The parties go their separate ways, somewhat unsatisfied and slightly indignant.  And for years to come, they will restate their case over coffee and cocktails on soccer sidelines and at holiday dinners.

Such is disparagement, circa 2006.

Now enter Facebook and Twitter.  An online community can come together and unite against your oafishness, and the next thing you know Demi Moore is tweeting about you.

Try explaining to your new eHarmony friend why Google results 1-10 of about 478,000 say you’re a dirt bag.  Go adopt a dozen cats, because you’re going to be single for a long time.

Now put that in a business context, using as an example a local hospital.  Its nurses and other health professionals walked off the job March 31 in a good old-fashioned labor dispute.  At issue besides the usual—pay raises, health benefits, etc.—is something new, what workers are calling a “gag clause.”

In point of fact, it’s a non-disparagement clause, an age-old legal tactic designed to discourage adversaries from bashing each other publicly.  It’s legalese that’s appearing in contracts more and more.

A point of disclosure, I run a public relations agency.  For more than two decades, I’ve represented management, never labor, whenever there’s been a dispute.  I’m particularly successful doing so, I think, because as a child of divorce, I see and appreciate the merits of both sides.  In labor disputes as in life, the better the communications counsel, the faster the resolution.

But here we have employees who adamantly want to preserve their freedom to advocate for patients—I might even suggest their duty—without fear of reprisal.

On the other side, we have a hospital whose mission and business model is based on delivering the highest quality of patient care.

Psst.  Guys, you want the same thing.

More precisely, this is about what each side doesn’t want.  Nurses don’t want their employer dictating what they can and cannot say about their workplace.  Guess what, no employee wants that, and it’s an unreasonable suggestion.

And hospital management doesn’t want to Google its brand and find thousands of posts insulting their hospital or its leadership.  No business wants that, and this particular health system runs a great hospital.  Or the nurses wouldn’t work there in the first place.

Both positions are entirely understandable, especially nowadays.

The fact that a non-disparagement clause is a deal-breaker in a labor dispute says a lot about where we are as a society, particularly our media—and social media—culture.  Doing good and getting it right doesn’t earn nearly the attention of misdeeds or mistakes.  And the backlash, which thanks to the Internet can echo for all eternity, can bring individuals and institutions to their knees.

Who wins when the reputations of organizations are sullied beyond repair?  Maybe their competitors.  Certainly not their employees.

I subscribe to my grandmother’s rule:  When you throw a little, you get a little on ya.

There are economic forces at work today that continue to create struggle and hardship for families and companies in every town at every level.  Must we exacerbate that condition by disparaging and criticizing anyone and everything just because we can?  What’s become of restraint?

From the president of the United States to the parking attendant who dinged your car; from the reality star who can’t dance to the grocery clerk who puts your bread on the bottom; from the company that signs your paycheck to the people who work there … a little dignity and respect, please.

For this recession to end, employers and employees need to get back on the same team.

By no means am I suggesting that we should perpetually agree or never question.  Rather, I’m worried that our disparaging culture in society and in the workplace, clause or no clause, is reaching a fevered pitch.

Such rancor isn’t getting us anywhere, and worse, it’s distracting us from recreating the atmosphere of innovation that made our communities, our companies and our country great.

Employers should delete the non-disparagement clause, because employees should remove the need for it.

Replace that paragraph with a collaborative statement that reads, all parties will support each other publicly and unequivocally in pursuing a shared mission.

That’s a contract we should all sign.

My bankroll is experience, manifested as opinion, disguised as counsel and distributed here free of charge.  Many, many clients have paid for such insights; and I love them for it, because no one likes the sound of their own voice more than I.

But sometimes you have to give back.  It just feels good.

So I’m about to reveal a secret client service formula that has been tested daily at my firm for almost 20 years.  It’s mad science coming from a liberal arts major, who runs a public relations and marketing communications firm, and still has an adding machine on his desk.  That. I. Use.

Client service.  Ready?  Pay attention, here it comes:

Them + (you x value) = success²

Read it again slowly.  It’s slightly more complicated than the theory of relativity, but much easier to explain:  What’s important to you is not important to them.  Them is them.  However, what’s important to them needs to be understood and advanced by you.  When you bring value to them, they are successful and you are successful.

It’s like a client service haiku only it’s longer and has too many syllables.

