Choose your swimlane

A couple of weeks ago Anj Handa, asked me to write something about working out how to sell yourself if your experience is pretty broad. Being a 'Jack of all trades' can be useful, but being considered 'Master of none' is potentially damaging to your reputation.

I've suffered from this problem. After all, I spent the first 10 years of my career pootling along doing PR and media relations. And then it all went a bit sideways. I got bored with doing the same type of stuff all day. I wanted to taste some variety and test myself a bit so I joined Cisco and over the next 10 years started saying yes to lots of different challenges and opportunities, none of which had anything like ‘PR’ in their job title or scope.

Quite often I had almost no idea what I was doing when I took on a new opportunity. But I trusted two things:

1. That the person who was asking me to do get the job done knew enough about me to understand my abilities and wouldn’t set me up for failure
2. That my core skillset would act as a foundation to make a success of the new job I was being given whilst I learned more about it

And the second point is important, because in every case, each new challenge was basically in an adjacent function to PR or media relations. So it was a stretch, but never a hernia-inducing leap. For example, if I could do PR, surely I could turn my hand to executive communications. Or Internal Communications. Or Marketing. Or Strategic Planning. Or Sales Enablement. Or Sales Acceleration. Or Inside Sales.

I was pretty successful in navigating all these twists and turns, until about a year ago I decided to take a really giant leap off the hamster wheel and set out on my own as a consultant.

The first question was, where would I focus? I had done all these different jobs by now, so which would I prioritise? And where was there the most demand for my skills?

I thought long and hard about this one. Should I present a groaning buffet cart of capabilities, or just serve up a limited menu?

I decided on the latter. You see, the thing is, despite all the many experiences I’d had and projects I’d completed, I realised:

1. I’m much better at some things than others
2. I don’t really enjoy some of the things that I have the experience to do

I also reflected on something a former colleague had once shared with me. His advice was to know what’s at your core. Like a piece of Brighton Rock, what’s the core message that runs through your very being?

At the core of all my skills is the ability to communicate with clarity. And though for years I had been afraid of being type-caste as the ‘PR girl’ or later the ‘comms lady’ and had run away from roles that did that, in retrospect I realised that communications is my strongest skill. And doing it well makes my heart sing. So I decided to focus in the 3 areas I enjoy the most in this field:

1. Communications and marketing strategy
2. Content and messaging
3. Audience engagement

OK, these are still pretty broad churches, if I’m honest, but I’ve at least narrowed it down from a vast ocean to three swim-lanes.

Next I had to work out how to put this together into a narrative that might make sense if I was to describe it to someone I’d just met at a drinks party. This took ages. Call it cobbler’s shoes but it’s very hard to communicate your own communications value! Here’s what I ended up with:

My purpose is making positive change happen via effective communications, marketing and stakeholder engagement.

I focus on getting things right for my clients in 3 areas: 

1. the right communications or marketing strategy

2. content and messaging which delivers measurable impact

3. creating strong, enduring engagement with your audiences

All this creates business value in the form of revenue growth, as well as more meaningful relationships with customers, employees and stakeholders.

And now I’ve done this work it’s pretty easy for me to qualify in opportunities that come my way as a consultant. Does an opportunity map to what I’m good at and where I’ve said I want to focus? If yes, bring it on. If no, well maybe that’s not the right opportunity for me.

Of course I have to be prepared to be flexible and I may well decide to narrow things down further in the future, but for now this is working for me and it’s enabling me to articulate my value more clearly than ever.

So if you’re struggling to describe what you do, or what you could do, try following the process I outlined. If you focus first on realising what you love doing, success will likely follow. But you have to choose your swimlane.