08:00 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Careers: Personal Branding and Thinking Big

If you’re small, there’s no reason to think small.

That was the message for me from a terrific event I was privileged to attend last weekend in New York City. Some 20 PR professionals from around the world – hailing from as far away as Russia and Scotland -- convened for the first annual meeting of Public Relations Boutiques International (PRBI), an international network of small PR shops.

A testament to the creative force of a group, the event showcased how personal branding today has tremendous reach. Here we were, small shop owners with each of us having at most only a handful of employees, yet potentially we had the firepower of a far larger organization. Not only could we learn from and help one another – as we did – but suddenly there were the rumblings of multiple connections and synergies that could result in our promoting ourselves and our clients worldwide.

It’s easy of course to think small and narrow and market ourselves to our immediate colleagues and geographic regions. And, that, of course, makes sense. Proximity can be a powerful enabler of business. Yet, with the Internet, ingenuity and the combined wisdom of a like-minded crowd, there is no reason today to think small. What with a blog and social networking, it’s easy to befriend people throughout the world. That, however, is but the first step. The next one is to somehow harness all that talent in a way that advances your career and those in your network. How do you lasso in some of the talent so that it becomes a creative, one-for-all, all-for-one force? I’d love to hear how you are doing so.

Wendy Marx, Personal Branding and PR Specialist, Marx Communications

08:42 am | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

Careers: Personal Branding and Change

Change. It’s certainly been the mantra of the Democratic primary race but it also has an important place in personal branding.

Take my profession, public relations. Just as the Internet has dramatically rewritten – and shaken -- the newspaper business, it has changed public relations tactics and even strategy. Where once public relations focused on media relations, today a lot of public relations is focused on Google relations. Instead of putting all our energies into getting our clients on page one of a major publication, many of us are also focused on getting on page one of Google. Different skills and tactics are involved from the old days of simply pitching journalists.

Which is simply to say that the profession is evolving and so must its practioners. The same goes for personal branding. Standing still is equivalent to death.

Change today is the great force rumbling through so many professions and industries. David Brooks in today’s New York Times calls the incessant changes happening in industry a “skills revolution.”

“We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combing information.”

Personal branders need to take a page from companies. The Times also today reports on the changes afoot at Kodak, which is trying to redefine itself in the digital, as opposed to film age. For Kodak, that means turning itself inside out, exiting businesses and entering new ones and changing the organizational structure and culture.

How are you evolving your personal brand so it stays relevant in this never static, cognitive age?

Wendy Marx, PR and Personal Branding Specialist, Marx Communications

04:47 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Pink's Whole New Approach to Career Guides

Daniel Pink's The Adventures of Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need is anything but a simple comic book, even if it closely resembles one.

Aimed primarily at recent (and impending) college grads, Bunko is a graphical story told in illustrated panels. Pink says it is the first US business book rendered in the Japanese "Manga" style - an entertaining, fanciful yet unintimidating way to assimilate information.

Pink's hero is stuck in a dead-end job. One night, as if in a fairytale, a hot looking (give or take her pointy ears) career adviser named Diana shows up at his office offering to show him the way to a better life. Bunko summons his mentor by rubbing chopsticks. (Don't over-think that one.)

Diana badgers him a bit, but Bunko needs both a push and encouragement.

Pink, who authored A Whole New Mind and Free-Agent Nation, is a gifted writer and perceptive thinker (well known to FC readers). Unlike old-school business gurus, Pink doesn't do all of the thinking for you - he leaves some room for you to flesh out his ideas. The corporation isn't the center of gravity in his writing - it's what's best for the reader.

Along the way, our everyman hero discovers key lessons of a successful career:

• There is no plan
• Think strengths, not weaknesses
• Persistence trumps talent
• It's not about you
• Make excellent mistakes
• Leave an imprint

One of the most perceptive observations in the book is that where you work is almost more important than what you do there - at least to begin with.

"The most successful people ... take a job or join a company because it will let them do interesting work in a cool place - even if they don't know exactly where it will lead," advises Diana.

