Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Man's Best Friend,

You just might want to do what I did when I wanted to understand the P&G culture better. I picked up a book that is rated 4 out of 5 stars (which is not bad) at Amazon .com. It's called "Winning With the P&G 99: 99 Principles and Practices of Procter & Gamble's Success" by Charles L. Decker. Charles gives a great deal of understanding on the P& G culture, processes and even in some cases how they even deal with internal protocol.

This will definitely open up some new insights for you. If you have already read the book the next best thing I would recommend you do is be extremely sensitive to your clients needs.

Recognize that your team will always vibe off of whatever you're on. So if you are feeling uncomfortable and struggling to lead they will pick that up. Regroup, refocus and take a new mental approach. Recognize that you're just not struggling with protocols and politics but you just might be struggling with a need to see things from your clients perspective.

The only real way you can get beyond this is to position yourself to simply be their servant. Yes just serve them on whatever their expectation is but that means you've got to go deeper in the relationship communication area in order to be able to uncover this.

You've got to strengthen your relationships with your point person in order to get past this uneasy time period and remember your client has all the answers to your uncomfortable situation.

When I've facilitated challenging areas in b2b and b2c circles the above recipe is what I've used to bring clarity and focus.

The Good News is if you won the account there had to be something there that made P&G feel warm and fuzzy about you. Keep going back to the beginning and reusing this experience to expand the relationship.

It's like in a relationship with someone you love if you're beginning to struggle it's because one or the other of you have gotten off track and you need to go back to when you first fell in love. You need to bring the love back so that they will open up and be more helpful with you in the communication area. If this does not help please let me know. I'm sure you can grow past this moment because greatness is with in you. Is there anything else I can do for you?