Everything you do that’s visible to other people in some way will factor into your personal brand. It’s important, therefore, to ensure you’re taking steps to convey the right messages.We apply the principles of project management to personal branding and outline six tenets to follow:1) Identify your purpose2) Decide on your investment3) Get clear on the benefits — and how you’ll track them.4) Identify your stakeholders.5) Lay out your resources and deliverables.6) Nail down your plan.

Your Personal Brand

Most professionals recognize the value of having a strong personal brand. After all, if you’re not associated with particular concepts or strengths or characteristics or viewpoints, then you’re probably invisible inside your organization. That might be fine for where you are now, but if you want to advance, you need to distinguish yourself in some way. Conversely, if you have a strong personal brand, people often seek you out for opportunities or want to work with you, specifically. A strong personal brand is a form of <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90529474/how-to-give-yourself-career-insurance-during-uncertain-times">career insurance</a>.

A Personal Brand Is Career Insurance

Developing and honing your personal brand takes time — and it’s almost never “urgent.” So why bother? It’s essential to get clear on your purpose before starting, or your motivation is likely to flag quickly when time pressures emerge. One trick is to ask several times, “Why am I doing this project?”The answer might be: to be recognized for my expertise. Then ask yourself again: Why do you want to be recognized for your expertise? If after the exercise you don’t reach something relevant then you not start the project.

Identify Your Purpose

When it comes to your personal brand, even though there may be some investments (you might decide it’s useful to create a personal website, for instance), the majority of your investment will be in the form of your time. For instance, you might decide to focus on building your network, creating content (such as launching a blog), or <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/01/what-you-need-to-stand-out-in-a-noisy-world">cultivating social proof</a>. It’s important to recognize that building a strong personal brand is a project that will take years to accomplish in the form you’d like.

Decide on Your Investment

You might be seeking benefits such as revenue (more clients seek you out because of your strong brand); impact (you’re offered the chance to write a book or a column for a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140327193839-5068349-how-to-start-writing-for-high-profile-blogs/">high-profile publication</a>); or career progression (in a crowded field, you’re chosen for the coveted promotion).Building a strong personal brand is a process that plays out over many years. The benefits rarely accrue in weeks or even months.It’s essential to develop a hypothesis for how long you suspect your project will take. Also look for signs of progress, celebrating the small wins.

Get Clear on The Benefits — and How You’ll Track Them

Building a strong personal brand may seem like a project that only affects you — but actually, it’s worth thinking expansively about the stakeholders that may be impacted. Your boss, for instance, may feel threatened or worry that you’re plotting to leave your job if you suddenly start to get active on social media or take steps to raise your profile. Where possible, it’s important to keep them apprised of your goals and enlist their support.

Identify Your Stakeholders

Projects are delivered by people, and they can’t be automated. So ensuring that you have enough time to dedicate toward building and managing your personal brand is key. In most cases, before starting the project, we recommend that you stop one or two activities that you are currently doing. Maybe that means reducing your volunteer activities, or quitting your sports league, or recognizing that you won’t actually learn Italian this year. But giving yourself sufficient resources to commit to the new project is an essential starting point.

Lay out Your Resources and Deliverables

You need to ask: How and when will the work be carried out? Every project manager will tell you projects have a natural flow. There is a relaxed feeling at the beginning of the project, as the end seems distant. Stress starts to hit as the project moves toward the midway point and teams realize that deadlines are coming quickly. Toward the end of the project, everyone is in a mad scramble to get things done. A key job of project managers is breaking projects into smaller deliverables with deadlines to lessen this effect.

Nail Down Your Plan

By breaking the work into the most important things that need to be completed on a weekly or biweekly basis and then having honest conversations about what they accomplished during those periods, teams hold themselves accountable, focusing on what they need to do. Instilling the habit of making and reviewing commitments each week is a great way to focus on what’s important and get a clear picture of what’s getting done.

Forming Routines And Habits

Developing a regular schedule is important for your personal branding project, as well, because it ensures that even if you get busy, the most important tasks won’t fall off your radar. We can never fully control how others view us. But when you manage the cultivation of your personal brand like a project – replete with a compelling purpose, ambitious objectives, a realistic timeline, and clear deliverables – your chances of success in developing a reputation you can be proud of will be much higher.

