Here we are, sandwiched between the Superbowl, what history may or may not remember as the "caricature riots," and the winter Olympics... so I'll be nice and keep things super short and sweet (for once).

Okay, here we go:

First, check out this fascinating post from Corante's David Wolfe. The post makes some great points about corporate denial, the wisdom of crowds, and the concept of Firms of Endearment.

"To date, I’ve not seen any report of GM officials (...) in which anyone at the top admits to GM being the maker of its present, perhaps life-threatening problems. Such is the resistance of most companies in to look inward for the source of their problems threatening their very existence."

If your company or client isn't doing as well as they could be, it might be because of some internal issues that could be easily fixed. The tough part isn't the fixing. It's the looking in and accepting what's there at face value.

"In our research for Firms of Endearment, the executives of FoEs were united in believing that their greatest competitive advantage was neither product design, nor innovation. Nor was it marketing or service delivery, nor their employees. It was corporate culture."

I'll let you guys decide what you want to make of the second statement. I would love to know how these executives a) define "corporate culture," and b) manage to separate it from employees, product design, innovation and the other elements that are essentially the building blocks of the very thing that is corporate culture. Very, very interesting.

Read the whole post here.

Also be sure to take a look at John Winsor's piece on how to turn solid presentations into good ones. Yep, even if you're a powerpoint guru and a fantastic public speaker, it doesn't hurt to get a few quick pointers from other pros from time to time. John's piece is as short as it is helpful, so click here and take a two-minute refresher course. You won't be sorry. (I promise.)

By the way, here's a great little presentation ice-breaker I found on Mary Shmidt's piece on superbowl advertising:

(...) Department store founder John Wanamaker (died 1922) once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I just don’t know which half.”

Lastly, you absolutely want to go read Chris Carfi's post entitled RSS In The Mainstream.

If - as Malcolm Gladwell tells us - "to understand how things work is to have control over them," then Chris just put us in the driver's seat. (It's a big seat.)

Here's the skinny:

"When the soccer moms, myspace kids, construction workers, and grandmothers can use RSS, commercial email will give way to RSS.

I'd even take it a step further than that. When the soccer moms, myspace kids, construction workers and grandmothers can explain RSS to each other, then we'll be on our way."

Exactly.

Read the whole thing and follow the threads in the post. All of the pieces come together to form a brilliant little "YOU ARE HERE" chapter in the still unwritten history of RSS.

Okay, that's it for today. See? I told you this one would be painless. :)

Don't worry, we'll be back tomorrow with more good stuff.