Branding. Companies spend millions of dollars to be recognized as a World Class organization. World class can mean many things to many different people but all situations have one thing in common...they are the best at what they do.
Before we look at the importance of personal branding, let me share a few examples of organizations that have achieved World Class status.
For some, it's as simple as having their company name automatically become associated with a world wide brand.
Apple! Who thinks of a fruit when you say the name? Few if any. Apple is the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac! Computers and technology, readily identified by that one word. Is it any wonder that Apple has more cash reserves than any company and most, if not all misgovernment!
Walmart! Another entry into the world class arena. What comes to mind when you mention Walmart as a company. Many things, and a few not so flattering ones. But, Walmart is and continues to be the #1 retailer in the world. Why? Execution of their business model. Low, highly competitive pricing. Mass merchant. One could argue that they are losing ground to Target, and that is true. But they are far from being overtaken.
Nordstrom's - On the other end of the pricing scale is this very upscale retailer. Pricing is NOT their business model; exceptional customer service it. And it is legendary. You will never find service at this level, and with a high degree of consistency, anywhere else.
And one more!
Amazon - no, not the river! Amazon leads in merchandise selection and markets it very well. No one comes close to the volume and merchandise assortment. Amazon truly owns the online retail world. It was easy in the beginning when there was no competition, small or large. Now, nearly every retail organization of size has an online presence. And they continue to produce growth numbers annually.
Enough plugs for these World Class retailers. They are doing just fine!!
So what about your brand? What makes you different in the sea of job seekers? For many, the answer is one of not having a brand. You are highly skilled, well educated and have years of successful experience behind you. Unfortunately, so do many others. You are another apple (the fruit this time) hanging from the tree. You look the same as all the others.
Branding starts with your creating a mission statement just like organizations do. What do you want to accomplish and when successful, what will be the end result. You will be the BEST at who you do.
Step two is building upon that mission statement and defining the behaviors and competencies that will guide you towards your goal. Be specific. It's your road map.
Once you conceptually have the goal in mind and have developed the necessary competencies to achieve it, it's time to market your brand (you).
Your resume is one place to start. What are your major accomplishments? It needs to be more than just a list of positions, titles, and responsibilities. It needs to be well written and please, no spelling errors. And it needs to represent you and not just your experience. It is a tool. It is an advertisement. Does your resume reflect the same level of quality as the last Apple advertisement that you saw?
The same can be said for LinkedIn profiles. Let your top accomplishments lead the way as you again market yourself. Any place that you are represented, be it your business card, a personal website, postings that you make online, the spoken word; it makes no difference. You must present yourself as World Class!
I want to share a short story that exemplifies the brand and how little it takes to damage it. It relates to Disney, another World Class organization that protects it's brand every second of every day..
A young girl and her family are going to Disney World for the first time. She is so excited because she is going to visit the Magic Kingdom and Cinderella's Palace. Her hero is Cinderella herself and she is going to get the chance to meet her!
Upon entering the gates, she is off and running with her parents in tow. The little girl just can't wait any longer. Running around, over, and sometimes, through the crowd, she arrives at the Palace. Not seeing Cinderella, she walks around the outside of the Palace and in a back corner, out of sight of the public, she spots her hero. Cinderella is at the top of a short flight of stairs going into a secluded entrance to the Palace. She runs wildly towards the stairs, all the while yelling out "Cinderella, Cinderella". As she arrives at the base of the stairs, she gives out one more shout, "Cinderella". And this time she was heard. Slowly, Cinderella turns around to face the girl... with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth!
The little girl is devastated. All of her dreams of the perfect "princess" are washed away in a split second. And, at least for this child and her family, so it the brand. The brand that Disney worked so hard to develop and fine tune was gone in the twinkle of an eye.
You see, it doesn't take much. Walt Disney, himself a smoker, was never shown with a cigarette in hand (and he was a chain smoker). It was airbrushed out. His brand concept did not associate itself with smoking. Why? The most loyal fans were children!
Remember that when you develop your brand. The efforts that you put into becoming recognized as World Class can vanish . Create your personal brand, continue to develop it to higher levels, and never forget just how fragile the brand really is.
