On image management

By Nilofer Merchant

“How do you manage your brand?” I get asked that question really often, especially at public-venue speaking events. Typically, I sigh. It is not that the question is silly, or the questioner shallow, but because this question itself represents so much of what is stopping all of us from doing work that matters.

As I’ve written in more depth elsewhere, connected individuals can now achieve what once only centralised organisations could. The implications for this are huge. It changes the basis of market power for organisations because size no longer protects competitive advantage. It changes management because people can figure out for themselves what needs to be done to implement the larger strategy. It changes careers because we no longer need to belong to an organisation to be able to create scale or impact. Today, what matters is the ability to create, not the ability to first prove you can… While what people think of us matters, what matters much more is our ability to do and deliver. That’s what makes the ultimate difference in the world. And that’s what reputations are really built on. That’s what will draw people to you.

Yes, we are in the middle of a vast sea-change in which social can put the power of connection to work to solve meaningful problems. But in order to do that more meaningful work, we need to recognise what is holding us back… The real signal is the work itself, and the social signalling is just its echo.

From “Your Brand is the Exhaust Fume of the Engine of Your Life”