The importance of building your brand

When I talk about having a brand, I don't mean self-promotion or chasing clout; I'm talking about owning the business of your career. There are always macro forces in play when talking about career, business cycles, reorgs, emerging trends, etc. you don't have a lot of ability to control these things, but you can manage your brand. I once sat through a course from a professor at Kellogg School of Management, and he said, "branding is the promise that you keep". This means a brand isn't just a marketing exercise; it's a distillation of who you are and what you can deliver to a prospective employer. With that in mind, I unpack 3 areas I believe are really instrumental in helping define your brand below.

Your Value proposition:?Who are you? What do you do well? How can you distill that into a singular phrase where everyone knows exactly when to call you? For myself, I translate deep technology into value that is easily understood by my audiences. But far more often, people use a far more familiar word to describe me… I'm a storyteller. What's good about clearly defining what you do is that you become top of mind for people when they need help in that area. In marketing, we might call this unaided awareness; your name comes to mind via word association. If you've achieved this level, that is a powerful brand. There's also aided awareness, where we say your name, and then the audience says the area they associate you with; this is also good but might show there's room to work on your value proposition and/or differentiation vs. your peers. When you achieve in this area of your brand, you'll be surprised how often your name comes up for meaty projects.

Your Network:?In marketing, we consider this your addressable market and/or influencers on your brand. What I mean by your network is how many people, if they were in a buying position (managers) would seek you out, or how many influencers (co-workers) would recommend you and/or go to bat for you. This is an area everyone can work on and strengthen, but one of the areas I've always found to be rewarding and practical to growth is acting in service of others. In other organizations I've worked in, there was a lot of "it's not in my KPIs" or "that's below the line." At Dell, I've often found people very happy to jump in. The example I'll give on this one comes from a colleague who went above and beyond and said yes to something in their wheelhouse but not their day-to-day job. Getting ready for a big event, we really want to maximize the ability of our customers and partners to meet with experts at an event. This is a logistical nightmare, to put it mildly. It requires someone with next-level program management skills, someone passionate about the charter of helping to connect people so they can learn, and who has the patience and grace to keep things running smoothly in a chaotic arena. This person said yes and probably delivered the most value they will do all year (not that everything else isn't valuable), but that's how important this was. If you ever think, "that's not my job" rest assured that means you're thinking, "I don't need to establish this area of my network". When you deliver like this, its memorable, and you build advocates that will carry your story with them wherever they go.

Your results:?I'm sure you all saw this coming with the comment about a promise kept. At the end of the day, you have to deliver, that seems logical, but the mindset is everything here. In any role, you're always going to come across something hard or where things?don't go right , and it is all too easy to let that impact your performance, but that is self-defeating. Another area folks struggle with is connecting their work with the organization's outcomes. We all have the annual kickoff meetings and frameworks to build on, but that only gets you so far. You need to own the work as if it were your business to achieve greatness. This means looking for ways to extend its value, being concerned about its performance, and looking for new innovative opportunities. So, how can you see your role as delivering for the business? What are the outcomes you wish to provide? How can you strive for constant improvement? Because when you're invested in these areas, the results follow, and eventually, others begin to invest in you. This is an area I always talk about with folks early in their careers, as there's also an interesting correlation between results and your value proposition (beyond the obvious); typically, when you get the results, you become more comfortable with your own value proposition, you stop trying to be everything to everyone, you stop trying to drive everything, and you settle into a cadence where you interject only when it is appropriate.

Closing

This was a nice bit of introspection at the crossroads of here and the future. Understanding what works for me and why also resonates with you as a reader. I'd also love to hear from others on what they think about this area and if there are any things I'm missing.