Distinct OR Extinct.. Reinventing yourself as a Brand You Enterprise!!

If you’re going to light out for the frontier, OR if you’re going to reinvent yourself as a Brand You Enterprise, then you will need to pack some key traits in your old kit bag. Here are such key traits which makes you Distinct or Extinct!!

1. Think Like an Entrepreneur: The point of Brand You is not that you should quit your job. It is that you should re-imagine yourself as the CEO of Me Inc. Your point of orientation must always be how noticeably you enhances your market value. Be the de facto boss of your own work. Reinvent all Gigs (non-traditional?work) to ensure that they become Brand You Enhancers. The rule of thumb is that are you working in such a way that you update your resume at least once a year?
2. Always Be a “Closer”: If you are going to head up an important enterprise, including one called Me Inc, you obviously need to understand the ins and outs of your work areas. The track record of Me Inc. derives from only one thing – Implemented Projects/Executed identified work successfully in a defined timeline. As all true businesspeople know: Life is sales, The rest is details. So, when it comes to completion of work, “good try” isn’t good enough.
3. Embrace Marketing: You do need to master much more of the Marketing Puzzle than you probably did in the past. Brand Your World is a long way from the old world in which you hung out for 20 years with the same 15 people in your Dept. Instead, you will be going from project to project, mostly working with strangers. Thus, ?on each gig, you will be selling yourself a new – marketing your point of view, marketing your worth, marketing Me Inc.
4. Pursue Mastery: Competence in baseline business skills like marketing and networking is essential. But it’s not enough. To survive the White-Collar Wipeout, you need to be very special at something of specific economic value. In a word, you need to exhibit, “True Mastery”. Mastery goes beyond just having distinct skill. Think about athletes or actors who have records of sustained excellence. These folks are consummate pros who work obsessively at their craft. You should approach your tradecraft in the same way.
5. Thrive on Ambiguity: Mastery is great. Mastery is essential. Yet in a world where the very categories of thought and action are constantly slipping and sliding, even mastery will not suffice. Just as important as the ability to do one thing extremely well is the ability to do a dozen things at once and change course without raising a bead of sweat or feeling a shred of remorse. Everything is up for grabs. Nobody knows what he or she is doing. In such unsettling circumstances, you must be able to not just “deal with”, but actually thrive on ambiguity.
6. Laugh off Vigorous Screw-ups: The sweet spot of a Brand You attitude is a great sense of humor. By sense of humor, I don’t mean having a knack for telling off-color after-dinner jokes. I mean the ability to laugh off the fabulous prototype that self-destructs and immediately get on with the next rendition. Reaching and stretching and trying anything new is a requisite for survival – let alone some yet-to-be-specified form of New Excellence! In the current Disruptive Age, we will – by definition – be screwing up far more frequently and far more embarrassingly than ever before. Enterprises that tolerate or even celebrate failure, that encourage the bold bid for greatness that fizzles or goes down in flames are the only ones that will succeed.
7. Relish Technology: The brutal truth is that lots of people are simply “past their prime” when it comes to getting new technologies. You don’t need to be a Certificate holder in any particular software package; you don’t need to be able to program the stuff yourself. But you must instinctively appreciate the unequivocal fact that the Internet and everything that comes in its wake will turn business upside-down in an astonishingly short period. If that prospect doesn’t turn you on, if it doesn’t make you tingle with joy and anticipation, well, you are going to be in for a very rough ride. And I suspect, a very short ride!!
8. Grovel Before the Young: Those of us who are a bit high in Age#, say, of that Age 35 and may not have that appetite for technology. But will we ever truly get it? Not a chance! So, we must surround ourselves with young people. The necessary upshot: Every team must include at least one youngster – Someone well around 18-20 years of age – who doesn’t need to “reinvent” himself/herself, because he/she was born and bred and genetically certified in the New Economy.
9. Nurture Your Network: Despite numerous reports to the contrary, I believe that loyalty is more important than ever. But the Axis of Loyalty has shifted a full of 90 degrees. Old loyalty was vertical loyalty – Loyalty to a hierarchy. That’s going, going, and gone! And good riddance! New loyalty is horizontal loyalty. Loyalty to a trade or industry: What matters is what your peers think of your work. You must build?and deliberately manage – an ever-expanding, ever-deepening network of professional contacts throughout your field.
10. Cultivate a Passion for Renewal: Picking up new skills on a catch-as-catch-can, as-needed basis used to be a reasonable career strategy. But these days, a passive approach to professional growth will leave you gathering splinters on the bench, or off the roster entirely. Revolutionizing your Portfolio of skills at least every half-dozen year, if not more often, is now a Minimum Survival Necessity. ?

The theme of Talent goes to the root and branch of Who We Are and What We Do. It gets at how we contend with those millennial forces that are tearing away at White-Collar World. What makes for True Distinction in this Age of Talent? Truly distinct talent reveals itself through Work! Through weird, wild projects that add Incomparable Value and effect Profound Transformation.