Developing A Schedule

Your personal brand is your career insurance.

The truth is, everything you do that’s visible to other people in some way — be it in real life or online — will factor into your personal brand. It’s important, therefore, to ensure you’re taking steps to convey the right messages. The authors apply the principles of project management to personal branding and outline six tenets to follow: 1) Identify your purpose 2) Decide on your investment 3) Get clear on the benefits — and how you’ll track them. 4) Identify your stakeholders. 5) Lay out your resources and deliverables. 6) Nail down your plan.

career

Career

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Approach Your Personal Brand Like a Project Manager

Recent research from Gallup shows that daily rates of anger, stress, worry and sadness among American workers are worse than over the past decade. As a team leader, you are responsible for managing your team's moods without letting their anger impact your effectiveness.

Managing anger in the workplace

There are three damaging reactions to your team's anger.<ul><li>Dismissing the team's grievances, believing they need to get over it.</li><li>Deflecting issues. First showing interest, but then changing the subject and not doing anything about it.</li><li>Defending. If you are emotionally distant from your team, you may react defensively to protect yourself.</li></ul> Depersonalise how you receive feedback that your team is angry. See these inputs as data. Don't add your judgment or excuses to the data. This will enable you to respond more effectively.

Stabilise your emotion before reacting to theirs

Accept the feedback that your team is frustrated without judging your team or yourself. Ask for more information, demonstrating that you care to acknowledge it. Then reframe the concept of anger as a part of the human condition that, when managed effectively, can improve the drive across your team. Offer your team members a safe space to vent. Then encourage them to partner with you to find solutions that benefit everyone.

Lean into their anger with an intent to learn

Once you have de-escalated emotions, you can channel their frustration toward more constructive outcomes. <ul><li>Helping your team redirect their frustration toward a battle that benefits others can help spark creativity around what changes to make.</li><li>Design goals that involve striving for success instead of doing a task to avoid failure can increase their stamina and grit.</li><li>Consider the quality of your team's goals. Are the goals within reach or so unreasonable that they will likely give up?</li></ul>

Redesign team goals together

Consider your blind spots that could contribute to their anger. How you engage with your team can increase the tension or improve trust. Once you've identified your blindspots, be willing to publicly own the areas where you need to improve and request feedback and advice. This approach can shift perceptions from negative to positive.

Owning your part

Four strategies to help managers respond with compassion.

mentalhealth

Mental Health

communication

Communication

Managing Anger, Frustration, and Resentment on Your Team

<ul>
<li>As a young manager, observe and do everything to learn various aspects.</li>
<li>The first 10 years of your career is too crucial & that’s where you learn all the stuff. Thus it’s important that you focus on getting the right kind of learning.</li>
<li>To make a better decision, keep asking yourself “What should be happening in your career/start-up in the next 5 years”. </li>
<li>This might sound like a theory to you or you probably have heard from yogis to practice living in the moment. But that doesn’t mean you should not try to foresee or plan where you want to go and how you can probably reach out there.</li>
</ul>

Advice For Young Managers

Outsiders should understand that it’s not their company. This means to avoid being the face of the company or getting media coverage. That’s what Eric did when he was leading Google and Larry Page, Sergey Brin. He focused on running the company & making it profitable leaving Larry & Sergey to be the face of it.

A CEO Who Is Not A Founder But An Outsider

The way you build great products is by building a small team, working really hard, pushing the team & getting the product out which just barely works.  Example: The original iPod just barely worked initially. From there, Apple improved it before it was taken to the mass market. As a founder, you have to have a judgment when your product & start-up is ready to scale.

Building Great Products Is A Long Game

Great products are built from self-use. As a founder, you know whether your product really works or not. And if you don’t know, get the data from your initial set of customers and analyze it. Making sure your product works before you take VC money and start expanding in all directions.

Self Usage: Eating Your Own Dog Food

<ul><li>Hire intelligence over experience.</li><li>Take your time to hire the right guys. And if things are not working with new hires even after doing multiple interventions, fire them fast.</li><li>Sell your dream to prospective candidates. Hire those to whom it makes sense. .</li><li>Hire ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.</li><li>Hire people who can work better in teams. Give a person an exception to be an individual contributor if she is an exceptional talent.</li><li>On the finance side, hire CFOs who have gone bankrupt because they have seen what should not be done to become bankrupt.</li></ul>

Hiring Tips From Eric Schmidt

Next generation of successful programmers will be those who can write programs such that software themselves can learn how to solve a problem. This is also called machine learning.