There’s been much hullaballoo about Gen X, Gen Y and the Millennials and how their sense of entitlement makes for bad employees, how young guns crave praise and reject criticism, plug themselves into iPods at their desks, leave dirty dishes in the office sink and tweet on company time.

Who’s whining now?

What makes a service employee good or bad has nothing to do with any of that.  Rather, what makes that employee great is mastering the client service formula above.  What’s true for PR firms and advertising agencies also holds true for your department, their department, the dry cleaner and the grocery store.  It has nothing to do with age and everything to do with professional maturity.  It’s the ability to see more than just your part of the formula, more than just you.

When your team and team members evolve to the extent that they can identify with their client’s vision, values and objectives apart from-and above-their own, then they have arrived. 

Them + (you x value) = success²

Imagine being on the receiving end of your own work, not to mention your own e-mail.  Become, at that critical moment of delivery, your own customer and be where they are.  Is it good enough or better yet, is it great?  Don’t focus on what’s probably right, but rather on what might be wrong.  Can you spot any flaws?  They will.  Are you about to make their day easier or harder?

Now react to that client insight before you leave for the day and before you hit “send.”  Think about them.  Remember they can always become someone else’s customer tomorrow, and you’ll wonder where it all went wrong.  It happens the moment your over-confidence, convention and comfort set in.

Memo to all staff:  The money we use to pay you comes from them.

Now think about you.  The only reason you’re in the formula at all is to increase value for them.  Your good looks, affluent parents, college degree, 15 years of experience, clever portfolio of samples, impressive resume or past accomplishments don’t add up to anything unless you bring measurable worth, early and often, to your client.  Phone it in, stretch less, do only what’s expected; and every day ask yourself nothing about how to elevate your own work product.  Never bother with the big picture.  See where it gets you.  

Alternatively, bring more thinking than what was expected.  Bring something better, something extra that hits their goal harder, drives it higher.  Surprise and delight them.  There’s immense personal and professional satisfaction in doing so.  Take another look at the formula.  Notice that what stands between you and success is value.

Them + (you x value) = success²

Sweet success, exponential and shared.  It’s the only kind there is.  They’re happy, you’re not … frustration.  You’re happy, they’re not … failure.  And fired.

Interactions with internal and external clients and customers make up the larger part of my day.  If you leave your house, then yours too, I’ll bet.

In client service and in life, customers want and need your products and services.  And you certainly don’t prosper without them.  Unless you’re a self-sustaining professional organism, you will never achieve gains without understanding and embracing your relative place in the client service formula.

As Bob Dylan so wisely wrote, everbody’s gotta serve somebody.  If you accept, commit to and deliver on this equation, you’ll be successful throughout your career.  Subscribe to its simplicity and its power, and you’ll win at the office and at the deli counter too.

Because sometimes you’re them.

If you’re still employed and in business midway through 2009, you did something right in the past nine months.  You likely reduced your organization’s not-so-fixed overhead, eliminated nonessential and underperforming workers, froze salaries, cut budgets and expenditures, put growth on hold and hoarded cash.  It’s been about as unfun as business gets.

Congratulations, you made it.  Almost. 

It’s what you decide and what you do in the next three months that will either recalibrate your business for optimal economic recovery, or alternatively will write the first line of a cautionary tale.  Chapter One will be called “Leadership Failure.”  But this story can still have a happy ending.

To survive and arrive at Third Quarter 2009, successful C-levels already have embraced the idea that preserving their organization’s business model and brand are the principal obligation of the executive team.  You can be a compassionate leader all day long, but if there’s no money to cover payroll and pay bills, nothing else matters.  The organization goes dark, and popularity will earn you a spot in the unemployment line right behind a slew of managers and staff who hope their next boss has the courage to lead.

The captain goes down with the ship.  Well, put the snorkel down, because you’re not sinking anymore.  And guess what?  If you play the next 90 days correctly, you could actually end up the stuff of legends.

Here are five things organizational leaders should do right now.

1. Take a giant step backward.  It’s counterintuitive in every way, because this advice is about going forward.  Train your thoughts on the past, and rediscover the essential products and services that established your customer base and built your business.  Whether it was 100 years ago, 25 years ago or early last spring, recommit to what made you.  Identify your organization’s core offerings, document their value and post it on your office wall.  If it doesn’t fit on a single page, you don’t understand the homework.  For the next year, market and invest only in whatever appears on that piece of paper.