Pink draws a distinction between taking a job for "instrumental" reasons - "because you think it's going to lead to something else", versus "fundamental" reasons - "because you think it's inherently valuable, regardless of what it may or may not lead to."

And he adds (through Diana's voice) that, "The Dirty Little Secret is that instrumental reasons usually don't work. You never know what's going to happen so you end up stuck."

Less clear is how Bunko or the rest of us will "leave an imprint" in this world. I hope that blogging qualifies as an imprint. Rob Ten Pas' Manga story illustrations in "Johnny Bunko" are hip and fun.

Rusty Weston, My Global Career • San Francisco, Ca • http://www.myglobalcareer.com/ • rusty@myglobalcareer.com

09:04 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

Work+Life Flex as a Retention-Retirement Strategy? Yes, Say More Retirees and Companies

Recently, I was brainstorming with the CFO of a client about how to more accurately reflect the cost of regretted turnover in the operating numbers of individual business units.  His industry as a whole is experiencing intense competition for talent, so he wanted to figure out how to make the loss of a valued employee felt more directly by his line leaders.
 

As we spoke, he kept his focus on younger employees.  Then I suggested, “What about including regretted retirements in that calculation?”  He stopped and thought about it, “You know that’s something we might want to consider.”  This organization already has used flexibility to stay connected with employees who had “retired”--some were consultants, others worked part-time.  And now the CFO was thinking about the loss of a professional who retires in terms of regretted turnover calculation.

The idea of using flexibility to strategically retain talent that would otherwise walk out of the door in retirement, was the focus of an excellent segment on NPR by Judy Martin, entitled “Workers, Employers Adjust to Phased Retirement.”  Martin interviewed an IBM employee who reduced her schedule instead of retiring fully, and uses her extra time to play in a band!   Last week, The New York Times ran a number of stories discussing “working” flexibly in retirement. 

Clearly, there’s an awareness building that work+life flexibility is a strategy we all need to use, but it still isn’t a natural part of how we think about work and retirement.  We tend to make it about moms or younger employees, and in the process overlook a very important use of flex. 
 

One of my faithful readers, forwarded a posting from the Time Goes By blog entitled “This New Land of Old Age,” a new book by Dr. Robert Butler called The Longevity Revolution—The Benefits and Challenges of Living a Long Life, that looks at “the historically unprecedented shift in age distribution…” and challenges us to rethink many of our core attitudes and assumptions about aging.  Here’s an excerpt:

“The stereotype equates aging workers with nonproductive drains on society, but, ironically, older workers who remain productively employed are most likely to remain healthy and able to contribute to society than those who retire..."

It’s easy to focus the work+life fit debate primarily on attracting and retaining “young people.”  And, yes, that is one very important objective.  But we need to keep pulling back the lens.  We need to remind ourselves that this is a strategic imperative for attracting and retaining all talent, including employees at the other end of the demographic scale—soon to retire Baby Boomers.

What do you think?  How do think Baby Boomers will redefine retirement, and what will that look like for all of us in terms of how we think of flexibility in the workplace? 

(To learn more about some of the financial considerations of working in retirement, check out the Wall Street Journal article by Toddi Gutner, "Pitfalls of Working in Retirement")

08:36 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

The Leading Edge - Election '08 - The Best Man for the Job is a Woman

I love flip-flopping as I look at the Presidential campaign through the lens of emotional intelligence. Maybe I should run for office.

Here goes my current iteration.

Obama is a charmer, not a fighter. Clinton is a fighter, not a charmer. Clinton is a bulldog and it’s beginning to “feel” like Obama is slinging a lot of bull.

Given how uphill a battle it seems to get anything accomplished, I can see the advantage of a bulldog over someone with charm, but possibly not much else.

Truth be told, the reason President Bush may have beaten Gore and Kerry, is that compared to both, he was the bulldog to their complainer and whiner personae. Ironically, President Bush’s bulldog personality may even be preferable to either Obama’s or Clinton’s. The problem with Bush was his flawed vision (or perhaps his gamble that didn’t pay off) and then even more flawed execution of that vision. If Bush had a better vision and was more effective in implementing it, he in fact has the better personality for the job.

