Do You Hire for Skill or Culture Fit?

I love the East Coast.

Vestcom’s second annual sales meeting was held in Boston just a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t have been happier about the location.

My family and I lived out east for over 15 years. I have an instinctual bond with the city: the surging energy, the historical pride, the cobblestone streets whose buildings line its edges offering some sort of eatery, shop or retailer (I even bought my iPad there). My blood starts pumping and my brain starts churning in places such as Boston.

Why Leadership and Ethics Go Hand-in-Hand

Our VP of Marketing, Jeff Weidauer (follow his blog at The Shelf Edge), forwarded me this interview with Don Soderquist, former chief operating officer for Wal-Mart. Soderquist, who now runs The Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics, discusses the applications of ethics and values in business leadership. I liked that Soderquist included both “Leadership” and “Ethics” in the title of his organization. One cannot effectively exist (especially long-term) without the other, and the recent news cycle, filled with stories of companies that have failed to exhibit either quality, reflects the truth of this. We’ve dealt with the news of energy companies, Wall Street financial giants, and national mortgage lenders whose ethics have been called into question. These types of stories break far too often.

Dear Associate: I Hear You

An article has been circulating its way around Vestcom. I found it on an associate’s Twitterfeed, who has been tweeting back and forth with the company’s official account. Dennis Smith, Director for Client Services at Vestcom (follow him @seawolf93) shared this article on his Twitter – “Dear CEO, it’s me your most valuable asset.” Of course, the title caught my attention.

The writer highlights the importance of internal communication in recessionary times, and the opportunities technology and the Web afford senior-level managers to “meet” their employees online. Vestcom is 25 years young and has seen fads come and go—we realize that the web isn’t going away anytime soon.

Welcome!

Hi and welcome to my new blog. I’m John Lawlor, Chairman and CEO of Vestcom. You may wonder why I have decided to enter the fray and start this blog. The fact is, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the marketing services industry over the past two decades, but I’m finding that while a number of “new, shiny things” have come and gone, some core principles have always remained the same. I think for all of us to be successful we need to connect to talk about them, and most importantly…. Advance them.

This point is brought home in a book I read recently by A.G. Lafley, Chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble, called The Game-Changer. In the book, Lafley highlights the role innovation should play as a core principle driving key business decisions. Lafley notes of the five to seven percent annual sales growth that P&G targets, they look for all but one percent to come from innovation-driven organic growth. That is pretty impressive. And I think he is right on the money.