Posted by: Shawn Grubb | 02/11/2010

“The Brand You 50” by Tom Peters

The “The Brand You 50” by Tom Peters was a quick read, but the overuse of exclamations!!!!!!, bold type, ALL CAPS, font changes, and h-y-p-h-e-n-s was tedious and kind of juvenile.

Once I got past that, it was a solid read that gave me a few new ideas.  I recommend this book for the person that is just realizing that it’s not just what you know, but WHO you know and WHAT they know about you.  I picked out the most relevant pieces by identifying what I wanted to remember (which I added to my learning journal), and what actions I wanted to take.  Both are outlined below.

Why I selected this book:

I selected this book because Mary Anne Gale suggested in her book “Running for Office” that we get clear on your own personal brand.  Based on her input, my action was to think more about this, thus I found this classis and bought it for .99 cents on Amazon.

Was the “The Brand You 50” helpful?

Yes.  It helped me to think about what was most important in the work and I do and try to cut out the non essential items.  It also helped me to think about “who I am” and “what I want to be known for.” As this requires quite a bit of introspection, I do not have the results yet, but the mind is working that direction.

What will do as a result of reading “The Brand You 50”

Do a Personal brand equity evaluation:

Define: What 2 to 4 things am I known for?

Define: Next year, I will be known for these 2 to 4 additional things

Start building a personal brand equity statement (brand priorities)

  • Start with skills, attitude, and character
  • Develop a quarter page advertisement
  • Synthesize down to an eight-word positioning statement
  • Ensure the calendar reflects 1, 2, or 3 of these priorities each day
  • Do an after-action-review (AAR) each night, was the day focused on one of the three brand priorities?

Look at the “to do” list, does it have a off brand topics on it?  Can you 1. Kill it, 2. “Wow” it 3, postpone it

Ask, is not on-brand, stop it!

Focus on 100% on the on-brand work

Develop a contact list and manage the heck out of it!

Last contact, next contact, score each contact (in touch, neglect, etc)

Invite the project killer to lunch

Develop a visibility plan

Construct a formal word of mouth marketing campaign (see Read: Regis McKenna’s “Relationship Marketing”)

What did I add to my learning journal after reading “The Brand You 50”

Re read Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people”

Read: Brad Blanton’s “Radical Honesty”

Read: Regis McKenna’s “Relationship Marketing”

Try 1 thing really different each month

Go to the bookstore and skim through 20 magazines you typically do not read

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Posted by: Shawn Grubb | 02/07/2010

Weak signals of change: are you listening?

Some years ago I had the unpleasant experience of being sold as part of an outsourcing.  While it was a pretty bad experience (I was working in Germany at the time), what I saw fundamentally changed my approach to my career and brought to life my predisposition for trying to “anticipate the future.”

Central to that experience was seeing the pain and frustration of my colleagues going through this situation.  Let me tell you about one of those fellows, let call him Bill.  Bill was a capable leader, a pillar of strength and dedication, decisive in his approach and deliberate in his actions, a real leader.  This was one guy who I would have expected to have his act together, he was a solid leader and I figured that for sure he would survive the outsourcing.

Bill was a wreck.  He had a near melt-down in front of his team which was understandably unsettling to everyone around him.  It was tough to see this 40-something pillar-of-strength turn visibly shaken as he realized that he had zero choice in the outsourcing.  His destiny was not his own.  He was without options.

I distinctly remember thinking “I never want to be in that position.”

Tammy Erickson had an article on blogs.hbr.org earlier this month titled “Predictions for 2010: Five Changes in the Way We Work” that got my attention.  Aside from suggesting out a few interesting trends (see below) what was most interesting was the news headlines she pulled from 2009

Company Furloughs at 17-year High: unpaid days, or weeks, off trims bottom line, but at a cost to employees – Ellen Simon, Associated Press, December 31, 2008

The new worker’s dilemma: take a pay cut or risk getting the sack – Gary Duncan, Economics Editor, The Times, January 22, 2009

More Companies Force Workers to Take Time Off: but not all welcome ‘banishment,’ especially when they don’t get paid – Eve Tahmincioglu, msnbc.com, January 29, 2009

The Recession Ripple Effect: A little pay cut goes a long way – Lynette Chiang, Fast Company Blog, February 17, 2009

Employers Hit Salaried Staff With Furloughs – The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2009

Recession Finds Even Those with Jobs Losing Pay – Christopher Leonard, The Huffington Post, March 8, 2009

Her point was that although the tools used to navigate this crisis had changed (using furloughs and pay cuts) the result was the same as using traditional economic crisis tools (layoffs).  The result of the furloughs and pay cuts are that employees lose confident in their company’s ability to compensate them for work done, and the company’s ability to take care of the employees..