Darn, this personality stuff is such a distraction.

I think what Americans need, want and ache for is something that none of the candidates have and if they had, most Americans would fight.

What we need is a candidate with a noble vision so powerful and compelling that we will put aside our more pressing personal needs to throw ourselves behind it.

Fighting for individual freedom was the vision that gave birth to this country, freedom from slavery caused the Civil War, making the world safe for democracy led to WW I, overthrowing evil led to WW II.

None of the candidates seems to have a transformational vision that can be that rising tide that lifts all Americans. Instead, they seem hopelessly locked in transactional myopia where the focus seems more about getting elected than on taking America to a place of world prominence and eminence.

08:32 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Careers: Personal Branding and PR No-Nos

During the height of the Iraq war, you couldn’t turn on the TV or listen to the radio without hearing a military analyst make pronouncements about the war. What we didn’t know at the time was that many of these analysts were spouting talking points provided by the Pentagon.

The New York Times last Sunday reported on an extra cozy relationship between retired military officers and the Pentagon, who recruited the officers as shills for the administration’s wartime progress. The retired officers, who frequently had ties to military contractors, were often paid by the TV and cable networks to provide analysis of military issues. Meanwhile, the words they were uttering as their own were often warmed over talking points provided by the Pentagon.

The campaign, according to the Times, was the brainchild of a Pentagon PR person, and was a way to gain “information dominance” over military news. Unfortunately, the campaign didn’t simply try to get across the Bush administration’s point of view but also according to the Times, passed off as fact false or inflated information

According to one PR person, the Pentagon simply practiced good public relations by using the retired officers to spin the news.

As a fellow PR person and personal branding specialist, frankly, I find that point of view disturbing. The bottom line is that the retired officers’ hands often were dirty. They were helping fill the pockets of military contractors they worked for with their Pentagon access and TV pronouncements. And, the ultimate victims were the American people, who were fed false and biased information by seemingly independent spokespeople who were actually Pentagon shills.

There is a fine line in personal branding and public relations where promotion gives way to unethical distortion of the facts. To me, public relations and personal branding, advances a point of view. Certainly in doing so there is some bias. But the perceptions are supported by facts, not half truths gussied up as objective statements.

What the Pentagon did with the TV and other media’s unwitting help is bamboozle the American people. That’s neither good public relations or ethical behavior.

What do you think?

Wendy Marx, PR and Personal Branding Specialist, Marx Communications, Inc.

01:34 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

The Leading Edge - Post PA Primary Debrief - Looking for Leverage in All the Wrong Places

It’s not what you can do (Obama) or what you will do (Clinton),
it’s what you’ve already done
that has made a positive, lasting and measurable difference
that earns you leverage.

I
was trying to figure out my mixed feelings after the Pennsylvania
primary and where my ambivalence towards Obama and Clinton comes from.

I
think it derives from the dissonance that both candidates trigger in
me. Dissonance occurs when what you see and hear doesn't match what you
feel or "What are you going to do FOR me?"/"What are you going to do TO me?"

I see and hear what both Obama and Clinton are saying, and I think the mixed feelings I have towards each are as follows:

Obama = Can do but hasn't done yet
Clinton = Been there, done what?

Obama
lacks the track record and experience. Clinton has the experience, but
lacks the track record of being effective in making a positive, lasting
and measurable difference.

So I guess it comes down to the Devil
you don't know (Obama) vs. the Devil you do (Clinton, and for that
matter McCain) which makes for a devilish decision come election time.

03:35 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Text Heavy

You’re briefing your team on an important project when you notice a coworker is busy texting away on a cell phone instead of paying attention to what you are saying.  

It happens all the time. And sometimes it can be a problem.  

Some people have the ability to carry on five in-person and virtual conversations at once, but unfortunately for the rest of us, the majority can only focus on one shiny object at a time—be it a new smartphone or the glare off of the forehead of Stan from accounting. They might be able to pick up bits and pieces of your conversation while typing away on that tiny keyboard (am I the only one who finds that humorous), but without their undivided attention, you’re fighting an uphill battle to get anything productive from them. Also, it’s just plain rude and inconsiderate to other members of the team. 

