Hello, friends. Greetings from Gorinchem, The Netherlands! I’m writing here at the Brasserie Hotel Le Bon ‘Apart, a brand new hotel nestled along a canal . . . of course. And by “new” I mean retrofitted into a building 400 years old or more.

The Dutch know about space and architecture. In Amsterdam, in particular, you see buildings within the center city built at forward-leaning angles. It’s not an accident. Those hooks at the top of every building allowed for occupants on the top floors to hook and pulley goods from the ground to the top floors without scraping and damaging the external walls of the floors below them. Brilliant! My client here, who lives in Rotterdam, explained to me tonight that after the city was rebuilt after WWII, it was torn back down, only to embrace modern architecture to exhibit a destination of 20th-century commerce. As I screamed by on the fast train yesterday, clearly this was a good decision. It’s a city of impressive spaces any international business will find attractive.

Earlier this week, upon finding some inspiration from Steve Jobs’ biography about his design of the Pixar headquarters, I did something in reaction to something that had been bothering me for some time about my firm’s space. Recently, we acquired and redesigned quite a bit of new space. More than we needed at the time. The result was that we now all had a lot of space per person. In fact, all of us have spaces that are beautiful and grand. So, what did I do? I “banned” them. We had quickly gone from a company that was used to collaborating and intersecting with each other to a company comprising talented people now isolated from one another.

In the Jobs’ bio, he talks about how it would be impossible to create works of brilliance in an environment where people are dependent upon e-mail and iChat to communicate with one another. This insight struck a chord with me, and it was clear that our newfound office space, while comfortable, was going to kill our creative instincts. So we killed it. Our private offices are now spaces for private phone calls and for time when absolute quietude is required to get the job done.

The result? Happiness. We really enjoy each other’s company. We enjoy the efficiency of simply lifting one’s head and asking a question of a colleague, rather than setting up an hour meeting, getting schedules in place, and dealing with the hassle. We simply “move our stuff” from the bottom floor to the top floor without bringing destruction to the infrastructure of the other floors.

Who knew we were so Dutch!?

I recommend the same to your own teams. Offices, cubes, and other constrictions within corporate American stifle creativity and problem solving. If you’re a leader, walk through your offices. Do you think your best work is being done? Are your smartest people working side by side? Can they actually work together, or are you holding on to some sort of antiquated idea of what “accomplishment” is inside your pointed office? Think about it. What’s more important? The internal comfort of personal space or the result of the work you’re doing for your customers?

Greetings, dear friends and readers. First, I’d like to thank you for your comments, ideas, and critique over these past few months of the Post-Chaos blog. I enjoy writing these posts, although I’m realizing I’m getting older, and as I get older I get more grimy and curmudgeonly. Stay positive, Andrew! Jeez. I mean, really.

My frustrations in digital marketing are really human ones, not technological. Technology isn’t the problem. The problem—still—rests with humans being resistant to change in a field so wrought with change it becomes incredible to me that so many people are still employed. I mean that, quite honestly.

So, with that, I believe 2012 is the year in which lots of people and companies are going to be caught with their pants down. Here are a few ways in which that’s going to happen:

1. Mobile. HOT. HOT. HOT. Super hot. I understand there are 14 billion blogs written by people who have something to gain from the explosion in mobile. This isn’t one of them. But this is a blog that basically says one thing about mobile: There’s a good chance that your key customers are now on a smart phone and that’s how they access the Web. Problem is, your Web site doesn’t render on a smart phone screen. Do I need to go into any more detail than that? I do not. Go to your smart phone right now and bring up your Web site. Happy with what you see? Fix it. (Disclosure: My own site sucks on mobile. I’m fixing it right now.) Plus, if you’re an executive and don’t have a smart phone, get one. Flipping open your flip-phone or Blackberry in 2012 is not giving your direct reports (and maybe now your board) any additional confidence in you. Don’t be that guy (or gal). It’s showing a lack of curiosity.

