My mother passed away on February 20. I got to spend the last two days of her life with her. She was not afraid, she was ready, and she died peacefully without pain.

Jewish tradition requires us to observe a seven-day mourning period called Shiva. When we "sit Shiva" we don't leave the house, so people from the synagogue bring us food and take care of menial tasks. They bring the services to us and say the daily prayers in our home, including Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Once Shiva is over, I will continue to say Kaddish for my mother during daily prayers and on Shabbat for 11 months to honor her life and her memory.

Shiva gives you a lot of time to think, and I spent the past week thinking a lot about the lessons I learned from my mother. Sandra Pushkin was a proud Jewish woman. She was born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents who arrived in America with nothing. They taught her to be frugal and work hard, which she did her entire life. The only thing she loved more than the Jewish community and Israel was her family.

My mother was devoted to her husband, her children, her family and her friends. She taught me to waste nothing and appreciate everything. Responsibility was big with my mother. Not just being responsible for yourself and your family, but the responsibility we all have to help others, to practice kindness and charity, to stand up for what is right and to speak up for those who have no voice.

So as I sat there reflecting on my own life, I took heart from the lessons my mother taught me.

Be responsible. That means providing for my family, being accountable to my clients, behaving ethically at home and at work, contributing to my community, my people, my country and my planet.

Be grateful. Appreciate where you came from and everything you have. Treat others with kindness.

Be happy. Even though my mother was a big worrier, a trait I inherited, she always had a smile for everyone. She enjoyed taking care of people. She wanted to make sure everyone always had enough to eat. She ended every one of our phone conversations with "I love you, up to the sky and into space."

Be present. Understand what is important and what isn't. Don't sweat the small stuff. Always treat family, friends, clients, employees, colleagues and strangers with kindness, respect, dignity and love.

There are a lot of people who teach us important lessons in life. Sometimes we are too busy or too arrogant to remember to appreciate those lessons. Sometimes we need to sit Shiva to finally understand what it was that they were trying to tell us. If we are lucky, we will keep those memories with us when we stand up and move on.

It's hard to believe but baseball Spring Training starts this week. Pitchers and catchers report in a few days. Although Spring Training is a time for renewal and looking ahead, not back, here's a blog that I posted last year at this time. I think is still relevant.

For baseball fans, there is nothing like Spring Training. It is a time to forget about last year and look forward to a fresh start. It is a chance to shake off your blues and have a little fun in the sun. It's like a break but not a vacation. Teams establish their goals for the coming season, and every player works hard or they don't make the team.

Hope springs in Spring Training. Whether they are rookies or veterans, All Stars or Minor Leaguers, Hall of Famers or guys who only had a cup of coffee in the show, everyone has a positive outlook. There are no egos in Spring Training. Everyone mingles with the fans and signs autographs. Every fan has a chance to sit in the front row.

We could all use some spring training to help us escape from the daily dose of gloomy economic news that makes us dread getting out of bed in the morning, and refocus on what we need to do to improve personally and professionally. From a PR perspective, spring training would be a chance to examine our brand, polish our key messages and adjust our communications strategies. It would be a time for every player and coach to get on the same page and realize that only by playing as a team can we give ourselves a real shot at winning the title.

To paraphrase Nuke LaLoosh from the movie Bull Durham, "Baseball is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."

If we think about our own businesses and our own lives that way, we can boil it down and keep things simple. We can avoid getting hung up on the negative and focus on the positive. We can allow ourselves an opportunity to let go of our mistakes and start fresh.

In Spring Training, every team starts out in first place. The teams that win in October are the ones that maintain that perspective through all the ups and downs they encounter over the course of the long season.

A Denver funeral home puts the wrong body in a casket. Then they have to dig up the right body. Then they tried to bury the problem by refusing to comment.

The University of Colorado dental school lets unlicensed residents prescribe drugs using the credentials of off-site faculty members who never saw the patients and in at least one case, did not have an active state license to practice. Whoops. I guess someone forgot to attend the regulatory compliance class.