It’s not just BlackBerry addiction. I’ll be the first one to admit, I often find myself so glued to a computer screen that I can have an entire conversation with someone standing in my doorway without ever making eye contact. The exact same thing I used to get frustrated by when a coworker would do it to me. To my coworkers-don’t worry, I’m aware of it. I’m working on it.  

Before anyone rolls their eyes in disgust, I know real-time communication is the lifeline in a number of industries. If something is critical, it’s obvious you need to respond to an email or text immediately. But, in most other cases, I think we let the bad habit of texting get the best of us. Even if it’s something as unimportant as who got voted off Dancing with the Stars last night, you might be more fixated on that than listening to your coworker.  

It’s almost like we need technology police. “Turn the device off and step away from the conference table. Put your hands up and don’t make any sudden moves towards your Blackberry!” Of course, they could also monitor the inner-office coffee supply and pass out fines to anyone caught fleeing the scene of an empty coffee pot. 

The next time you feel the vibration on your hip signaling an incoming message, assess the situation before you start typing away. And, if you’re a repeat offender, just remember that when you’re freaking out in response to the periodic service outage or internet hiccup, some of your coworkers are probably smiling from ear to ear on the inside knowing they actually have your complete attention—even if only for a short time. 

Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (www.courtingyourcareer.com).

06:03 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Careers: The Maestro of Personal Branding

How do you get 60 bloggers to create a huge buzz for a book none of them has read?

Just ask Rohit Bhargava, Internet marketing whiz and author of the just published Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back (McGraw-Hill, March 31, 2008). The book’s premise is that companies can no longer be faceless entities in today’s social media era.

Exhibit One in the importance of personality is Bhargava’s marketing of his book. Not simply content to do the usual book tour, Bhargava has marketed his book like a brand. Which, in his case, means “making it stand out and go viral.”

Bhargava, already an Internet personality with a top marketing blog, offered an irresistible challenge to the blogging community. Send him five questions; he’ll answer them all and the several thousand readers of his blog will select a winner. Within 48 hours, 60 bloggers talked up the contest and 55 submitted questions.

That was just for starters. Bhargava blogged about the contest and book launch on Twitter, created a Facebook group dedicated to the book…and just this week will launch The Personality Project.com, an initiative as ambitious-sounding as its name. It’s a group blog that over the year will feature 100 visionary marketers talking about -- you guessed it -- why personality matters in business. Among the bloggers will be the president of Kiva.org, the founder of Zappos.com and the founder of BuzzAgent.com.

While any author wants a favorable review, Bhargava went one better writing his own review of his book on Amazon. He modestly gave his book four stars leaving it up to readers to decide it if it merits another star. His review, really more of a brief introduction to the reader, again helps put a human face on the book and its creator.

Check out his website for his book, and you’ll see a site your average marketer could take a lesson from. It includes everything from an elevator pitch for the book…to the author’s original book proposal…to a rejected book cover. Bhargava, like all great personal branders, understand the importance of being transparent and authentic and creating a virtual identity.

In the 24/7 world, it’s not enough to forge an image offline; you also need to create an online persona that melds with your flesh and blood self.

All of which has been Bhargava’s operating principal since he launched his first personal website in the Internet dark ages of 1998 – before many realized what a branding machine the Internet could be. In 2005, he created the first social media bio (now online at http://www.aboutrohit.com/), and even registered socialmediabio.com.

Rohit’s advice for personal branders?

• “Don’t be afraid to use your personality. It’s the secret sauce that makes you or your product stand out.”
• “Thinking about your online identity as a brand means letting your many profiles online work together to deliver a better picture of who you are.”
• “Doing things online isn’t a substitute for actually participating in meetups and attending conferences in person. Face time still matters.”

Wendy Marx
Personal Branding and Corporate Marketing Specialist
Marx Communications

Rohit Bhargava
Rohit at FaceBook
Personality Not Included at Amazon.com
http://www.personalitynotincluded.com/

tag technorati: self-promotion, careers, public-relations, personal branding, personal brand, branding, Rohit Bhargava