Yesterday I spent the entire day on the couch in my home office reading CEOs' columns in employee publications.

By lunchtime, my head was filled with challenges. And opportunities. And excellence. And teamwork.

By the end of the day, I was having all sorts of world-class quality thought leadership.

At one point, my 18-month-old daughter came in crying because she couldn't find her doll and I gave her a rather calm talk about the importance of accountability; the doll has purple hair so I also talked briefly about diversity. My dog farted, and before I could become angry I said to myself, "Well, change is the only constant." And I laid him off.

But on this strange day of reading CEOs' columns, there was something more than the platitudes and the bromides and the boring, boring, boring bureaucratese.

On this day, there was some seriously good CEO communication. That's because I was looking at the very best CEOs columns written in the last year庸or the Ragan Recognition Awards.

I'm not allowed to reveal any companies or any details about the entries, but here's what I saw yesterday in the best of these columns. I saw some things you rarely see, and a couple things I'd never seen before:

� I saw a CEO take on directly a media report on his company expressing doubts about its economic viability. Not only did he take the charges on, he acknowledged their veracity to a great extent and explained what the organization was going to do about it.

� I saw a CEO use his column to praise a star employee in great detail for a brilliant and inspiring and complex thing she did that helped the company save a great deal of money.

� I saw a CEO explain a very difficult spin-off to employees in a way that was neither patronizing nor cheerleaderish擁n a way that expressed both appropriate sadness at losing the business unit and credible confidence that the divestiture was the right strategic move.

� And I saw a senior vice president, in a column about diversity, say that he knows from experience that minority cultures have to deal with "disrespectful behavior and comments" every day within his organization. He went on to give a few specific examples that he'd heard of. And then he went on to say how much he despised such behavior and how he wouldn't tolerate it. And he called on all employees to have courage and root such behavior out wherever they saw it.

Next time you or your senior executive wants to communicate and some goof in human resources or legal says you can't say that, remind them預nd use this column to do so if you must遥es, you can.