Toyota spends months ignoring or denying a serious safety problem until the company's reputation for quality and integrity is badly damaged. Now Toyota is spending millions on full-page "open letters" (don't you love that term?) in major daily papers and facing hundreds of millions in repair costs and lost sales, not to mention the long, painful process of repairing its brand. Oh what a feeling.

A crisis can happen to any organization, big or small, at any time. It is not surprising that all these crises popped up in the same week. What is surprising is how they were handled. The funeral home obviously did not have a crisis plan at all. CU and Toyota apparently knew about their situation but ignored or failed to address it for a long period of time. What the heck were they thinking?

Crisis management is not just about how you respond when you have a crisis. Putting the fire out is a lot harder than preventing the fire in the first place. Repairing a reputation is a lot harder than building it. Every organization should consistently be anticipating potential problems, determining how those problems can be prevented, and developing a fluid plan to address those problems if, in fact, they do happen.

This plan should include:

A designated crisis team and team leader. The leader sends out the "Bat Signal," and calls the team into action when action is required.

A system of communication: Who contacts which stakeholders? Who is the spokesperson designated to speak for the organization?

A messaging platform that allows the spokesperson to show compassion, define how the organization expects to fix the problem, and puts the situation into perspective in a way that positively reflects the values of the organization.

A careful post-crisis review process to help the team identify what worked well and how the crisis plan could be improved.

The midst of a crisis is not the time to wonder where the fire extinguisher is and when was the last time you checked to see if it works. Taking some time to plan ahead will provide you the best shot of minimizing the damage and reducing the recovery time. In business, your reputation is all you have. Don't screw it up by being stupid, shortsighted or arrogant. No one wants a ticket on a ship of fools.

In public relations we talk a lot about messaging. Staying on message is, as Banya would say on Seinfeld, golden. It's the gold standard. But before an organization can stay on message, it needs to first figure out what the message is, whom the message is for, and the best way to deliver it. That's not as simple as it sounds.

Organizations that try and do too much for too many, or worse, to be all things to all people, end up with messages that can be confusing and dull. Some organizations dilute their messages because they want to please everyone. Many are just too busy to develop a clear understanding of what they want to say. And that's a problem that can be very frustrating for each internal and external audience the organization is trying to reach.

Organ donation organizations are a good example of delivering a clear message in a consistent way. Many of them use Donate Life as a primary message. It communicates the organization's mission and a call to action, all in two words. From there, they can expand the message. "Organ donors save lives." "One donor can save the lives of eight people." "Give the gift of life."

Townsend (a Pushkin PR client) is an intellectual property law firm. They wanted to communicate that no one is better at protecting the ideas and innovations that inventors and entrepreneurs create. When the firm went through a recent rebranding process, it settled on a way to communicate that message in one word: Townsend. The message is simple, clear and direct. You came to the right place. Enough said. Rather that coming up with long, complicated sentences that tried to explain the firm's long history, every practice group and every industry it serves, it settled on something beautifully simple: Townsend, period.

When an organization struggles to explain who it is or what it does it is an indication that something is wrong. That's when you hear people saying that someone is "off message." They ramble, they stumble, they get themselves in a whole lot of trouble. It’s like taking to someone at a party that's had a few too many drinks. Pretty soon you start explaining to them that you are due back on planet Earth.

If this problem sounds familiar, take a step back and ask a few important questions:

Who are we?

What do we stand for? What is our brand promising?

What do we do?

What are the three most important things we want people to know about us?

Answering those questions will help you define the core qualities that define your organization. After that, the trick is to communicate them in a clear and consistent way. Once you master that skill, you'll be in like Flynn. Solid gold.

Taking a peek at the future is no simple thing. Just look at Colorado. Who would have guessed that Governor Ritter would decide not to seek reelection? Or that Ken Salazar, the leading candidate to take his place, the man who said being governor of Colorado was his dream job, would decide to stay in Washington?

It's the same in public relations. We all try and come up with our most educated predictions on the economy, industry trends, new technology and the job market. We tweet about the "new" Twitter, we blog about the "new" PR, we tell our friends and our connections what is about to happen, but none of us has a crystal ball. Instead of guessing what's going to happen, what if we decided to make it happen?

