Author Archive

I’m guest blog posting again. This time with The Redhead, Erika Napoletano. One of my favorite people on the social web because she’s herself to the end. Without apologies. Love her style or hate it, you know what’cher gettin. She builds trust, proving that authenticity rules in today’s world.

What better place, I figured, to write a bit more about personal branding. Because what Erika does can be called Personal Branding, but it might be something more.

You can check out my post here. And by all means: add Readhead Writing to your RSS feed. Rants writing and musings that will make your day better. And maybe make you re-think about what authenticity really means. I know she did for me.

It was my pleasure to write a guest post for a fairly new and very cool blog called Sundayed.com. You can check out my post here.

The post is a reflection of my ongoing interest in bridging the left and right-directed minds. I try to use the trumpet and improvisation as a way to illustrate how even in creative pursuits, we all deal with context and in fact it can create greatness. This is something the creative mind understands very deeply. But sometimes when context is presented in a business setting, creatives find the constraints instead of the inspiration. Or least mine did for long time.

Thanks for checking it out. Consider adding Sundayed to your RSS feed: a good site to feed the brain.

Albums - not just for the music.

I’ll say it: Effective participation in the social web is hard. Damn hard.

It requires strategic acumen more akin to leadership (valuing social capital and investing in the necessary competencies to build and leverage it) and execution skills more akin to in-person networking (add value to those you want to reach and do it all the time) than any kind of marketing and communications discipline.

It isn’t free. It isn’t fast. And the worst time to build your social web presence is at the beginning of a campaign, a crisis, or any other time when you want to broadcast and promote.

It’s exactly the same as this truism: The worst time to build a real-life network is when you want a job. Or a sale. Or anything at all. Social systems sniff out those who are out for themselves. They can detect them like a gas leak. And they’ll leave your house posthaste.

So how do you demonstrate the value of the social web in a culture with competing priorities?

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Only a few days after my post on branding re-framed as leadership (which had a short stab at personal branding) my lodestar on this topic Doc Searls linked to a few more posts that he (and now I) found apropos.

I wanted to point people to this one in particular because (a) I love it, and (b) I agree. Big kudos to you, Maureen Johnson. (And you should have whispered it, btw.) We are not brands. We are, indeed, weird. And layered. And multitudinous.

I’m actually working through a brand platform for a client that pivots around an eclectic, multi-layered experience. I turn to New Belgium Brewery as a model for this – a great brand that captures their layered experience. It can be done.

But people aren’t experiences. We experience. People aren’t work. We work.

And people aren’t results. People aren’t products. People aren’t services. We make, and yes, brand those things.

Is branding really worth saving?

Branding (not product branding, but that enterprise-level notion of name and reputation we’re still wrestling with) is dying because we’ve run it into the ground. If you asked anyone or anything to wear as many hats, mean as many things, or be a placeholder for so many musings as contradictory (think tactics promoted as strategy), impertinent (think one-size-fits-all-contexts theories), and importance-inflated (the genocide in Rwanda is an element of a brand? Really?) as we ask of branding, it’d die too. From sheer exhaustion.

It’s not the years (to paraphrase Indiana Jones). It’s the mileage.

Branding started as a notion of something you could control. If you had the resources to overcome the complexity of making fires and casting iron, you could mark something with a fair degree of inspiration, but without much thought of listening to anyone else’s opinion on the matter. Here it is. Our brand.

Branding today is obviously different. So much so that it’s sort of turned inside of itself. It’s lost its way. What branding has become in the last five years or so is actually a re-brand of good leadership practices. Let me make that case.

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I guest blogged on the website Please Feed The Animals this week. It’s worth clicking over for no other reason than to check out Erik Proulx and his work in inspiring people to turn lemons into lemonade. He’s a great guy with a great story and an even better passion.

Thanks, Erik.

There are new bedfellows in the world of communications.

I had an interesting week of facilitating workshops and guest lecturing. Standing in front of people and trying to add value – acting like (as my late uncle used to say) I knew what I was doing.

Two key takeaways from the week of acting like I knew what I was doing:

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This is a three-part series written with Dr. Paul Kosempel, leadership faculty member, Assistant Director of the Pioneer Leadership program at the University of Denver. Paul also wrote his dissertation on the topic of mentoring. Read Part One: Get your act together, here.

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Your network is made of people. People who are not sitting around waiting to show you unconditional love.

Now that your act is together, it’s time to get thoughtful about networking.

We shouldn’t have to tell you this, but you won’t find a job without help, and you won’t get help without a network of supportive people. If you think landing a job happens with resumes and cover letters, check out this study. Or this one (PDF).

Remember this: rare is the contact in your network who will actually hire you. More common is the person who puts you in touch with someone in your target company. Or asks a hiring manager to put your resume at the top of the pile. Or simply gives you an insight to the job you’re interested in.

The gold in your network is found in relationships, and the expansion that happens when you build those relationships. Not in the immediate.

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Paul Hawken could have used his time at the Denver Sustainable Industries Economic Forum to talk about anything. And he covered a fairly wide variety of topics.

But what stood out was his reminder that “people want to play in the fun sandbox.” That sustainable solutions to business and our world should be joyful. Think of the innovation that’s going on in this space, he challenged us. The amazing technology. System-changing ideas. Massive shifts in the status quo. The wondrous problems about to be solved. The human spirit and joy behind it all.

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This is a three-part series written with Dr. Paul Kosempel, leadership faculty member, Assistant Director of the Pioneer Leadership program at the University of Denver. Paul also wrote his dissertation on the topic of mentoring.

Please join the discussion. (Jill Montera, we’re talking to you.)

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Spring in Colorado is a reminder of an important life dictum. Just when you think you’re finished, ya ain’t. Life and work is a process.

A few weeks ago we had a 70 degree day on Thursday, and six inches of snow and a 60 degree temperature drop by Friday night. The parks were packed with energetic runners and smiling dogs on Thursday. Friday afternoon was a commute from hell. Wake up call.

Spring is also the time when undergrad and grad college students in their final semesters start waking up to the reality that it’s almost time to get a job. Some will start seeking internships, others begin realizing what their mentors meant by building a network before you actually need it. Damn. Shoulda done that.

Having worked at a university I still get asked the occasional favor to sit down with a student and chat about their careers. Not any more than any of us, I’m sure. But there are some things that really matter, in my opinion, but aren’t exactly easy to categorize and teach someone in a college career center. Tough-love stuff. Stuff that needs to be said but often isn’t.

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