2. Organizational Social Media. I read a B2B predictions blog from last year that said that social media will be pervasive throughout the organization by the end of 2011. Yikes. This is not happening. There are pockets where wide-spread, strategically driven engagement and relationship development is going on, but this is not pervasive. Many companies still don’t have a social media policy. Strike that. Most companies still don’t know what they’re actually trying to accomplish. Fix this. It’s 2012. We can’t operate companies as though our consumers have just heard about Yahoo for the first time.

3. Understanding All Customer Touchpoints. OK. I loathe jargon and “touchpoints.” I understand. The bigger word for this is “customer experience,” and I simply wonder who within an organization has truly mapped and understands how a customer really interacts with its brand, across all media, all people, and all relationships. If, for example, you claim to be “the leading company in ________,” but you have mega-lame digital presence or your people aren’t involved in online forums and social channels where real conversations are actually taking place, then you’re not. You’re simply not the leader. You may make great products but the paths you build to those products are increasingly complex. A good idea would be to fix this. Understand how your brand actually lives in the modern world.

4. The Talent Crisis. This year, those leaders and emerging leaders who truly understand just what the hell is going on are going to be rewarded. Of course, the other side of that coin is that those who don’t are going to be exposed. That goes for all of us. Agencies and consultants who claim to be “experts” but can’t deliver aren’t experts. They’re dabblers who push jargon around. I struggle with this every day at my own firm. Ask yourself every day, “Just what exactly am I trying to accomplish that has value to my shareholders, customers, and colleagues?” You need to have an answer—or many well-crafted, documented, aligned answers. If you don’t, pants down. Fix yourself first. Then fix your company.

These are just a smattering of critical needs right now in 2012. I would love your ideas as well, so please go through the trouble (ahem . . . ) of commenting below. Once again, please tell me if I’m full of it. Or if you have much better ideas, share them. We can all use the help.

Oh. And pants. Pull ‘em up.

I have this stereotype of the 1950s-era husband. Guy works hard all day. Stops off at the bar for a couple of bumps. Heads home. Dog brings him his slippers and his pipe. Wife is finishing up dinner in the kitchen. Eats food. Watches a little TV (or listens to the radio). And maybe, if according to the schedule these two have agreed to, retires for a little unsatisfying (at least for her) nookie. But I doubt it.

I know it’s not a fair stereotype. I’m sure there were plenty—like a hundred—of marriages in that era based upon an equality of intimacy where man and woman brought equal emotional investment and respect to the relationship. (I’m sure there were man and man or woman and woman relationships too, but you just didn’t hear about them.) But that’s certainly not the stereotype of that era. In fact, if I were a single guy at that time, I’d be a professional “kept man.” What an opportunity! There was a great market for outsourced intimacy.

Everyday, and especially now with a new year right around the corner, bajillions of companies are putting elaborate plans together to outsource their customer relationships to their PR firms or digital agencies. The term for this is “community management.” You’ve probably heard of it or perhaps have a proposal on your desk that offers it. The idea is that companies are going to launch a series of social environments where customers of all types are invited to gather and share their experiences together, interact with branded content, and make decisions about how they want to make their relationship with these organizations.

And these companies are going to outsource the oversight of these communities. They’re going to dial it in. They have no time for that squishy old “relationship stuff.” No! We make products, not babies!

So, that’s cool. They can do what they want to do. But customers are burning their bras, and they’re not going to take it anymore. They’re looking for a new kind of partner, one that recognizes that they have a voice, ambition, and power. You see, these people—these customers—have never experienced power before. They’re giddy. You think Gaddafi and Mubarak don’t know a little something about this customer power? How about Syria? How about . . . Google?

How about you?

It’s true. You have a choice. You can hire an agency to oversee your most intimate relationships with your customers. But don’t be surprised if they don’t represent you well. They’re not you. They’re them trying to be you. And customers see right through it.

The other choice is to change. To use our analogy, the cultural transition of women’s rights and empowerment wasn’t easy for traditional power struggles. (Our continued struggles with providing equal rights for gay people or people who are anything other than white are about fear and power as well.)

Are businesses immune from the same dynamics of transitioning power? Absolutely not. Can we dial it in? Can we simply say, “Oh, yeah—we do social media,” but never actually become social enterprises? That’s a choice for you to make, but remember history. It’s about to repeat itself once again.