This blog is intended to bring focus to communications as the most powerful success tool. Communications is stating, saying, articulating. Communications is also listening.  But a third powerful component of communications is simply doing – delivering, creating, serving, making – in short, performing and going about one’s daily routine.
 
Not long ago, I had the pleasure of attending an annual dinner for one of the hard-working organizations in our area, a group called Always There. They provide home health care and day care for senior citizens. The event brought more than 125 people from Ulster County, N.Y. to meet and dine at The West Park Winery.
 
A centerpiece to the evening was Always There’s first ever “Making a Difference Award,” which was bestowed on a good friend and client of ours, Steve Aaron, the managing partner and founder of Birchez Associates, LLC.  Steve was recognized for his extensive work in developing affordable housing communities for our senior citizens. He has three beautiful facilities, a fourth headed toward completion this fall, and ideas and plans for even more.
 
Steve doesn’t just throw up structures that provide safe, clean and affordable housing, but he builds facilities that go beyond the minimum specifications required by government agencies that develop the programs for making housing available to those who would otherwise be struggling. Sit in one of his team meetings, and the conversation inevitably turns to how ordinary fluorescent lighting can be enhanced with decorative sconces or how a rec room can be transformed into a community center with capabilities for cooking hot meals.
 
You will find accents like lighting, installations like wired and wireless Internet in every unit, personal training available in the workout area, full kitchens coupled to the community rooms, and more features that go beyond or add to the minimum requirements. All this is reflected in the developments themselves, with little and sometimes no fanfare.
 
Steve not only builds them better but builds them with a vision. They are communities, he says, not developments. His vision? It is to enable the residents to “age in place” with comfort, safety and dignity.
 
“You have to see this,” one of his advisors said calling me. He talked about Birches at Esopus, the latest senior community to open. “It’s like a hotel, a really fine hotel,” he said. “Unless they are living there or have family there, people have no idea what Steve is doing in these structures.”
 
It’s about letting what one does shine, even outshine what one says. When you see an organization like Always There saluting this entrepreneur for his service and accomplishments, or hear salutes from public leaders like Diane McCord, clerk for The Town of Esopus, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, and others who traveled across the state just to join in the recognition, you have an example of the power of communications by doing.
 
Doing, delivering, and performing are fundamental to the integrity of any brand – fundamentals that are too frequently overlooked in our hyperlinked society. Too often the attention is drawn by brands trying to outshout one another. We’re all familiar, too, with the soothing posturing from suppliers who attempt to make emotional connections with assurances of listening that far outperform what they deliver.
 
Truly, the core of every brand is the product or service. It’s leaders like Steve Aaron and his Birchez organization that not only remind us of the importance of performance as the core, but of the power of communications by doing.

Among other things I am worn down by what MSNBC’s banner is calling the AIG Bonus Blame Game — the latest being that the execs at AIG were demanding the bonuses or else they would dump confidences about the company to the competitors.

Maybe others like me are worn down by the headlines, sound bites and the cable news people. I mean worn down!

Contrast these headlines with a story by one of the best bloggers out there, Danah Boyd  in her post yesterday called “random act of kindness.”

This guy gets up from his seat in first class to allow her companion to have the seat, so the couple could fly together. No gimmicks, no follow up… he just did it.

Isn’t that somewhat like what policy leaders probably expected from AIG and all those bankers? Something larger than self.  Maybe random acts of goodness — as in the public interest.