned have reported down stock prices. Apple, Target, and Starbucks among them. But Steve Jobs at Apple has been there before and knows how to innovate his way out of a slump. Howard Shultz is back at the helm at Starbucks and they are going back to what made them an icon in the first place (like grinding their beans in the store and focusing on an intensely personal and unique coffee experience). Retail is tough all over so even innovative Target isn’t totally immune.

Over the last five years, Proctor & Gamble has turned the aircraft carrier around by actually listening to their customers in a deep and meaningful way, using innovative new practices to turn that learning into profits. In a forthcoming book, The Game Changer, A.G. Lafley, P&G CEO since 2000, talks about how innovation changed the giant consumer products company once they started to really know and understand their consumers better.

Heinz CEO, Bill Johnson managed his way through a near takeover by corporate activist, Nelson Peltz, by using innovative tomato technology and some focused innovative thinking in focusing the nearly 140 year-old Pittsburgh giant. Sometimes innovation can look as simple as turning a ketchup bottle upside down with the dispenser on the bottom.

Recently, I have been flying all over the country examining and shooting innovative health care technologies, talking to leading bioengineering experts, learning from cutting-edge clinical web portal and pharmaceutical innovators – one thing is becoming apparent: Innovation is easier to talk about than execute.

It also scares the pinstripes off a lot of people in corporate America because it is often unruly and doesn’t play well with our preconceived notions. Sometimes it leaves the cube and goes down the hall and starts trouble that saves a company’s bottom line but scares the companies top management. Innovation makes people uncomfortable. It pokes at their insecurities and irritates their prejudices and messes with their 9 to 5 workdays because innovation doesn’t do lunch, doesn’t take vacations, and keeps people up at night.

If innovation was your neighbor, it might be the one you are uncomfortable inviting over for dinner because once it shows up, you are never the same. Think, Jesus, Ghandi, Buda, Martin Luther King; you might say you’d love to have a chat with them but I promise you they will push your buttons and you will leave that conversation on edge.

So what does this ubiquitously overused word “innovation” truly mean?

At its foundation, it means change. It means exactly what Apple says in their tagline: Think different.

With the average MBA costing between $80,000 and $130,000, maybe innovation is getting your MBA from GE or Intel or Johnson & Johnson instead of a university. If you and 100 of your friends paid GE 130 grand each (that puts you in the top tier of their customers) and if you asked their executives to develop a two year program that allowed you to learn about how to navigate and grow and innovate inside the machinery of a real business, up close and personal in a serious, on-the-front-lines experience, what would they say? Ask them. They mentored Six Sigma into every company that manufactures anything including service. With doubts being published every day about the intrinsic value of the current MBA, such an MBA from a innovative company would be worth every dime of your $130,000 and more.

What if the nation’s top 1000 propulsion engineers were hired by a billionaire (who wanted to have his image carved on Mount Rushmore) to launch the innovation project that would wean us from oil (foreign or otherwise), and give us clean and endless energy forever? It means we aren’t trapped by the current Middle East crisises (many of out own doing). Naive? Wait and see..

Albert Einstein, a patent clerk (who couldn’t even get hired as a high school science teacher), sat down and solved the deepest problems of time and space using nothing more than the space between his ears and a pencil and paper. Why do you need a PowerPoint presentation? Garrison Keillor doesn’t need one to tell a compelling story. He just needs that story.

Why is it that Southwest Airlines can run a profitable and legendarily popular airline when almost everyone else is near bankruptcy? It is innovative thinking and precise execution of those innovations.

Innovation is not one thing; it is everything. For innovation to work, everything has to matter. You have to be willing to do what it takes, change your mind, adjust your thinking, shift your paradigm. And it may not be pretty. Innovation hurts sometimes. Building muscle means you have to tear down the current unworked muscle so it grows back stronger. It’s hard work and you will be sore.