More next time...
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Monday, April 14, 2014
Using Outlook to control Email! - It's not an "out of the box solution"
We covered email and the basics of managing it in the last post. This time we will focus on Outlook and how it can be used to properly manage the process.
Why do I say "properly" manage? Simply put, Microsoft Outlook, right out of the box, will do more to take time away from you rather than save it. We spoke to managing your time through effective use of Outlook as a tool. And we can! However, Microsoft is a software developer, not a productivity organization. As such, they strive to put all the bells and whistles into an application as possible. The why is so that they can create perceived value and drive revenue.
Think for a moment about how you organize your day? Some make a "To Do" list and check off each item in the order written. Some take the time to prioritize the list but still use the "checklist" process. In both examples, email is not usually on the list! Nor is time.
Prioritizing the list is an excellent way to determine what needs to be done, and in what order. What it does not address is the time involved. So let's look at Outlook and see where we can make changes to more effectively use it as a tool.
First things first. TIME is what matters. So would it not make sense to have Outlook open to the Calendar page? One would think so but, in case you haven't noticed, it opens to the email page. Why? Because Microsoft markets Outlook as an email platform. In can be much more than that in the hands of a knowledgeable user!!
Step one - change the settings to have Outlook open on the calendar page. Take a look at your day. Meetings? Calls to be made? Other "time" activities? You should find all of those on the calendar.
Step two - turn off the reminders! You just looked and you should be working from the calendar page. I promise, once you get the process down, you will not forget to do something that is on the calendar.
Stop! You said this was about email. When is that coming? Well, it is coming right now. We just needed to set your frame of mind around time rather than the email itself. Now that we have done that, let's move on.
There are many moving part in managing email and we will cover many in future posts. In this one, we want to just set up Outlook properly so that we can use it to manage the email rather than having the email manage us.
In the email settings, you will find many defaults that need to be turned off. They are time robbers! First, let's turn off the notification! You know what that is, right? It's the little envelope that pops up on your desktop or withing Outlook every time an email arrives. And every time that email envelope appears, what do you do? Of course, you look at the email. It makes no difference that you are in the middle of a time critical item, you look! Does this possibly bring Pavlov's Dog Experiment? Do you mentally salivate every time the envelope appears?
Notification OFF. Check! Now what? The second big time robber is the "reading pane" view. That's the one where you get a sneak peek at the first few lines of the email. Now tell me that you don't read the first few lines but may not open it to read the entire email. Think of that process similar to moving the paperwork that you need to do from one side of the desk to the other, moving from pile to pile and never getting done. Reading pane - OFF. That kills time robber #2.
Now let's go back to the Calendar! Schedule time to review and act upon email. I can here you say, "what do you mean schedule time to read email". And my answer it exactly as it sounds. Block off time on your schedule to take care of the email! Only you will know if it takes 30 minutes or an hour. Some may get it done in even less time. The difference is that your email is no longer a time robber. You set aside time to address it!
And now that the time has arrived to deal with the "Inbox", we need to set up 4 very specific action to take with each email. No shuffling it back and forth. No setting flags on it (the why to come later). Nope, we are going to deal with it now. Her are the 4 actions ( or the 4 D's).
1. Do it now. You read the email and can take action (it requires a response of some type and the information is handily available). In that case...DO IT!
2. Delay. In other words, schedule it for a future time. You may need more information, files that are not accessible right now, or you may not currently have time and it is not critical.
3. Delegate. Is the request in the email something that you have to do personally or is it something that just has to be done and you have staff that can assist? If it's the latter, delegate. And then set a schedule to follow up to ensure completion.
4. Delete it! You read the email. It did not require action or your part nor that of a staff member. While it was informational, it was not something that required retention in a folder. Now DUMP it. Get rid of it. Clear it out.
The above process, the 4 D's, is going to take you out of your comfort zone initially. Understood! But being uncomfortable is part of stretching and learning a new way of doing something. You will feel better, I promise.
W just scratched the surface on using Outlook for time management. We changed only a couple of settings, so far. Yes, there are more to be made. In the meantime, focus on what truly is important and eliminate the time robbers that we addressed above. Do that and you will have "created" more time to work that priority list.