2. Don’t introduce anything.  You heard me.  For 12 months, plan new products and services to your heart’s content, but launch absolutely nothing outside of your core portfolio.  Doing so will divert the gazelle-like focus you need.  That doesn’t mean shrink your business.  It means grow, for now, only what you know.  There will be a time again for pioneering, but not in 2009.  Keep track of those great new concepts, though.  If ideas are truly great, they are sustainable; and will be great next year still.  Rather, put that money, time and energy behind the flagship.

3. Pour your resources into communications and marketing.  That means cut other budgets and beef that one up.  If you don’t successfully market your core products and services now; and in so doing, immediately engage every existing and prospective customer to buy from you, then what you spend anywhere else won’t matter.  Your server can take a patch; but your marketing cannot.  Invite your senior communications and marketing strategists to sit at the executive table, and for that matter, your agency principals too.  We are all up to the challenge.

4. Get your act together on social media.  This, from an old dog.  I attended fax machine training and marveled at how paper that went through there came out somewhere else.  Age or unfamiliarity is no excuse today for not having an organizational presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like.  And a strategy for organizing your online communities is a must.  That’s what the social media boot camps call them:  communities.  We used to call them customers.  If you don’t understand the power of the “tweet” and don’t have the first clue about social media planning, hire a PR firm or a consultant that does.  PR firms do more than issue press releases.  If not, you’re with the wrong one.

5. Start everything by thanking your current customers.  Every executive team held the same meeting in the past six months, more than once probably, during which company leaders examined areas to cut.  If you’re still doing business at any level, they didn’t cut you.  They remained loyal during a very difficult period, one that’s not over yet.  Even a reduction sent a positive message: Times are tough, but we value your contribution.  Communications and marketing strategists will advise on the best way to say thanks and, if they’re really smart, how to turn thanks into referrals.

When adults ask little kids what they want to be when they grow up, there’s one answer you never hear:  “An employer.”  If you’re at all like me, you never wanted to be anybody’s boss.  Yet if you excel at your profession, it becomes inevitable that you will ascend.  Although there are many perceived perks of leadership, the reality is few if any balance the intense pressure and expectation to always have the answers.

Doctors become heads of hospitals.  College professors become college presidents.  Lawyers become judges.  Line workers become CEOs.  In my 20 years, I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with many great organizational leaders.  The very best of them remember where they came from.  And know what they don’t know.

Not everybody is a great communicator.  Not everybody is a great marketer.  Today, more than ever, everyone needs to be.  As an executive, if it’s not your personal sweet spot, don’t let the next three months break you.  Team up.

Welcome to the buyers’ market.  It’s post-stimulus, United States of Obama out there.  And here’s what it means so far: the tightness in your chest that began in November, caused shortage of breath in December and made your arm to go completely numb in January is beginning to ease.  Or maybe you’re just learning to live with it.

The news media, only slightly distracted by modern-day pirates and Lindsay Lohan breakups, is shifting its coverage from downturn drama to signs of upturn or any indication that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is working.

I speak for many Americans when I say until it’s working for me, it’s not working yet.  But I do think our toes are finally touching the bottom of the pool.

As owner of the venerable Jack Horner Communications Inc., an award-winning public relations and marketing agency whose workforce and office space I sliced in half in January, I can tell you that it’s never been a better time to be a client.

Alert the ticker-tape editors at CNN and FOX: Our interest is high and our rates are low.  Maybe we need a lobbyist group like our consumer counterparts.

Through the crevices of mostly dismal first-quarter earnings, we are reminded that interest rates on home mortgages are so darn low, that we’d be foolish not to finance or refinance.  Auto manufacturers are offering new cars for a song.  And if you haven’t been to the mall lately… let’s just say that Macy’s is having a sale.

If Dave Ramsey hasn’t yet convinced you to cut up your credit cards, well then have at it.  I totally get that consumer confidence and spending are leading economic indicators.  And behind that box of Puffs purchased at Target is a Procter & Gamble brand group ever grateful you didn’t just use your sleeve. 

Shop more, please.