Machine Learning

In every successful company, you have got a core team with following qualities:<ul><li>The one who has very good product sense.</li><li>The one who has emotional intelligence for all the stakeholders.</li><li>And the one who knows who to make people move fast.</li></ul>

A Successful Company

Three pointers for entrepreneurs who want to build a great company: <ul><li>Have an incredible founding team & right founders to address right kind of problem</li><li>You need to have some luck</li><li>Passion, lots of hard work and hiring awesome people</li></ul>

Advice To Entrepreneurs

Advice to Young Managers and Leaders By Eric Schmidt

This is session 8 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Reid Hoffman interviewing Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Alphabet Inc. (formerly Google).

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

startup

Startups

podcasts

Podcasts

This is session 8 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Reid Hoffman interviewing Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Alphabet Inc. (formerly Google).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do tech startups go from idea…to iconic? Greymatter’s weekly podcast features interviews with VCs, founders, and tech visionaries on everything from AI, marketplaces, and cybersecurity as well as company-building strategies like growth, finding product-market-fit, and recruiting top talent. Founders and VCs offer candid accounts of success, failure, and adaptation. Greymatter delivers practical insights mixed with the bold optimism that defines entrepreneurship.  

Greymatter

Eric Schmidt on Structuring Teams and Scaling Google | Blitzscaling 08

Pressure can spur you on, but it can also become an obstacle to performance and achievement. It can overwhelm a leader and cause missteps. Pressure grows more intense across three elements:<ul><li>How much something matters.</li><li>How uncertain the outcome is.</li><li>How many other demands there are.</li></ul>

Pressure is a double-edged sword

Being connected to the importance of what you are doing is a powerful motivational force. But during peak pressure moments, importance can rise to an unhealthy level and can derail a cause - all you can think about is how important the stakes are and what you might gain and lose. The secret to managing importance during these pressure moments is to understand that how your view the stakes can be controlled.

Dealing with peak pressure moments

<ul><li>Ask yourself what is not at stake. For example, your family will still wait for you at home, regardless of how the presentation to the board goes.</li><li>Avoid the anxiety spiral. Leaders tend to exaggerate the stakes in peak pressure moments. "I'm not good enough to do this." Instead, find evidence for the stakes you associate with the challenge.</li><li>Give up ego-driven stakes. You can only own how you acquit yourself. All the other things such as share price, revenue, profits are only partly within your control.</li><li>Gauge what is really urgent.</li></ul>

Defusing the stakes in peak pressure moments

To control the anxiety produced by moments of intense pressure, first step back and analyze the stakes.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

strategy

Strategy

business

Business

Leading under pressure

WORKPLACE CULTURE CONSISTS OF THE VALUES, PEOPLE AND COMMUNICATION OF A COMPANY, IT FORMS A COMMUNITY THAT THRIVES ON THE PARTICIPATION OF ALL PARTIES.

<ul><li>Jeff Lawson, CEO and Cofounder of Twilio defined startup culture as the collection of great people you hire to make thousands of decisions for you every single day, who you trust to perform their best.</li><li>Rand Fishkin, CEO and founder of Moz stated that if you want to undertsnad the values of the company, you should take a look at how they handle situations from gaining money, how they take risks, and losing face due to an executive; if you want to know their mission and vision, look at the things they've chosen not to do.</li></ul>

How Founders Define Startup Culture

<ol><li>Blindly hiring people instead of hiring based on "culture fit". Everyone who is involved in the hiring process should have a good grasp of the cuture and knows how to evaluate for culture fit without discriminating.</li><li>Having a lack in diversity will inevitably lead to a growth issue. Studies have shown that having diversity in the company provides fresh persectives and leads to greater work performances.</li><li>Having inconsistency within the company's missions and goals; and</li><li>Having feelings of disjointed leadership. Pay attention to your culture alongside the growth of your business,</li></ol>

Pitfalls To Avoid In Startup Culture

"Focus and reflect on your positive and negative experiences with workplace culture."From there we can enlist relavant concepts and values that we can choose from. These values must be actionable and are values that resonate with the company.Moreover, with instilling company values, you must know how to articulate what you want in order to have everyone on the same page as you and let them have collaborative experiences to contribute to the development of the startup and keep having good relationships with your people.