More to come in the next post.
Why do I say "properly" manage? Simply put, Microsoft Outlook, right out of the box, will do more to take time away from you rather than save it. We spoke to managing your time through effective use of Outlook as a tool. And we can! However, Microsoft is a software developer, not a productivity organization. As such, they strive to put all the bells and whistles into an application as possible. The why is so that they can create perceived value and drive revenue.
Think for a moment about how you organize your day? Some make a "To Do" list and check off each item in the order written. Some take the time to prioritize the list but still use the "checklist" process. In both examples, email is not usually on the list! Nor is time.
Prioritizing the list is an excellent way to determine what needs to be done, and in what order. What it does not address is the time involved. So let's look at Outlook and see where we can make changes to more effectively use it as a tool.
First things first. TIME is what matters. So would it not make sense to have Outlook open to the Calendar page? One would think so but, in case you haven't noticed, it opens to the email page. Why? Because Microsoft markets Outlook as an email platform. In can be much more than that in the hands of a knowledgeable user!!
Step one - change the settings to have Outlook open on the calendar page. Take a look at your day. Meetings? Calls to be made? Other "time" activities? You should find all of those on the calendar.
Step two - turn off the reminders! You just looked and you should be working from the calendar page. I promise, once you get the process down, you will not forget to do something that is on the calendar.
Stop! You said this was about email. When is that coming? Well, it is coming right now. We just needed to set your frame of mind around time rather than the email itself. Now that we have done that, let's move on.
There are many moving part in managing email and we will cover many in future posts. In this one, we want to just set up Outlook properly so that we can use it to manage the email rather than having the email manage us.
In the email settings, you will find many defaults that need to be turned off. They are time robbers! First, let's turn off the notification! You know what that is, right? It's the little envelope that pops up on your desktop or withing Outlook every time an email arrives. And every time that email envelope appears, what do you do? Of course, you look at the email. It makes no difference that you are in the middle of a time critical item, you look! Does this possibly bring Pavlov's Dog Experiment? Do you mentally salivate every time the envelope appears?
Notification OFF. Check! Now what? The second big time robber is the "reading pane" view. That's the one where you get a sneak peek at the first few lines of the email. Now tell me that you don't read the first few lines but may not open it to read the entire email. Think of that process similar to moving the paperwork that you need to do from one side of the desk to the other, moving from pile to pile and never getting done. Reading pane - OFF. That kills time robber #2.
Now let's go back to the Calendar! Schedule time to review and act upon email. I can here you say, "what do you mean schedule time to read email". And my answer it exactly as it sounds. Block off time on your schedule to take care of the email! Only you will know if it takes 30 minutes or an hour. Some may get it done in even less time. The difference is that your email is no longer a time robber. You set aside time to address it!
And now that the time has arrived to deal with the "Inbox", we need to set up 4 very specific action to take with each email. No shuffling it back and forth. No setting flags on it (the why to come later). Nope, we are going to deal with it now. Her are the 4 actions ( or the 4 D's).
1. Do it now. You read the email and can take action (it requires a response of some type and the information is handily available). In that case...DO IT!
2. Delay. In other words, schedule it for a future time. You may need more information, files that are not accessible right now, or you may not currently have time and it is not critical.
3. Delegate. Is the request in the email something that you have to do personally or is it something that just has to be done and you have staff that can assist? If it's the latter, delegate. And then set a schedule to follow up to ensure completion.
4. Delete it! You read the email. It did not require action or your part nor that of a staff member. While it was informational, it was not something that required retention in a folder. Now DUMP it. Get rid of it. Clear it out.
The above process, the 4 D's, is going to take you out of your comfort zone initially. Understood! But being uncomfortable is part of stretching and learning a new way of doing something. You will feel better, I promise.
W just scratched the surface on using Outlook for time management. We changed only a couple of settings, so far. Yes, there are more to be made. In the meantime, focus on what truly is important and eliminate the time robbers that we addressed above. Do that and you will have "created" more time to work that priority list.
More to come in the next post.
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