Maybe you watched the recent HBO miniseries: John Adams. Abigail Adams understood that without the proper defense her family could die of smallpox. At the time, the only known inoculation against the dreaded disease was to infect yourself with cowpox, which, in effect, gave you immunity to smallpox. But that inoculation was a crude and painful ordeal at the time. Frankly, it was gross beyond description. It involved scratching puss from an infected cowpox pustule, cutting your arm and rubbing the puss into the wound. What followed was horrid and painful because you are basically volunteering for cowpox – not the most pleasant way to spend a month. But it saved lives. Similarly, once you have successfully infected yourself with innovation, you increase your chances of being immune to failure.

There is no patented answer for innovation. It’s like a correct answer; it depends on the question. Every company has the need for different kinds of innovation and there are as many flavors of innovation as there are ways to fail.

Open your mind, look at everything you are doing, question everything, simplify complicated processes, connect with employees and customers in the straightest line; engage everyone inside and outside of your company. But start with yourself. Innovation begins at the end of this sentence. Now what?

Just when you thought America’s infatuation with coffee was exhausted, along comes the next generation of bean purveyors with a twist. Except the twist is really pretty stupidly simple (which, if you know me, is my motto on almost everything branding and business).

Intelligentsia Fresh Roasted Coffee is about good coffee, grown, shipped, roasted, and brewed right. Seems too simple to work as a premise. And that is the premise exactly.

Intelligentsia has been making news for a while now (since the mid 1990’s), if you live in Chicago or Los Angeles. Here at the start of 2008, however, accolades have been rolling in faster than it takes to brew the perfect cup, which, for this indie roaster and coffeehouse, is an every cup experience.

Los Angles Magazine voted them one of 2008 Best New Restaurants because of their “life-changing brew.” Forbes ranks them in the ten best coffee houses in the United States. Women’s Health magazine listed them as the Best Cup of Joe. The New York Times pumped them up with a great review, calling Intelligentsia’s $3 cappuccino a “work of art,” and touting the Clover (that makes it) “a machine with a cult following.”

Only in 2008 could machines have cult followings.

Doug Zell believes that coffee is as nuanced as fine wine. Well, at least his is, anyway. Founded by Zell, Emily Mange, and Geoff Watts, Intelligentsia is all about perfection in the basics. And this little coffee-that-could company is big time about Direct Trade with the growers themselves. Social responsibility and a commitment to sustainable methods are more than cover songs for this band of coffee fanatics. It’s their core truth, just as much as that simply perfect cup of java. Then again, this is not a new story in coffee.

So when you get down to the last drop, what is it about the hottest Joe in town that makes it different from the other hot coffee-craze roasters?

Exquisite taste.

Really? Aren’t all good coffees about that?

This one is different according to those who swear by it.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? How could something that freakishly simple and obvious be the cause of such buzz about Intelligentsia?

Maybe it’s because they actually deliver it.

Let’s see, they have an inspired vision (be it simple and obvious), make

good on their promise – and they don’t stop there. They deliver the taste

every step along the way.

Align and Glue. Align and Glue.

Intelligentsia took their simple vision and aligned it at every point in the process and Glued those points to those little nodules on that reptilian part of your brain that Starbucks first tweaked all those years ago.

That is called branding.

When you do it right, you succeed. If what we’re reading in every publication in the country is correct, Intelligentsia is success with a double-shot of caffeine affogato style.

These people talk about their Roasters (the human Roasters, not the machines, and yes, they capitalize the R word) like skilled painters or professional athletes. The roasting machines are equally legendary in status – handmade, vintage 1950’s era, cast iron perfection built in Stuttgart, Germany. Can you say, “Porsche?”

They don’t over-roast the pampered green beans into charred little pucks either. I won’t go into how many new coffee companies have throwndown on Starbucks for their roasting strategy. Not to defend Starbucks (they hardly need my defense), but that dark roasting has worked pretty darned well for the big guy, considering.

Intelligentsia keeps the interest going with a brewing process using the Clover (of the cult following), an $11,000 perfect brewing wet-bean dream (only 68 Clovers in the US). It brews like a French press without the sediment and squeezes a cup of perfection so subtle; women cry and old men rewrite their wills to leave their earthly possessions to this mechanical java divination contraption.

Here’s my take: Before Starbucks turned a commodity into a passion; before Howard Shultz made it nationally acceptable to pay outrageous moolah for a cup of bean juice, we looked at the drippings from ground brown as a cheap buzz.