Know What You Value 

PEOPLE ARE YOUR GREATEST ASSET. THEY HAVE THE ABILITY TO HELP YOUR FUTURE THRIVE OR KILL IT ALTOGETHER.

Startup companies are gaining traction because people are able to integrate their work into their lives that gives them satisfaction with their overall work experience.The people, however, do not have absolute powers to demand greater salaries, but what they do have are greater expectations for the company.A company's culture must have these three elements: core values, mission, and talent strategy. While determining the company's startup culture is to look at their identity, growth strategy, and relationships with others.

Defining Startup Culture

Startup culture has received a lot of attention lately — people are looking for ways to improve the overall experience at work and some are even champions of seamlessly integrating work into their life. People don’t have absolute power to demand a higher salary or more vacation days but they do have high expectations. They’re…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

teamwork

Teamwork

How Do You Define Startup Culture?

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

Sometimes a teammate needs a warm hug. Sometimes the team needs a visionary, a new style of coaching, someone to lead the way or even, on occasion, a kick in the bike shorts. For that reason, great leaders choose their leadership style like a golfer chooses his or her club, with a calculated analysis of the matter at hand, the end goal and the best tool for the job.

Change Leadership Styles

<ol><li>Pacesetting leader - “Do as I do, now”: expects and models excellence and self-direction. </li><li>Authoritative leader - “Come with me”: mobilizes the team toward a common vision.</li><li>Affiliative leader - “People come first”:  works to create emotional bonds that bring a feeling of belonging.</li><li>Coaching leader - "Try this": develops people for the future.</li><li>Coercive leader - “Do what I tell you”: demands immediate compliance.</li><li>Democratic leader - “What do you think?": builds consensus through participation.</li></ol>

Daniel Goleman’s leadership styles

Taking a team from ordinary to extraordinary means understanding and embracing the difference between management and leadership. According to writer and consultant Peter Drucker, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." Manager and leader are two completely different roles, although we often use the terms interchangeably.

6 Leadership Styles And When You Should Use Them

Teams are effective due to various processes like psychological safety, constructive conflict and sharing of information. 
While teamwork is definitely better with the presence of such processes, the importance of shared leadership in team members is often overlooked.

Shared Leadership Vs Teamwork

We all worry about our own productivity, but fail to see that it is interconnected with other colleagues, peers, bosses and subordinates, which are sharing the same ecosystem and goals.
In shared leadership, individuals can be navigators to set the direction or to orchestrate tasks, engineers to solve problems, integrators to facilitate communication and interactive activities, and liaisons to act as connectors to external partners

Individual Productivity Vs Shared Leadership

A role exchange mindset promotes self-selection of roles and responsibilities as per the person best suited for the particular task or project. It also takes into account that each team member isn’t available at all times, and the task at hand will evolve and change hands.
People have to be comfortable with going back-and-forth with their roles and responsibilities, switching between leading and following.

Shared Leadership: Role Exchange Mindset

A leader with an ego is a bad leader, especially in the long run. An optimized shared leadership role is best suited for someone who only takes up the role when the team or situation demands, and defers or delegates roles and responsibilities to others based on merit.
A true leader is humble and lets other people take up the mantle without judgement.

Shared Leadership: Egolessness

To be a leader, one has to be self-aware and also be aware of others work-related skills, strengths and weaknesses.
One has to be clear on what skills the team has, which requires a good grip on each team member's role preference.

