BUILDING BRAND 'ME'

Inspired by Gill Corkindale(an executive coach and writer based in London. She works with managers and leaders from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East to develop strategies for business effectiveness and personal change.)

What do you think? Is personal branding vital for success at work? Are there any drawbacks to marketing ourself in this way? If so, what should you do about it? Assuming that Personal branding is now a prerequisite for career success, what does our brand need to offer?

• Rethink the way we view our career. Don’t think of ourselves as an employee but as an asset . Ask ourselves: What do I do that brings value? What I am most proud of?
• Being authentic. Be honest about who you are -- your attributes and qualities. If you know yourself, you can promote an honest brand.
• Learning from the big brands. Identify what makes us distinctive from the competition. What have we done recently to make our self stand out? What would our colleagues or our customers say is our greatest strength?
• Make ourselves visible. Build our profile internally and externally. Ways to do this include networking, signing up for high-profile projects, showcasing our skills in presentations or workshops, writing for internal or external publications, volunteering for committees or panel discussions at a conference.
• Being consistent. Ensure that our message is consistent. If it is erratic, it will undermine our efforts. Everything we do -- and choose not to do -- contribute to our personal brand, from the way we talk on the phone to the way we behave at meetings or write emails.
• Balance substance with style. Don’t forget that the way we do things is often as important as what we do.
• Build and manage our marketing network. Our friends, colleagues, clients, and customers are an important marketing vehicle for our brand. What is said about us will determine the value of our brand.
• Learn to influence. Use our personal power, our role and our network. But use them sensitively and intelligently, or else we will not be regarded as a credible or trustworthy leader.
• Seek feedback. It’s critical to keep checking the value of our brand. This can be done by formal methods such as 360 feedback or informally, by asking people around us for honest and constructive feedback on our performance. Another good way to check is to go for job interviews, regardless of whether we wish to change jobs, which will help you test our market value.
• Reassess. Keep checking what motivates us. What's our personal definition of success? Write a personal statement about why we work and check it regularly.

MASTERING YOUR POWER HOURS

We all want to make our work day more productive. To enable this, we need to start watching our body clock. Where there’s chaos, there’s stress. Where there’s order, there’s beer. So why should we tolerate workdays that feel chaotic? Between meetings, phone calls and surprise parties, it’s almost impossible to stick to our well-intended plan. But if we can follow these simple guidelines all day, the payoff will be huge: less stress and more energy.

Best time to do the hardest thing you’ll do all day
Early morning. Your personal periscope isn’t the only thing to rise a couple of hours before you wake up. The stress hormone cortisol does. And this change triggers an increase in your blood-sugar level. As a consequence, this gives you the energy and momentum to manage difficult situations effectively. While too much cortisol can make you feel overwhelmed, it’s also what contributes to the ‘fight-or-flight’ ability to finish that project that’s hanging over your head—or to storm into your boss’s room and ask for a raise.

Bonus: The morning is also the time when you’re least likely to activate ulcers.

Best time to make a presentation
10 am Morning is the time of day when your voice is most rested. And by nine or 10 am, you’ve surely had got at least one chance to drink some water; a good dose of hydration will help eliminate early-morning raspiness.

Best times to stretch at office
10.30 am, 2.30 pm and 4.30 pm

Stretch every few hours to avoid back and shoulder tightness that comes from hunching over a keyboard. Here’s how you can stretch your muscles even while at work: clasp your hands behind your back and lift them straight up; hold for 10 seconds. This will open your chest and relax your shoulders and back. If you want to stretch your glued-to-the-chair glutes, cross your left leg over your right, resting your left ankle on your right knee. Bend forward at the waist and hold the stretch for 10 seconds. Then switch legs and repeat.

Best time to read reports with lots of numbers in them
Early afternoon
Our vision is often a bit blurry in the early morning and sharpens over a few hours.

Best time to make major strategic decisions
Late morning
This is when your body temperature is rising, your alertness is up, and your brain’s ability to process information is at its best. Most people also find they’re best at problem-solving around now. Scientists think your rise in temperature keeps your mind more aroused. And why we keep asking for a transfer to the Caribbean islands.


Best time to drink coffee or take a walk
3 pm
While other people rely on the caffeine method to jump-start their central nervous systems in the morning, you can use it to get you through the afternoon slump. Drink 250gm of a caffeinated drink about 30 minutes before a meeting and you’ll feel more alert. Sworn off the stuff? Take a brisk 15-minute walk around the halls. It’ll help re-stimulate the hormones associated with alertness.

Best time to make or return calls
3.30 pm
Waiting for that caffeine to kick in? Do some mindless tasks meanwhile (ones that won’t get you fired). Some person-to-person stimulation— even over the phone—can help revive you enough so you can finish the day strong.

(Extract from Men's Health Magazine)

MANAGING CHANGE

Most change efforts begin when some individuals or some groups start to look hard at a company’s competitive situation, market position, technological trends, and financial performance.

Most of the corporate change efforts that fail -- Mostly fall off somewhere in between. The most general lesson to be learned from the more successful cases is that the change process goes through a series of phases that, in total, usually require a considerable length of time. Skipping steps creates only the illusion of speed and never produces a satisfying result. A second very general lesson is that critical mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact, slowing momentum and negating hard-won gains. Perhaps because we have relatively little experience in renewing organizations, even very capable people often make at least one big error.

Perhaps nobody understands the anatomy of organizational change better than retired Harvard Business School professor John P. Kotter.

According to Kotter, Leaders who successfully transform businesses avoid the following 8 errors (and they do them in the right order).

It will feel familiar when you read it, in part because Kotter’s vocabulary has entered the lexicon and in part because it contains the kind of home truths that we recognize, immediately, as if we’d always known them. But the following commandants, on leading change will always remain definitive.

• Error 1: Not Establishing a Great Enough Sense of Urgency
• Error 2: Not Creating a Powerful Enough Guiding Coalition
• Error 3: Lacking a Vision
• Error 4: Undercommunicating the Vision
• Error 5: Not Removing Obstacles to the New Vision
• Error 6: Not Systematically Planning for, and Creating, Short-Term Wins
• Error 7: Declaring Victory Too Soon
• Error 8: Not Anchoring Changes in the Corporation’s Culture
  
  
  (Courtesy: John P Kotter)