Precise execution of a simple concept built on focused branding turned one of man’s most basic beverages into the phenom we now see as Starbucks. Constant aligning and Gluing that brilliant Starbucks brand to a unique customer experience made Starbucks into the ubiquitous visible target everyone sips today. Starbucks even owns the smell of roasted coffee because few people had ever smelled such a thing before. Starbucks’ extreme coffee makeover made old Joe sexy – and expensive.

We can all attack them, as we often attack Wal-Mart, but there is a reason why they are attackable: Like it or not in hindsight, they redefined existing categories and redefined our experiences with those categories. Starbucks aligned and Glued a lot.

Would Target ‘s success be possible without the demise of Sears and the ascension of Wal-Mart? Would Intelligentsia and Storyville coffee be possible without Starbucks? Would Starbucks be possible without Peet’s?

Would any of them be possible without visionary aligning and strategic Gluing?

Using data mining to determine and predict when and where crime will happen, they allocated resources (officers) to the times and areas (crime). It stuck.

This is yet another example of the common sense of Glue. There is a point in every transaction, be it a conversation, ad, sale or other contact, where Glue must be applied or there will be loose ends to possibly deal with later. And later is always more expensive than now.

That dedicated focus on the Glue “moment” often means the difference between success and failure, profit or loss. Clearly, Glue is sticky, but not if it’s never applied. And if it’s applied to a misaligned transaction or process, it is just as sticky, causing as many problems as no Glue at all. If you put Super Glue on a broken vase after aligning the broken parts correctly, it bonds and solves your problem. If you Super Glue your finger to your posterior, it bonds and causes a problem. Same in business.

Some companies are making business software more like a video game in order to align and Glue their product to their customers. Creating a habitually more satisfying product (a $4 cup of joe at Starbucks) increases the odds of more sales, because people like using it daily and tell others as well (you like the joe, Starbucks likes the $4). So Glue is not just one thing, it’s everything.

What may be powerful Glue for you may be totally un-sticky for someone else (why you need a Gluru). That’s why it requires some research and homework and data mining and experience and talent.

In wrestling (real wrestling, not the pro version), there is a technique called “chain wrestling” in which an opponent connects one move smoothly to the next without stopping, making many moves into one flowing, multifaceted move. By Gluing one move to a totally different kind of move, end-to-end, in a fluid attack, the wrestler creates a nearly unbeatable system that puts even stronger challengers on the defensive and gives the chain wrestler a massive winning advantage. Chain wrestling from a skilled opponent takes luck and strength out of the equation and is extremely difficult to defend against.

What we’re talking about here is basically “corporate chain wrestling:” Gluing one practice, process and function to the next in an aligned flow of unbeatable attack on the competition. Chain wrestling is not Glue, but Glue makes it possible.

Remember the old BASF ads? “We don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” ®

That’s Glue. It is the contact point, the moment, the bond, the connection of one thing to another that makes both of them work better.

Online brokers, like Charles Schwab and E*Trade, have applied Glue to younger investors by offering higher-interest checking accounts and working harder to get all of an investor’s money, instead of the old a la carte investment strategy in which one bank has your checking, one your savings, a broker does your investments, a mortgage company does you home, etc. By Gluing a high-interest checking account to a younger customer audience, online brokers are aligning and connecting to a potential lifetime investment relationship.

That relationship takes Glue, like a marriage. And just like a marriage, when things get unaligned and unglued, attorneys get rich.

To industry giants back in the day, Wal-Mart seemed like a small, podunk retailer. Then it embraced cost-cutting technology with the passion of a rabid accountant so it could offer its customers the absolute lowest prices and gain a massive competitive advantage.

Granted and even admitted, Wal-Mart committed some serious judgment errors in management style and a few practices, and has been called on the carpet for those miscues. Generally, it has also addressed those miscues (as good businesses do) and moved forward. But those mistakes don’t change the revolutionary chain of sticky innovations that recreated how stores operate top to bottom. Wal-Mart blazed new trails in retail and most follow it now. Wal-Mart’s Glue is so sticky that the name has become a verb: “Let’s go Wal-Marting.” “That store got Wal-Marted.”

