Don’t become like peanut butter. In a recent IBM survey, less than 20% of American shoppers trust food companies to produce food that is safe and healthy and 83% could name a product that has been recalled in the last two years. Peanut butter was the most recognized recalled food at 46% followed by spinach at 15%.

Now here’s where it really hurts – 49% of those surveyed said they would be less likely to buy a recalled item even after the problem has been corrected. Peanut butter has been a staple in most homes for years, and now many PB&J fans may be going away.

This same thing can happen to your organization. You’ve spent years building a great brand…a reputation of good service, quality and integrity. Then a series of mistakes or even one lapse in judgment can take it all away. You’ve lost your customer’s trust.

In the case of peanut butter, the warning signs were ignored. Don’t let this happen in your organization. Develop a culture of accountability and openness where you are listening to customers, donors, board members and staff for cracks in your armor. Then when problems do arise, address them immediately.

I have forgiven peanut butter and welcomed it back into my home. Your organization may not be so lucky.

Want to grow intellectually, emotionally and spiritually? Start with these three simple words “I don’t know.” My friend and pastor, Dr. Gary Fenton, recently shared with me that saying “I don’t know” opens your mind to becoming a life-long learner and gives the other person permission to teach you.

Sadly, our culture and egos have conditioned us to avoid those words at all cost. This is especially true of leaders. We believe saying “I don’t know” somehow equates to being weak or inferior. So we find ways to cover up our lack of knowledge or understanding.

Want to grow at work? Be the first one to say “I don’t know” and learn a new skill or concept. You will probably be helping many of your coworkers who are thinking the exact same thing.

Want to grow in your relationships? Tell your friend or spouse you don’t know how to handle some situations and ask for her help. You will see the difference.

Want to grow spiritually? Tell God “I don’t know” and ask for His help. He already knows that you don’t know, so you weren’t going to fool Him anyway. And best of all, He wants the very best for you and wants to help if you will only ask.

Start today by saying “I don’t know.” Believe me I know it’s hard. I’ve tried to avoid those words for years. Just ask Kathie, my wife.

Short has always gotten a bad rap. I remember our family’s first trip to Disney World. My brothers and I couldn’t wait to drive the race cars. Everyone jumped into his own car…except my youngest brother. He was too short and had to ride with my dad. No one ever gets turned away because he is too tall.

However, short is sweet when it comes to e-mails. In a recent study by MailerMailer, subject lines with 35 characters or less outperformed subject lines with 35 characters or more. The research found that shorter subject lines produced average open rates and click-through rates of 18.98 and 3.52 percent respectively. The longer subject lines only produced rates of 15.38 and 1.75 percent.

Click rates are defined as the total number of unique clicks (i.e., the first time a person clicks on a link) divided by the total number of opportunities to click. It is calculated as follows: the total number of unique clicks divided by the product of the number of links in each message and the number of total recipients. For example, a message sent to 100 people with 5 unique links in it that get 10 unique clicks would have a 10/(100*5) = 2% click rate.

To see more of this study and the average click rate for your industry, go to study . For example, the top 10 most common words found in the subject lines studied were as follows: “news,” “party,” “newsletter,” “free,” “night,” “sale,” “com,” “update,” “holiday” and “week.”

However, before you shorten the subject lines in your customer e-mails, test this concept with a segment of your customers or prospects. Testing will tell you if short works best for you.

The older I get, the more I think I'm shrinking. My fear is that by the time I'm 60 my sons will have to ride with me in the race cars.

Are you one of the 10?

A recent Harvard Business Review study revealed some very interesting information about Twitter and its users. For example, 10 percent of Twitter users account for over 90 percent of Twitter messages, and the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one.

The researchers believe this implies that Twitter resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.

Another finding in the study was that men are almost 50 percent more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, women are 25 percent more likely to follow a man than a woman.

This finding is just the opposite of what you would expect when comparing Twitter to other social networks where most of the activity is around women and the content they produce. Is this because Twitter only allows 140 characters to communicate your message and this works better for men who are just beyond grunts?

These findings will be very helpful as you determine the role Twitter will play in your business and personal life.