Ok, while I am resisting the urge to get all “who-moved-my-cheese” on you, it is time we all see the VUCA future.

Reality

Reality is that there are no more entitlements.  You can and likely will be sold, your job is not for life, you will have to find another job, and the company may not be able to (or may choose not) to take care of you.  Finally, you can trust the company to act in the best interest of the company; if that means firing/outsourcing/downsizing you tomorrow, you can trust the company will do so.

Will this happen to you?  Maybe it will, maybe won’t, but what I can guarantee you is that if you take responsibility for your own future / career, and mentally and physically prepare yourself for that crisis that might come tomorrow, you will be a better employee today.  How?  When those rumors about the sale of your division come up , you are going to be the calm one, the one others turn to for perspective, you will be able to focus and see a path through the turmoil, or see a path out. Net, you will be a stronger employee, husband, mother, you will be able to make a move from a position of strength, instead of desperation.  You will be with options.

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Posted by: Shawn Grubb | 01/31/2010

Get There Early – Lessons from Bob Johansen

So, I was going through my notes (looking for something interesting to review) and I came across notes I took from Bob Johansen’s “Get There Early”.  Bob is a bigwig at Institute for the Future and has an uncanny knack for presenting the future in a systemic way. While he did not invent the term VUCA, I know that for those of us in P&G, he brought the term to life.

So, I heard about his future approach, I did some research on VUCA and read his book. From the book, here are the points I added to my learning journal.

Memorable notes from the book: 

In a meeting that Johansen was in with AG Lafley and Peter Drucker, A.G. said “Great managers help eccentric people produce”.  Wow, this coming from a colony of Proctoids

Obsessively implement the AAR (After action review). After action review:  learning comes from the discipline of learning; after each event, ask these questions.

  1. What was our intent? 2. What happened?  3. What worked?  4. What could have been more effective?  5. What did we learn?  Reminds me of my WW-WDW exercise I used in my last team. (What worked, what didn’t work).  The name really never caught on.. AAR sounds somehow better.

“Every winning strategy is based on a compelling insight.” This is from the book “Strategic Learning” by Willie Petersen (Columbia Business School).  Wow, I like the quote, going to look for more from this guy.

“Sensing is listening to the world around you, listening to signals you think are important to your organization, and listening for your inner voice of innovation.  Sensing is listening for the future, hearing something others don’t hear yet.”  YES!!!  Once again the “weak signals” are the harbingers of change… seek them out!

Foresight: perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred. Immersion experiences help learners imagine provocative futures that might never have occurred to them before

 Insight: the act or outcome of grasping or perceiving the inward or hidden nature of things.  Immersion experiences encourage A-HA moments where learners see the world differently and imagine new strategies.  To me this means that you must seek out the insight…

Action: the state or process of action or doing.  Basically, get off the couch and have the courage to act on the insight you worked so hard to get!

Fundamentalism is characterized by listening narrowly, but generalizing broadly.  I thought this was interesting… an easy way to catalogue a person who is hell bent on raming thier perspective but not listening to a word you are saying.

Military strategic intent:

1. Purpose, what do you want to accomplish, how is this related to the larger mission or enterprise

2. Method or task, what needs to be done?

3. End state, what ends are we pursuing”

 Oh I love this one:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.  As our case is new, we must think and act anew.”  Abraham Lincoln, 1862 annual message to Congress

 Determinants of health status:  (According to the CDC):   10% is access to health care, 20% is genetics, 20% is due to the environment and 50% is due to behavior”!!!!  Cut out the high fructose corn syrup instead of asking the government to do it for you?

Networking IQ:  networking skills and new media practices are dependent on three factors:

How you use networks to engage others in effective ways

Referral behavior, how you use networks to link other resources in your network

Online lifestyle; how the network fits into the context of the rest of your life.”