Wal-Mart pioneered supply-chaining in a way that laid low the old ways of retailing and made Mr. Sam and those near him richer than anyone outside of Bill Gates’ immediate family. This horizontal approach flattened the world of retail and flattened Wal-Mart’s competitors at the same time.

Wal-Mart succeeds in all those towns because of its commitment to processes that bring customers lower prices. That takes Glue at every link in the supply chain. Wal-Mart has shelves filled with Glue. Like it or hate it, Wal-Mart has Glued its brand to the ones who matter most: Customers. That one focused, bonding, business practice has allowed it to overcome dozens of mistakes.

Mr. Friedman’s flat worldview tells the historic and economic tale of how service and manufacturing and supply chain expansion into low-cost places like India and China have made the world smaller and made us all run faster just to stay in place. There are evidences of much Glue in his tale as well, and although he doesn’t specifically mention them as Glue (Glue is our definition), the evidence is everywhere.

India is using Glue when it turns its trained and skilled high-tech workers loose on industries that used to be American-based. Your income taxes are likely being done for your accountant in India via blind digital Internet sources. Lead-based toys and tainted food aside, China has Glued its economy into the flattening world manufacturing and supply chain scenario using the advantage it has: Motivated human capital. When China gets the kinks worked out, the Glue will flow.

More is at work here than just low prices and cost-cutting. To make both of those things a permanent fixture in their outsourcing revolution, India and China have found a million points of Glue to align this successful undertaking on a worldwide scale.

It is no accident that America and India and China and Korea (Hyundai) are getting along so well. It’s just Glue at work.

The Japanese automaker began in America about 50 years ago with a Land Cruiser and a Corona. It’s easy to look at the success of this automotive giant and assume it was always so, but Toyota started out as a small loom shop to manufacture fabrics. How times have changed, and Toyota changed them.

Here’s a sales fact that brings Glue into perspective: In 2006, J.D. Powers measured the “retail return rate” of American automobile sellers – that is, the number of days a car sits on a dealer’s lot before it is turned over to a customer. Toyota (including its Lexus and Scion brands) averaged 27 days. BMW averaged 31; Honda averaged 32; Ford averaged 82; GM was at 83 and Daimler-Chrysler (before they sold the company) automobiles averaged 107 days on a dealer’s lot.

That is the definition of sticky. Toyota is Glued to the customer. Are Chrysler, Ford and GM more Glued to their own dealers?

Toyota doesn’t think in terms of months or quarters. It thinks long term. Ten years ago, using basically the same information about buyer trends, Toyota decided to create hybrid technology and Ford decided to make big SUVs. Short term, the SUVs did well. Long term, Ford is in trouble while Toyota is settling into the number-one-automaker-in-the-world position.

How did Toyota use Glue to do this? It dedicated itself to its customers’ desires for a vehicle that worked and was built to not come apart. If that sounds stupidly simple, watch Hyundai, because it has taken that thinking to a rubber-meets-the-road mentality as well. That takes extreme alignment across continents and oceans and cultural and language barriers. Glue has no language, it knows no ocean and it recognizes no country. It just sticks one thing to another. That’s how Koreans and Southerners can work together in that giant Hyundai factory in Montgomery, Alabama – the most sophisticated auto plant in the world. Toyota helped start that Asia-America manufacturing highway.

Toyota Glued itself to the American worker, and has no union issues or legacy of health care costs to pass along to customers. It spends $20 million a day on R&D, trying to understand exactly what American customers want and how to give them a better automobile and a better automobile experience. It sees no difference between the two. It aligned its internal and external and Glued them together early on. Toyota still does it every day.

Here’s how dedicated Toyota is to this sticky proposition. Yuji Yokoya, chief engineer for the redesign of the Sienna minivan, made it his personal job to drive a Toyota minivan in every state in this country, every province in Canada and as much of Mexico as he could get to. He drove over 53,000 miles to understand how people used the minivan and how it handled in every imaginable condition. Then he built it – and it stuck because he Glued it to the customer first.

