When I sat down to watch Invictus last weekend, I expected somewhat of a biography of Nelson Mandela’s vision to reconcile blacks and whites after his election as the first black president of South Africa In 1994. What was totally unexpected was the powerful lesson in the importance of vision, risk taking and passion required in personal leadership.

Vision

Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman, knew that he had to find ways to help

The great basketball coach John Wooden passed away Friday at age 99. His successful career hold lessons for anyone charged with motivating others and leading a team. We drafted the following post for an edition of our bimonthly eNewsletter, the Atkinson Advisor, a few years ago, and thought it would be a good time to revisit Wooden's Pyramid of Success.

John Wooden’s accomplishments as a leader are legendary. Wooden coached UCLA

Every day we see another story about newspapers dying or going to the recycle bin. There is even a website on the subject – Newspaper Death Watch.

Several members of our team recently had the opportunity to hear from Tennessean publisher Carol Hudler and two of her marketing colleagues about the health of Nashville’s daily paper. She refuted several typical myths related to the newspaper business. Here’s what we learned

As anyone who reads online news stories knows, the comments section is the Wild West of the World Wide Web. The following scenario is not improbable:

A simple story about a local lottery winner leads to comments about immigration, which leads to rants about race relations and, ultimately, an indictment of the current administration (regardless of who is in office).

It seems people feel free to say whatever they want, no

I saw the sign above in an airport recently. What we have here is failure to communicate on two levels.

Wouldn't "Yesterday's Airport of Tomorrow" be the airport in which I was standing today? But then a display about "Today's Airport" doesn't sound as sexy. And why would I want to see a display about the airport terminal?

The display is apparently (I didn't take the time to view it) about

Some reflections after three days of continuous television and social media coverage of the flood of 2010:

To Gov. Bredesen -- Thanks for your leadership. Nashville could use every bit of it right now.

To Mayor Dean -- A+ on the response. You were visible, struck the right tone, and managed the communications well. Please remember that crises are ultimately defined by the recovery. Lots and lots of work to do.

To all

In the last post, we discussed the importance of beginning any planning with business goals.

One option is to find the page in your company's strategic plan, copy those goals into the plan, and write the plan. This works.

A better option is to understand the business goals in depth. I recommend that you answer the following four questions and then schedule some time with your CEO and other leaders to hear their answers. The

We usually hear two responses when asking CEOs or other senior executives why they need PR.

The first sounds something like, "Our company need to be more visible." We'll call this Door No. 1.

The second sounds something like, "We need media coverage" or "We need to be in social media." This will be Door No. 2.

Neither door is the right place to start in the process.

Behind Door No.

We finally had a chance to play with the iPad.

It led to an interesting conversation with Bill Seaver about the business implications. You should check out Bill's blog post about what the iPad means for social media.It's good stuff.

Here are some other thoughts on the iPad:

1. It's useful at meetings. The iPhone OS makes it easy to turn the iPad on and off so that you can hop on Google and answer a question

It's been a few days since Undercover Boss (Sundays at 9/8c) aired right after the Super Bowl. We're still a little obsessed with it and like to talk about the show to anyone who will listen.

If you haven't seen it, the premise is simple: The head of a large corporation trades in his suit and tie for a week as he "trains" with several employees in the field (and a documentary crew gets it all on camera). Sunday's