What is your company’s competitive advantage? I’ll venture to say that most CEOs I know would probably answer that question with phrases that include, "customer service," "quality products," "our competent people" or "our strong corporate brand."

But those are tactical end results. The key question then becomes, how are those positive results achieved?

Authors Will Ruch and Pat Nazemetz recently led a Greater Milwaukee Committee discussion by sharing snippets from their book, "HR and Marketing: Power Partners." The book’s tagline reads, "The Competitive Advantage That Will Transform Your Business and Establish a Culture of Performance."

In this age of social media, companies participate in their brands, rather than control them, according Ruch, the chief executive officer of Versant, and Nazemetz, the former chief human resources officer of Xerox Corp. The authors contend that companies that align their internal brands with their human resource policies can gain a competitive advantage.

After all, if your people don’t buy into your brand, how will your customers?
The book has a strong Milwaukee flavor, with chapters featuring insights from ManpowerGroup CEO Jeff Joerres, Kohl’s Corp. executive vice president of human resources Telvin Jeffries and Qualres & Brady LLP chairman John Daniels.

Joerres said in the book that the key to ManpowerGroup’s staffing success is matching the right candidates with the right company, in terms of both skills and culture. Joerres said the pressure to do more with less through the Great Recession has forced employers to realize the true power of human potential.

"With the right people in the right place at the right time, organizations can achieve all they did before, and more. Employers need to ensure that they have the right people practices in place to attract, retain and unleash the inner human potential of the right people to succeed in the Human Age," Joerres said.

Jeffries said the missions of human resources a…

Hey Milwaukee, are ya feeling the love? In case you haven’t noticed, the city has been receiving plenty of praise in recent weeks from Forbes magazine.

It started with the magazine’s April 15 edition, which declared Milwaukee as "The Capital of Water." Forbes noted Milwaukee’s cold climate and its location on the western shore of Lake Michigan at the confluence of the Milwaukee, the Menomonee and the Kinnickinnic rivers. The city grew up on water-intensive industries such as fur-trading, meatpacking, tanning and brewing.

"And while they are long gone or, in the case of brewing, smaller, the suppliers and skilled machinists that served them are still around, building useful things like water meters, pumps and plumbing fixtures – and the city’s future. Implausible as it might sound, Milwaukee is transforming itself from a dying industrial center into a technology mecca – a water technology mecca," Forbes wrote.

The magazine noted that southeastern Wisconsin is home to more than 150 water-related companies, including A.O. Smith Corp. (water heaters), Badger Meter Inc. (water meters), Siemens (water filtration), Veolia (sewage filtration) and Pentair (flow management and filtration).

The article quoted Rich Meeusen, the irrepressible chief executive officer of Badger Meter and co-founder and lead cheerleader of the Milwaukee Water Council. "We know how to handle water…We’re going to position Milwaukee as the Silicon Valley of water technology. If you’re in the country music business, you don’t belong in Milwaukee. But if you’re an expert in water technology, you belong in Milwaukee."

Forbes followed up by including Milwaukee among the top 15 U.S. cities with "Emerging Downtowns."

Here’s what they said about Milwaukee: "The Milwaukee community first turned its sights to downtown in 1988 with the RiverWalk initiative. In the decades since, the city passed zoning changes to encourage developers to erect more housing in the area. In 2002, with th…

I generally don’t make it a habit to tell other people how to do their jobs, but this one time I need to make an exception.

This is a shout out to funeral directors: You folks need to change how visitations at funeral and memorial services are conducted these days. Somewhere along the way, the model changed, and not for the better.

The last three visitations I have attended went something like this: People arrive at the church or funeral home. They are told to stand in a single-file line. The line backs up. The people wait. And they wait some more. And some more. If they are lucky, they get there early enough to get a chance to hug and console the survivors of the deceased. They quickly pay their respects. And they quickly leave, because they know the eyes of all of the poor souls behind them in the line are upon them.

At one service last year, I waited in a line outside of the church for 45 minutes. When I finally moved up in the line to get into the church, I discovered that the line weaved in around the narthex and the church for another 45 minutes. I saw several old friends I would have loved to reconnect with in line about 100 people ahead and behind me. But I could not go to see them, because I had to keep my place in line. I never did get to talk to them that day.

Eventually, because the process is so monotonous and tedious, the funeral director regrettably had to inform the dozens of people in the back of the line that the visitation was ending, and invited them to stay for another hour or so at the actual service. They never did get a chance to express their condolences to the family.

Here’s the thing. Many people at the service may only know the father of the deceased. Or the mother. Or the brother. Or the sister. Or the son. Or the daughter. Whatever. They only wished to attend the visitation and give that one person they know a hug, pay their respects and move on.

There was and is a better way: Station the family members in different parts of t…

Tiffany Weber @tiffanyannweber I JUST QUIT MY JOB! A lot of it because of @stevejagler.

The above Tweet greeted me when I opened up my TweetDeck in the office the other day.

Without a doubt, it was the most startling Tweet I have read since the first day I was on Twitter when CNN was reporting that a Colorado boy was racing across the sky in a runaway weather balloon.

The balloon story, of course, was a hoax. But the Tweet by my Twitter friend Tiffany Weber was 100 percent legit.

Allow me to explain. A few months ago, a little puppy joined our family. Through Twitter, I was remotely connected to Tiffany, although we had never met in person. She had Tweeted that she is an accomplished dog trainer and sitter. So, I sought her advice about how to discipline our little Frankie.

Tiffany was kind enough to give me some very helpful insights.
Curious about my newfound Twitter friend, I checked out her website, tiffanyannweber.com, where I learned that she had 14 years of experience in advertising and marketing, including production and development programs on the side, in addition to her "While You Were Out Pet Sitting Services" in the Bay View neighborhood.

Much to my amazement, Tiffany also told me she held down a day job at a real estate management company.

At least, until the day she wrote the aforementioned Tweet.

I’ll let Tiffany tell the rest of the story from her blog.

"Last year I was talking with Steve Jagler of BizTimes and he said something that stuck like a burr on a warm day in a field… ‘Let me get this straight, basically – you’re in the business of being yourself?’ I paused. ‘No. I give all my pet sitting money away and I do all my marketing consulting for free for small businesses. I work a real job as well.’ Well. Not as of today. Today, I am in the business of being myself."

Tiffany said the grind of all her multi-tasking had begun to take a physical toll on her.

"People took notice, I was exhausted from the exchange to the po…