Same with the new Tundra. Chief engineer Yuichiro Obu and project manager Mark Schrage took a different tack, but one no less sticky. They knew Texas buyers wanted two-wheel-drive trucks and farmers in Montana wanted 4-wheel drive, because they went there and worked with them in their trucks. The knew guys wore gloves so the knobs in the cabs had to be bigger and easier to get ahold of. They discovered that contractors use their trucks as their office, so they built in file hangers in the doors and laptop accommodations.

Toyota sought out professional truck users, the trend-setters in the truck market, and catered to them. It aligned and Glued the Tundra to the early adopters, taste-setters for this type of vehicle.

This is not an unusual practice. But Toyota took it even further. Toyota built that truck plant right in the middle of Texas, where trucks are God on four wheels, and upped the ante by flying the Texas state flag out front.

Toyota sends guerilla teams in their Tundras to construction sites with beverages and donuts and truck beds-full of smart, subtle branding. Guys on the site test-drive the Tundra. Many have never driven anything but a Silverado or an F-150. Toyota is Gluing down the road.

Toyota is Gluing itself to fishing tournaments and NASCAR and country music with Brooks and Dunn sponsorships. This is All-American Truckville brought right to your inner psyche.

Toyota has done this undercover branding to its target before. The Scion went after edgier youth with totally untraditional designs and marketing and something else – limited production, to make them scarce. Glue takes many shapes.

GM knew similar things about truck customers, but it didn’t connect the dots with Glue. The devil is in the details – and so is the Glue.

Sure, Toyota made mistakes (there were some recalls for faulty parts), but it quickly addressed them in a painless way for customers and moved on. JetBlue may be studying Toyota’s fix strategy as I type. It could certainly do worse. So could many other companies.

Instead of covering up problems like too many companies, Toyota looks for ways to point them out so they can be addressed. It’s a point of pride. There will be problems. Toyota gets them in the open and fixes them. Productivity is Glued to efficiency and the result is quality – and sales and profits and diehard customer loyalty.

Toyota can refit a plant to manufacture a new vehicle in about 16 days. Less downtime adds about $100 million to sales numbers. It creates efficiencies not so it can pocket the profit but so it can make a nicer dash or more comfortable seats or a more refined interior or a tighter fit and finish or build in more durability – Gluing more customers to its brand.

Toyota’s quality is so legendary GM may not even be able to catch up to it, much less beat it. Toyota’s Glue is just that sticky.

So is its flexibility. Many manufacturers have a few packaged models outfitted with certain options. The Toyota Tundra comes in 31 different arrangements.

Innovations are standard equipment and quality is off the charts. Toyota puts as much importance on the process of designing and making automobiles as it does the automobiles themselves. Assembly line Glue sticks tightly to people in the showroom.

Toyota has been extremely fortunate to have a string of great leaders. And nothing is stickier than leadership. Toyota’s leadership Glued the brand to an entire generation of American customers and they never went back to GM, Ford and Chrysler. If hindsight is 20-20, what is foresight?

Toyota has already built its vehicles to accommodate the larger battery capacity for a plug-in hybrid. It is ready, installing Glue now for the future.

Some other manufacturers have their own powerful Glue, namely Honda. Toyota is not incapable of mistakes (it didn’t get the truck market right for years and missed the youth market completely until Scion). However, its steady pace is built on Gluing at every contact point. And it reconnects unashamedly and quickly after a misaligned effort and Glues it back in tight.

Glue holds things together because it’s sticky. Duh. Seems obvious. But too many companies try everything else before they Glue. And there is no shortage of theories to try.

Sometimes they get a slight improvement from their varied efforts, but a relapse of failure follows because Glue is not a theory – it’s a discovery. For 25 years, we have worked with companies and watched success and failure on large and small scales. We have seen CEOs with MBAs from prestigious universities run successful companies into the ground. We have watched as people without even an undergraduate degree build extremely successful companies and brands. The difference was, the successes were built on the principles of Glue.

Glue is not a matter of education. It’s a matter of inspiration and execution. Glue is about truth and passion mixed with dedication and hard work. Glue is about outsmarting the competition, not outspending them.