But what of business-to-business spending?  I’ve run a professional service company for two decades, and we’ve never experienced such simultaneous budgetary skittishness.  Used to be, if one client was down, another would be up.  It was the glory of being a generalist firm.  No tech bubble for me.  Rather, we represent everything from consumer brands to law firms, higher ed to healthcare, pharma and B2B, the works.  The mix is, or was, very stabilizing.

Then along came the Wall Street meltdown, bailouts, credit crunches, frustration, burst housing bubbles, layoffs, foreclosures and fiscal anxiety the likes of which only our grandparents knew.

And paralysis.

Such a universal pause in proactive public relations and marketing represents an unprecedented interruption of companies pushing their products, services and messages out to influential audiences-like customers.  In other words, businesses that slow their marketing are making a bad economic condition worse, for themselves and for the economy overall.

From a strategic standpoint, the hesitation is dangerous and ill advised.  If ever organizations need to be top-of-mind with key audiences, surely it’s right now.

And just like summer homes and flat screen TVs, it’s a very good time to buy.

You’d be surprised what hiring a PR and marketing agency will do to keep your company’s visibility high, and to get the creative juices flowing as the recession recedes and the rebound begins.  Don’t miss the next ride, it’s going up.  And you’ll fare much better with the added firepower of a creative communications firm at your side. 

Here’s why there’s never been a better time to be a client:

1. Project work welcome. Agencies typically work on retainers, which cap fees and protect clients from surprises. But most of us are now accepting project work as a means to introduce our capabilities, impact and results to new clients.
2. Over-service guaranteed. Like all professional service businesses, we sell time. But our firm has stopped worrying about giving too much away. For both project and retainer clients, we are putting in more hours than clients will ever see on invoices. I’ve talked to other agency owners who are adopting this philosophy too.
3. Senior counsel on your business. An agency culture is ever-youthful, and we certainly have some future-greats in our midst. But like many 20-year agency vets: I am riding shotgun with every account executive to assure clients are getting both tactics and strategy at the highest levels.

So buy a house, a car … and hire a PR firm.  It’s the perfect time to go talent shopping and review some potential new agency partners.  (Unless you’re already a Jack Horner client, in which case, just ignore this whole article-it’s a terrible time to go agency shopping for you.)

We’ve spent several weeks dusting our Anvils, Pepperpots, Renaissance and IABC awards.  It reminded me how great regional boutique firms can be for clients who seek to extend their internal staffs, and get national results, without a train ride to Manhattan.

Memo from the president’s desk: It’s now okay-in fact, it’s essential-to restart PR and marketing. 

Maybe executives are waiting for the media to officially break the news that the economy is no longer in the dumper.  If they wait much longer, there might not be a newspaper or magazine to report the turnaround.  Maybe someone will tweet it.

If you don’t understand that last sentence, it’s really time to hire a PR firm.

Strategic counsel for communicating layoffs, hiring freezes, salary reductions, store closings, plant shutdowns, project postponements and overall spending constrictions has become a popular agency service of late.  How to inform key audiences of your organization’s economic position and resulting actions is on the minds and plates of companies daily.

Many times we’ve heard this criticism of company leaders:  It wasn’t what she said, but rather “how” she said it.  It wasn’t what he did, but rather “how” he did it.

We’ve developed a gut-check list of “Five C’s” to help guide communications on dire economic subjects, from news releases to corporate Web sites to internal communications.  Remember that employee communications are always shared outside the organization and nothing is ever “off the record.”  Presidents, CEOs and all organizational leadership, more than ever, must have the courage of their convictions and speak with one voice.

1. Cutbacks.  Don’t wrap this word in pretty paper or dance around it.  If you’ve touched a newspaper or turned on a television in the past 30 days, you’ve grown accustomed to the concept and the realities of today’s economic crisis.  One thing that won’t be appreciated right now is sugar coating.  If you’re cutting back, plainly say so; specify who, what, where, when and how.

2. Context.  Draw the connection between national (even global) economic conditions and your business.  Sometimes it’s not obvious, particularly for employees.  How does a blighted big-three automaker in Detroit have any impact on Pennsylvania?  Windshields made by a Pennsylvania-based Fortune 500 company are installed in many car models.  That manufacturer employs thousands, plus it generously hires local talent and small businesses in markets where it operates.  Suddenly, what happens in Michigan is impacting our backyard.  Identify and explain your specific ripple, in this rippling economy.

