Archive for December, 2009

I’ve blogged a few times about how rare practicing is in business. In the context of social media, and in the public relations domain.

Exactly opposite of athletes and musicians, working professionals spend 99% of their time executing and 1% of their time practicing. It’s hard to find places in business to practice. So when you do, you have to take advantage of them.

It’s not surprising to see Tiger Woods recognize the need to get out in front of stories during a crises. He’s a smart guy. He proves it in this article, where he comments aabout Michael Vick back in 2007:

If you made that big a mistake, you got to come out and just be contrite, be honest, and just tell the public ‘I was wrong’…I think waiting a long time got a lot of people polarized.”

So he knew, just like most of know, how to manage in a crises. But knowing isn’t the thing. Executing is. And he of all people should know that effective execution requires practice.

AT school with the Marcus Roberts Trio*.

This is a long post. But if you’re in the mood for talking a little music and getting some groove and swing up in in your approach to branding, then I appreciate you settling in.

The Marcus Roberts trio has been together for some fifteen years. They occupy a place in American music that combines the maintenance of tradition and honoring the past with a highly innovative interplay of harmony, space, and rhythm.

And they’re heavy pros. Serious technique. If you haven’t heard Marcus walk a bass line with his left hand while improvising with his right you’re missing out on some joy in your life. I’ve shared a playlist on iTunes with a sample. Check it out.

But technique is just the start. They’re professionals with a steadfast dedication to the gig at hand regardless of their mood, the audience size, or a parent refusing to remove a fussy child from the auditorium. (Which happened recently. I witnessed it with hair raised. They played on, and blew us all away.)

And the gig at hand is larger than entertainment for them. It’s even larger than themselves. They have lessons to spread. Lessons in collaboration, flexibility, alignment, and dialog.

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If you’re on the wrong train, it matters not two wits that you’re going somewhere.

There’s clearly a personal branding gold rush. People and firms willing to take your money to tell you how important it is and how to do it. And of course the blogs, mainstream media, new media, Wikipedia, and even a magazine buttress the rush. Wherever we look we’re told we must brand ourselves.

Without commenting on whether or not there’s value in all of this (plenty of others have already chimed in, like @carlosmic’s common-sense insight) I believe there’s a big link missing from the dialog.

In essence, there are four key areas for brand building at the enterprise level that can easily be leveraged toward building a personal brand. In my experience with personal branding, too little attention is given to the first while there’s a flood of advice on the other three:

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I had a conversation this morning with an up-and-coming consultant who I’m sure will set the world on fire once she finds her stride. It was a conversation about bad things happening to a good someone with even better intentions.

She was burned as bad as I’ve heard someone getting burned with a trade agreement. It was a harsh learning experience for her, the kind of pill anyone who’s a free agent has been forced to swallow at one time or another. She asked for my perspective and since I had never articulated my guiding principles for this kind of thing, it was something I learned from as well.

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