After spending a lifetime as corporate voyeurs, we started noticing a pattern in how companies succeed or fail with their branding efforts. After reading a library of management books and talking to hundreds of CEOs, CFOs CMOs, CBOs and thousands of employees across dozens of companies and even more consumers, customers and average people on the street, we began to put an equation together that formed the framework of success.

Here’s what we found:

Successful CEOs search out the truth of their companies, organizations or brands. They never try to make up a reason for being. They want the real thing, straight up and pure. So they look everywhere for it – inside, outside and even with the competition. When they find it, they know they have a solid core, a firm foundation to build on. Sometimes, this truth is in the CEO’s own core and the reason he or she started the company to begin with (Leatherman, JetBlue, Starbucks, etc). Other times, the CEO must go on a corporate archeological dig to uncover it.

The result of such a search is not a mission statement, but an inspired, unassailable, compellingly relevant reason for being – the chorus of the song or the hook of a tune or plot for the brand or company story. With this unique core-truth firmly in place, they create a unique vision around that truth and begin the process of inspiring management to understand and grasp and believe the vision. This aligning of inspired vision with inspired execution is the first Glue opportunity, and is the starting point for the journey ahead. This seminal moment is Glued into the fabric of the brand with inspirational, creative rallying communication – not unlike America’s national anthem — which pulls everyone together, connects people to each other and the company and gives everyone a singular, corporate cultural experience.

With the CEO deeply involved in the process, the alignment begins first inside the company with its own people. Great effort is made to make sure everyone understands and believes the vision and is inspired to live the vision every day. The corporate anthem is communicated until it is second nature. This is accomplished by various connection points across the organization. It’s less of an internal branding effort than a brand “revival,” where people are brought into the congregation and made to feel the experience in religious terms (as strange as that sounds). Successful companies have this deep-seated belief and quasi-religious commitment to their people and success. They have a bond with each other and to the company and brand that is simply non-existent in most companies where people just have a job.

Those connections are where we started noticing the phenomenon we call Glue.

Glue connects and rebuilds broken parts of an organization, a company, a team or a group. Glue sticks business models and accounting to human profiles and company profiles and branding and HR and sales and advertising and operations and distribution. Glue dispenses with the theory and goes straight for the results.

As we studied this thing called Glue, we discovered that it is not just internal, but crosses over to the customer and potential customers. In fact, the Glue that holds the internal to the external is a giant pivot point build to withstand pressure and turmoil from either side, much like an aircraft wing keeps a plane in flight and steady even during turbulence.

Glue affects every single part of a company – always connecting the internal people to the external consumer. Glue is about connecting or reconnecting employees and management, to be sure. But it’s also about connecting or reconnecting brand promises and brand experience. It’s about connecting internal with external and operations with sales and distribution delivery. Glue is ultimately about reconnecting with results, and results can’t be separated from profits.

When a company is successfully aligned and Glued inside and outside, it has the highest degree of success potential.

Maybe this sounds like some academic explanation of the obvious. Truth is, it is obvious, so obvious that few companies even consider it. No model airplane gets made without Glue. No model success story gets made without it. Glue works because it’s not a business process, it’s a life process. It goes beyond business and fills emotional needs and rational wants. When you Glue your company or brand to your customers, you have created the bond that survives tough times. And there is never a shortage of those.

The latest, greatest technological advancements like automated telephony and Internet communications systems haven’t detoured the number one reason a customer leaves a service provider (of any kind, from cell phones to banks to credit cards): Customer experience. I predict the Chief CE officer will soon be the most important chair in a company next to CEO. It should be now.

A company that doesn’t keep its eye on customer experience will soon have no customers to experience. It may take a while to dismantle a company that fails at the “Big C,” but customer experience will kill a company as dead as Abe Lincoln if left unGlued. In fact, 62 percent of customers recently surveyed said customer experience was worse in all companies than it was five years ago.

Technical advancements are not a replacement for a customer experience person who has the information, the tools and the authority to actually help a customer before or after a sale. Often, companies are good at one of those three. It’s not a best-two-out-of-three game. You have to win at all of them. That takes Glue.

This will sound familiar: 54 percent of customers polled said that most of their customer experiences were like being stuck in bad traffic and being forced to take time-consuming detours when you can see a short cut, but the people in charge have rules that don’t allow them to help you get to your destination.