3. Compassion.  Blame no one and no entity; for no one is singularly to blame.  Resist human nature to point the finger.  Instead, have and communicate empathy around the resulting condition.  No one is immune, and households that seemingly are unaffected still have friends and families who are.  It hurts and creates strife when hard-working people suddenly have the financial rug yanked from under them.  When businesses have to shrink to stay alive, the employees who helped it grow in the first place feel punished, even deceived.  Respect and proactively acknowledge these natural emotions. 

4. Candor.  The truth may hurt, but any attempt to mislead is unforgivable.  And long remembered.  If you’re in a meeting where anyone suggests taking liberties with the facts, verbalize an immediate and permanent expectation that smoke and mirrors will not be part of your organizational communications strategy.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, but not that one.  It was true in kindergarten, and it’s true in the boardroom:  A lie is a lie is a lie.

5. Consistency.  There have been highly publicized and very negative stories about industries rallying for and receiving government “bailouts,” then holding company-sponsored executive retreats at luxury hotels.  Everything communicates.  Organizations cannot say one thing and do another.  Austerity programs don’t have exceptions, most importantly for high-profile executives.  Expect all organizational decisions and actions to be scrutinized and always be above reproach.

Here’s a crucial, parting thought:  After communicating with the Five C’s, resist temptation to provide a sixth one:  Comfort.  No organization can make promises or speak in absolutes right now.  Any attempt to do so implies that your crystal ball is working.  Leadership’s primary commitment is vigilant monitoring of economic conditions and open, ongoing communications.  No guarantees.

The good news is that every roller coaster ride stops eventually.  And next time, hopefully we’ll remember not to eat so much beforehand.

Meanwhile, what should the rest of the client roster do?  No denying the headlines are woeful, the predictions for ‘09 dire, and no matter how much hope you have or don’t for the Obama administration, he’s unlikely to find a magic wand in the top drawer of the Resolute desk.

Amid the uncertainty, commerce continues and more than ever companies that hesitate may indeed be lost.  That said, 2009 is probably not the best year to experiment with a Super Bowl commercial or to sponsor the next Space Shuttle launch.

But, hey, if you got it flaunt it.

Rather, 2009 is the year to adopt the age-old investment strategy of Dollar Cost Averaging.  It’s a common, often overlooked investing technique intended to reduce exposure to risk associated with a single large purpose.  The idea is to spend a fixed dollar amount at regular intervals (in our world, a retainer or fixed-fee amount); regardless of current share price.  Dollar Cost investors and retainer clients win over time, rather than receive immediate record-day returns and losses.

After all, it was the quick-win, high risk mentality that started boiling Wall Street’s pot in the first place.  Public relations and marketing clients, in the end, may give up an expected windfall in exchange for reduced variance.  However, since investing in public relations and marketing has an overall positive mean rate of return, clients who engage with their agency in this manner win every time.

So ask your public relations and marketing communications firm today, how to spread your PR and marketing investment across the calendar in the most effective way.  Like financial models, the client must determine how long the horizon will be.

What to do with how much you have?  When agencies answer that question honestly, creatively and correctly, that’s when they become partners.

In Philadelphia, too, where we’ve operated an office for just three years, we broke into the 2008 “Top-25 list of Public Relations Firms” published by the Philadelphia Business Journal.

So what’s the big deal?  Those regional rankings speak volumes for leading independent public relations and marketing agencies, like ours, who “bring it” year after year, in good times and in bad—weathering the last recession and this one.

Besides bragging rights and making my mother proud, industry rankings signal to current and prospective clients that JHC has a solid history of serving the region’s premier clients, with both local and national public relations and marketing programs, and serving them well enough to grow our business.

As a business owner, the latest ranking provides me with an important occasion to thank our past, present and future clients.  Without them and the opportunities that they provide, we are quite literally, nothing.  Thank you, JHC clients, you are really number-one.

A quick shout out to the JHC staff in both the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh offices: you are relentless performers and watchdogs over all things client service.  Your tenacity defines us.

The agency business is not for the faint of heart.  We are driven hard daily, by clients and by our own exemplary work standards, to produce strategy and implementations against targets that have a tendency to move amid conditions that change and change and change.  Amid deadlines that collide and crush.

Yet since we are hyper-committed and great at it, today we are number one.  Until tomorrow.

Thank goodness for the panini maker and beer Friday.