Shared Leadership: Awareness

<ul>
<li>Shared leadership increases the diversity of thought and creates synergy, proving that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.</li>
<li>It also increases awareness for backup behaviour and primary/secondary accountability.</li>
<li>It can be a high-maintenance system, requiring structure, communication and coordination. It requires more energy and maybe overkill for simple tasks.</li>
</ul>

Shared Leadership: Pros And Cons

Teamwork helps team members get along. That’s a good start. But what we really want is shared leadership—the process of dynamic, mutual influence based on role expertise.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

 We Don’t Need Teamwork, We Need Shared Leadership

<ul><li>Productivity is what keeps businesses alive and incentives increases it. They might be an incentive in how your office culture is, or how you reward great work – but incentives that drive sales, outcomes and maximise effort will have a huge impact.</li><li>Well rewarded employers work harder and longer while having lower attrition, sickness and absence levels. They are engaged in transforming your business and more likely to innovate. Incentives, financial or not, are the best way to harness great intentions and to show consideration. </li><li>Nurture engagement and motivation. The latter can be influenced by factors like salary while the former is a function of pride related to work, level of responsibility, camaraderie, skills and values alignment with the businesses, and the company’s culture.</li></ul>

Tips To Increase Motivation On Business

The importance of incentives - Stats and facts 2019 Why do incentives matter? Simply, incentives affect every business and if you work with people you need to get under the skin of why people stay, stick around and make sales. Everyone is influenced by an incentive. Everyone has motivation.

productivity

Productivity

humanresources

Human Resources

The Importance of Incentives - igniting business for the better - Incentive & Motivation

"What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed."

"Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement"

"The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new."

"The stars will never align, and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn't conspire against you, but it doesn't go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. 'Someday' is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it's important to you and you want to do it 'eventually,' just do it and correct course along the way."

"Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined and connected to one another. And, when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives."

"Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create."

"When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts."

"I got lucky because I never gave up the search. Are you quitting too soon? Or, are you willing to pursue luck with a vengeance?"

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

"If you can't fly then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward."

"It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are."

"It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change."

"If you can dream it, you can do it."

"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him."

"I talk a lot about taking risks, and then I follow that up very quickly by saying, ‘Take prudent risks."

"Make every detail perfect, and limit the number of details to perfect."

"Always think outside the box and embrace opportunities that appear, wherever they might be."

"If you can push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking a risk, really amazing things can happen."

"You don’t need to be a genius or a visionary, or even a college graduate for that matter, to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream."

There are many voices out there. All you need to do is listen.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

Motivational Quotes to Inspire Your Next Business Idea

Elon Musk thinks his company Tesla will have fully autonomous cars available by the end of 2020. 
However, there are some fundamental challenges to the safe introduction of these cars before they can be on our roads.

Fully autonomous cars

Autonomous cars use several sensors to detect objects such as pedestrians, other vehicles, and road signs. 
However, bad weather, heavy traffic, road signs with graffiti on them all interfere with the accuracy of its sensing capability. To enable true autonomous cars, these sensors have to work in all weather conditions anywhere on the planet.

Sensors for autonomous cars

Currently, there is no widely accepted and agreed basis for ensuring that the machine learning algorithms used in the vehicles are safe.
Autonomous vehicles will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to process the data collected from its sensors to help make decisions about their next actions. The algorithms will help identify the objects detected by the sensors and classify them according to the system's training.

Machine learning for autonomous cars

Once an autonomous car is on the road, it will continue to learn. It will detect new objects and be subject to software updates.
The system should continue to be just as safe as its previous version and not forget previously learned behaviors. It should be able to show that any new learning is safe. The industry still has to reach an agreement on these points.

The open road

Without recognized regulations and standards, self-driving cars will not be allowed on the road.
Currently, there are no sufficient standards and regulations for a whole autonomous system. The criteria for the safety of existing vehicles assume the presence of a human driver to take over.

Regulations for autonomous cars

Social acceptability is an issue for those wishing to buy a self-driving car and others who will share the road as numerous automated and autonomous vehicles have been in high-profile accidents.
There is a risk of rejection of this technology if the public is not considered in the decisions about the introduction and adoption of self-driving vehicles. Without collaboration on how to make the car safe and provide evidence of that safety, this project will not gain traction.

Social acceptability for self-driving cars

Despite what Elon Musk says, there are numerous challenges to overcome in creating completely self-driving cars that work in the real world.

Approach Your Personal Brand Like a Project Manager

Managing Anger, Frustration, and Resentment on Your Team

Eric Schmidt on Structuring Teams and Scaling Google | Blitzscaling 08

Leading under pressure

How Do You Define Startup Culture?

Zara M.