Ah, the rules. Got to have rules. But there is really only one rule in 99 percent of customer service transactions: The Customer Rules. When you forget that rule, all of your other rules become unruly.

There was once a very good customer experience guarantee: “You will be satisfied or your money back.” Period. End of rule.

That was before cell phone companies, banks, airlines, me, you, us and them automated our robotic answering systems and buried every human in a “Press 1 for more options than you can imagine and less service than you deserve” purgatory.

All too often, the customer experience rule is this: No matter why the customer calls, make sure it is the most time-consumingly miserable experience they have ever had. Put them on hold often. Make them wait and wait; maybe they will hang up, give up and pay up. Make sure they get absolutely nothing they want, even if it makes perfect sense and costs the company nothing.

That sounds like what more than half of consumers feel when they call that dreaded toll-free number. That kind of research is so prevalent, it’s free on Google.

“It’s not a toll-free number, really,” said a woman in Virginia. “The toll is huge. It takes a toll on your patience, sanity and common decency. If you have never cursed, then call a customer service line, especially if you have small children you have to take care of. You will feel like a sailor in an hour when you finally get off the phone. And you will have accomplished nothing except a rise in your blood pressure and a hatred of your fellow human beings.”

Here are some ugly customer service numbers:

• 75% said their customer service experience was negative
• Nearly 100% had a negative reaction to outsourcing the customer service to a third-party call center
• 70% said the representative was unable to solve problems
• 55% said reps tried to sell other products instead of helping with the issue
• 50% said customer service was inflexible
• 50% said response was slow
• 52% of customer service reps were not personable
• 48% mentioned one-size-fits-all solutions
• 40% said computer was down
• 53% of college students didn’t like automated calling systems
• 78% of adults didn’t like automated calling systems

One customer in New York said, “It seems like companies are training younger customers to expect less, so the future looks bleak for customer experience to get better.”

Customer experience guru Ernan Roman has spent 31 years advising companies about their customer service. Here is his Customer Service Bill of Rights:

As a customer I have the right:

1. To have my precious time respected by the company’s customer service department in every situation and to have my issue resolved in a single phone call or e-mail by one representative who speaks clearly, is easy to understand and has access to my customer records.

2. To be treated with courtesy and respect as a customer who paid money to the company with the expectation of customer service that cares about my individual needs.

3. To have adequately trained representatives who know enough to actually solve my problem and who will provide me with a case number I can use for a credit if I do not receive great service, as well as the ability to call back or e-mail the same representative should the need arise.

4. To receive quality customer service — including an easy-to-use menu with a minimum of clutter to quickly reach a representative — OR be compensated for my time and effort.

5. To have rapid access to a live person from a company with sufficient staff so I am not kept waiting on-hold for more than 10 minutes, or I will receive a negotiable credit on my next bill. I also have the right to receive a negotiable credit on my next bill from the company if the first customer service rep does not have my records or cannot solve my problem and has to transfer me.

6. To receive a negotiable credit on my next bill from the company if I have to speak with more than 2 customer service representatives trying to resolve my issue. I also have the right to receive a negotiable credit on my next bill from the company if I ask for a supervisor and none is available,

7. To receive a negotiable credit on my next bill from the company if I am billed incorrectly and I have to call or e-mail to fix the problem, or I am given the wrong information to fix my problem by any of their representatives, compelling me to call back or send another e-mail.

To make a customer service shift in the direction of what Mr. Roman writes above, you will need to Glue the internal components of your people, processes and telephony systems to your external customers’ needs and desires. How many meetings will that take? One, if you inspire people the first time.

Steve Jobs is not just a visionary computer guru, he seems to be a visionary music guru and retail guru and cell phone guru. Fact is, Jobs is what I would call a Gluru – a person who knows how to align internal to external products, people and processes while understanding exactly where to put the Glue between all of those things for maximum effect.

He simplified the entire computer experience years ago, put thousands of tunes in our pockets; he’s going to likely turn the cutthroat cell phone business on its earpiece (even with early glitches). And this recent retail success shows that operations people can be visionaries, too. In fact, they
have to be.

