Branding responsibility
I’ve been writing the blog daily for almost three months, and have earned a comment here and there, but wow! Yesterday’s post received serious comments from two whole people! Must have touched a nerve. Both commentators objected to the idea of keeping your business branding separate from your personal branding. Of course, my point was about giving your business the credit for branding successes; about institutionalizing your creative practices so that innovation and strong branding become company culture, not just your personal modus operandi. But my commentators’ concern points to a potential misunderstanding of the argument. Your business brand will have no strength unless your personal brand is even stronger than that of your enterprise. That is, your personal branding comes first, and it must be powerful before you are capable of endowing your work with similar impactful character.
“Innovation, as I’ve said before, is an inside job. It begins with the individual. Organizations don’t innovate. People do. And if people are ruled by past experiences, old assumptions, and limiting concepts of what’s possible, nothing much will ever change.” So stated Mitch Ditkoff of Idea Champions in the Heart of Innovation blog recently.
So yes, personal branding is of foundational importance. Personally, your character must be at least as well developed as that of your business; you should define and cultivate your creative and compassionate potential at all times. Your spirit will pervade in all aspects of the endeavor, and you can’t escape its influence.
I woke this morning thinking of the worker. I write so much here about the business owner, but what about the worker? There are many times more workers than owners. What relation does their personal branding have to the business’ success and longevity? How can the worker employ creative practices to boost personal branding and happiness?
Perhaps we are moving towards an economy in which every individual is in business for him/herself. I’ll look at this concept over the next few posts.