I guess I better get on with Dan Schwabel’s book “Me 2.0″

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Posted by: Shawn Grubb | 01/06/2010

Chris Kenton: My new Professor

Every now and then I do some environmental scanning to figure out if there are any voices out there I should be listening to (my professors).  No idea where I came up with this link, but at some point I took a note to look at www.chriskenton.com, the blog dedicated to the “Scenes from the superhighway: marketing AND technology AND society”.

From his “about me” I read:

Christopher Kenton is founder and CEO of the enterprise social media SaaS startup SocialRep, and cofounder and consulting partner at MotiveLab a social media marketing agency.

Er. Ok, so he is a social media marketing guy.  Ok that’s topical, so let’s press on.  The first post I read is about the mommy and daddy blogs:

As part of our research into online dialog and influence, we spent a lot of time looking at mommy blogs and daddy blogs, and variations on the content they create, the audiences they attract and the communities they develop. All very interesting stuff that would fill a good marketing brief. But the most interesting insight was a simple observation about the nature of mommy and daddy blogs. Moms are writing a lot about consumer gadgets, Web 2.0 and tech, while dads are writing a lot about changing diapers and teething. It’s a striking role reversal that’s fascinating to observe.

Hey… I think I like it.  Another source for the weak signals of change. I am bookmarking this one, I like his style, topics and insights.

Oh..  and check out his running dialogue with a social media/spamming firm Cision.

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Posted by: Shawn Grubb | 01/05/2010

Personal Brand Equity in 2010

Wow, want to see a Gen Y perspective on how social media is going to change things? Here is a summarized 10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010 from Dan Schawbel.  Dan is positioning himself to be a kind of “Gen Y Tom Peters” and he has cut out quite a little niche for himself.  Regardless, the list is interesting and brings out a couple good points that might be weak signals.

10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010

10) Online identities becoming as routine as employer drug tests

Looking for a job? What does your online identity say about you?  Today, 45% of companies use social networks as background checks and Dan predicts this to jump to 100% of companies in 2012.  One hundred percent might be a stretch, but the 45% today was a surprise.

9) More people working for free to build brand equity

I think this is tied into the Gen Y / millennials being more civic minded, however it indicates that if you are looking for your first job, be prepared to do some volunteer work.

8) Social media being used more for career development

Interesting.  I saw a post the other day where a person lamented, “I can find information externally using Google faster than I can internally”.  What if those internal people ran across an external post from another internal person.  That would make you stand out, no?

7) Monetization through branding becomes clear

Yeah, if you have 20 minutes and some kind of internet savvy, you can plug in a Google adwords account on your site you too can start raking in the dough (note sarcasm).  Unfortunately, wordpress (my blog host) does not allow external adverts.  Boooooooo!

6) Video becomes a brand-standard

Great, more lame videos.

5) People being forced to take a niche

Er.  Not sure how this plays out in a corporate setting. I can see this in the wild and wooly internet arena when you have bazillions of blogs, but cant see the relevance in the Fortune 500 setting.

4) Your voice becomes stronger than your resume

Clear… see number 10

3)  The new employment contract

I sure hope P&G is not planning to take my blog someday… but makes for an interesting conversation for someone who is hired as an influencer.

2)  More people understanding their brand

I am but a neophyte, so proving Dan right, I just bought his book “Me 2.0” on Amazon for about $9 and “The Brand You 50” from Tom Peters book for $.99.  Hmm….

1)  Transparency across the web from social networks to search engines and back.

Oh now this is interesting.  Google will include to Twitter Tweets and Bing will include Facebook status updates in their search results instead of just previously crawled pages.  For any of you who have managed SEO for a website, you know that page one (top 4 positions) in Google (Bing, yahoo, etc) is the golden key to traffic.  Will be interesting to watch as search results include REAL TIME information.  The future is going to be fun.. cannot wait!

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Posted by: Shawn Grubb | 01/02/2010

The Top 10 Most Important Tweets of 2009

Still need proof that Twitter matters?  Check this list and see how micro blogging is influencing our world.  Someone said this was human evolution?

The Top 10 Most Important Tweets of 2009 | buzzmarketing daily

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