Look at Target, Amazon and Best Buy to see more Glued retail experiences. These companies and brands are Glurus at attracting people with a memorably good customer experience.

Vineyards are Gluing to consumers faster than vines grow. Tea manufacturers are as well. Then there’s the food at Chipotle.

Steve Ells, the iconoclastic founder of the tastefully exploding fast food restaurant (based on his impressions of taquerias in San Francisco), has Glued us all to his fresh way of making Mexican food. He started in 1993 with the hope of creating cash flow so he could open the “serious” restaurant he’d dreamed of. What he did was turn Chipotle into one of the most serious success stories in fast food. If you haven’t tasted one of his items, stop reading and go do it right now.

Glurus uncover, define or unleash a strong vision and inject it into their internal culture through inspiration and communication. Then they align their vision-inspired internal culture with their external branding, advertising, messaging and overall customer experience and Glue the points of contact between all of these components. This bonding of people and processes inside and outside of these retail organizations is the Glue that creates sales opportunity and customer loyalty.

Rick Rubin, the legendarily astute music producer and culture guru (and now president of Columbia), has always been a Gluru when it comes to understanding what people want to hear. He says radio is no longer the vehicle for launching music and new artists. So besides the obvious Web distribution angle, he’s doing it on TV shows. Watch TV these days and listen for the hot new song on “ER,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “AMC,” whatever. He is Gluing his music to his audience by going through other media.

There is more than one way to Glue a category. You just need to have the vision and be ready to Glue that vision to your consumer.

Nielsen Company reports – in the first in-depth study of DVR habits – that while there are many traits surrounding DVR usage, a huge number of people are not fast-forwarding through the commercials like everyone thought. In fact, many aren’t even time-shifting the shows; they’re watching them in real time – commercials and all.

According to the new research, two-thirds of the nearly 15 million DVR users watch the commercials. Even the skippers are watching 40 percent of the commercials they could skip. Why? They like commercials that grab their attention.

This is now starting to open up a new thinking from the undertakers who were trying to bury the undead body of TV advertising, because even the advertisers and agencies figured commercials were being FF’d.

For all of the YouTubing hype and podcasting proliferation, the Internet hasn’t stomped the old tube just yet. TV still holds a prominent place in our living rooms and lives. But things are changing in other ways, just like how radio didn’t die when TV came along, it just changed to something else and, with satellite radio, is still changing.

If DVRs haven’t killed TV commercials, what have they done to the 30-second chunks of capitalism? It’s made some trends we already knew about more critical. For instance, the first commercial in a pod and the last commercial are the two most-watched slots. That’s always been true. The middle commercials are in the worst slots. DVRs have made those two positions even stronger, because even the people who zap commercials usually don’t zap those two because they are hugging the show on both ends. Seems that those two spots should be selling at a premium, doesn’t it? But so far, they are not.

Many people say they only FF the commercials if the ads don’t interest them. So what if the first commercial in the pod sucks? Bad news for the others. A bad first commercial often gets the others zapped – death by association. In hard-core business sense, it means that if you don’t create a killer spot, you are wasting your money because if it is uninteresting, zap. The riskiest thing you can do is safe branding.

This is survival of the smartest branders. Knowing what we know, unless they start separately selling those two premium positions in the commercial pods (instead of just buying time on a particular show), the good spots will always get the lead and end positions. The junk will get tossed in the zappable middle. You’ll need to make creative commercials or risk getting trash time – and trash time costs the same as the good stuff right now. Something to think about.

Why does all of this matter, besides the fact that the death of TV commercials has been greatly exaggerated?

Glue.

A truly interesting commercial is the Glue that sticks you to the viewers. You may say, “Duh. That’s always been true.”

Hardly.

Watch commercials. There are still hundreds of millions of dollars worth of truly dull spots built around over-researched selling points or just plain old client fear. Interesting commercials are the only ones you need to spend money on. Maybe that sounds obvious. But having worked in advertising for decades, I can tell you it is not.

DVRs are growing toward the tipping point. They are now used mostly by more affluent people. But younger people are the ones adopting them quickly and, as they grow into adults, the thing will tip. Will you get zapped? Or Glued?