What kind of business do you want? What kind of reputation do you strive for? What are the three most important things you want to accomplish this year? And how can you go about achieving them?

James Brown was the hardest working man in show business. Would you like to be known as the hardest working doctor in medicine? Or would you rather be considered the smartest lawyer in the room? Do you want to be a thought leader or a community leader? Do you want to be feared or loved? How about respected?

For me, instead of worrying about being an expert at all things and mastering everything I don't have time to master, I would like Pushkin Public Relations to be known for its integrity. Don't get me wrong, I want us to be known for our smarts too. But technology and the media world are changing too fast. Mastering every new social media tool that comes along is too overwhelming. That's what strategic partners are for. Personally, I would be happy to be known as the hardest working man in PR. The James Brown of PR. I like that.

Being a leader means being able to anticipate change and help your team, your co-workers, your organization, your clients or your community adjust. It seems that we can make the process easier and more predictable if we work as hard as we can to create the future we'd really like to see.

For most Americans, 2009 will be a year to forget. The Great Recession took its toll. Millions lost jobs and millions more lost their health insurance. Businesses closed, families were torn apart and communities suffered.

If you were fortunate enough to survive you feel relief, but as you count your blessings you also feel sadness for those that did not fare as well. One thing for certain is that no matter how you did, there are some valuable lessons to gain from the experience. So what can we learn from this?

For one thing, we learned a lot about our survival skills. Do we have the ability to get creative in times of distress? Can we adapt to changing circumstances or have we become too rigid to change? Can we respond positively to a daunting challenge and even thrive when tested?

We also learned something about our capacity for compassion. Did our primal instinct to protect our turf take over, or did we extend a helping hand to someone in need? Even during hard times there are lots of ways to help, from volunteering at a food bank to being flexible with employees who can no longer afford childcare or health insurance. It can even be as simple as scheduling an information interview with a job seeker.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from the past year is to never take anything for granted. Always deliver above and beyond what is expected. Make sure you consistently communicate with staff, clients, customers, contractors, patients, students, co-workers, vendors, partners, family and friends. Let them know how much you value and appreciate them.

As you look toward 2010, take some time off from worrying about what you've lost and remember to appreciate everything you have. Resolve to buy lunch for a client, drop a friend a thank-you note, forward a lead to a vendor or send a colleague a referral. Give a loved one a call and lend a hand to a stranger. Understand that in all the uncertainty the one thing you can count on is you.

Here's to a bright, happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.

Like Tiger himself, I am somewhat conflicted about how to respond to the episode of the mysterious car crash. The general consensus from PR pros is that Tiger could have avoided a drawn out media frenzy by quickly and truthfully addressing all the speculation, rumors and innuendo. In his words, the advice from the PR community was to come forward with a "public confession."

There is no doubt that using vague wording like "sins and transgressions" just fuels the speculation. The media and the public love to see revered figures brought low and when they smell blood they really get nasty. Knowing that an icon is "not perfect"
or "only human" just means they are weak enough to take them down. So in that regard, it might have been better for Tiger to accept the advice of his PR counsel and come clean. Explain what happened, answer any questions, beg forgiveness and move on with his life. Smart steps for any brand concerned about its reputation.

But the truth is that Tiger is more than a brand. He actually is human. So is his wife. And they have the right to work out their issues privately, without the assistance of the public, the media, the PR community or the floozy from Vegas. His brand has been damaged but not nearly as badly as his marriage. His sponsorships might suffer but not nearly as badly as his family. Corporate Tiger has taken a minor hit, but Personal Tiger's life is a mess.

So while I am certain that this episode will become a classic case study in crisis communications, my advice to the media, bloggers and PR pros is to back off. Let him be. Let his wife be. Let them work it out. Stop being so consumed with the personal problems of celebrities and celebrity wannabees and pay attention to the serious problems facing our planet, our country, our communities, our business and our own families. Let's stop chasing Tiger's tale. There's plenty to do right here at home.