There is an increasing importance centring on the reputation of individuals within business entities and the need to ‘brand you.’ As I’ve said before people are replacing products and, like our products’ reputation, we will have to do that with our people.

Key executives will need to be known for something, though quite clearly not everything. Our people will have a high visibility offline and just as critical online. It’s one we can’t nor shouldn’t control but influence. There is a significant shift to individual reputation (some traditionalists might call this career management) but its more fundamental than that as it means working even more closely with the business than even before.

Can you see why the war for talent is going to be crucial? A knowledge based company’s reputation will not be dictated by its marketing team’s interpretation of the brands identity but it will be the sum of the reputation of the people involved in the brands evolvement.

Think John Terry and Tiger Woods. That has brought it home. Reputation damaged over night, well perhaps over several nights if the truth were known. This isn’t a bad thing. Its not another headache to contend with. It’s a great development. Transparency increases professionalism doesn’t it? Trust breeds loyalty and commitment doesn’t it? Influence shapes new things doesn’t it?

HR departments need to down tools and stop process managing and go and knock on the doors of their marketing colleagues to start banging heads together about how this is all going to work for the people they recruit and the company they work for.

Phil Zimmerman was recently quoted as saying in the future we will all get our ’15 minutes of privacy’ rather than our Andy Warhol moment. Clever thought, and sadly, perhaps true. Both professionally and personally we are all going to have to manage our online reputations. We’ll even measure and score it. We’ll leave the personal element in the bottom drawer for now.

Measurement will evolve and monitoring is here already. I believe we will be measured independently based on the following five gauges:

Content – More work is online than ever before. With wikis and cloud computing, filing cabinets are becoming a thing of the past and it’s exposed, to some degree for everyone to see. In fact, it’s important that the content is accessible rather than hidden. The quality of that content will be critical. More of us will be publishing our work online, our ideas, knowledge and opinions.

Influence – This will be about your popularity. How many people are following you? How many fans you have? How often you are mentioned or referenced in other peoples content? It’s also about how well you are connected, who you are connected to and how you influence those networks.

Trust – Part of this will be how transparent, open and whether people respect your integrity. It will be about how you deal with the positive as well as the negative issues every business has. Included will be testimonials and case studies that clients quite openly communicate across their own online sphere not your website.

Community – Having a strong community around your brand will make online reputation management easier. A robust set of people full of influencers and passionate about what you do will fight your battles on your behalf. They are more ready to forgive if you deal with problems well. They will be engaged and assist you in managing your reputation over the long run.

How you use social media – This is perhaps as much about sourcing as marketing. The sourcing of innovative solutions, using social media to co-create, participate and share information. It will also involve seeking out top suppliers and partners.

If you want to hear more about this, I’ll be speaking at this event next week: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/509178968

It goes without saying that you earn reputation. If you don’t manage your online reputation someone else will and it isn’t that coffee induced, fast food journalist out to get you. Its not shameful promotion, its now the bedrock of managing your brand and developing a community. Expect to be measuring accurately soon…..

Deliberately forgetting stuff is actually quite hard to do. As Dee Hock, creator of Visa once said “The problem is never how to get new innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.” Familiar? And, blimey are we having to forget things. We need to unlearn how we’ve been taught to market, how to treat people, how to do business, what aspects to focus on, how we make money, who is important. The trouble with all of this is that its rather unsettling!

Jack Uldrich outlines unlearning in his neat post below:

http://www.unlearning101.com/fuhgetaboutit_the_art_of_/2010/03/mix-up-your-mind.html

People often say that they don’t want to disrupt something thats good or works. I understand this, but is it working and is it good is my next question. This isn’t about reinventing the wheel, its about forgetting a lot of what we have been conditioned to do. If you want to stimulate new stuff, you have to accept you need to forget the old stuff.

We need to stick our necks out more, play more and forget more. What do you need to forget this week?

Word provided by Robert Pickstone - www.robertpickstone.com

The only reason we need to be adaptable is because we are moving to mass innovation. It’s critical because no two clients, projects or people are alike. As change perpetually gains momentum and things happen quicker, we will need business models and people that adapt seamlessly to new environments.

We now as individuals, organisations’ and communities have to display chameleon like qualities. Perhaps we will need to change our attitude to business significantly in order to become more adaptive? Adaptability will demand that we understand how our business is going to transform itself from a current to future state as we try to build specific things under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

It will specifically involve solving problems creatively and adapting to dynamic changing environments. Dealing with uncertain work conditions where people have to adapt to novel situations. From that we must continuously learn so we can keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancement and cultural changes this will bring. We are going to have to attain interpersonal adaptability, being able to produce incredible outcomes in fluid work environments with a project led business. Whether we like it or not cultural adaptability, we live and work in a globalised world. We will become one tribe and we will have to learn how to perform well in different cultures, surrounded by people who do things different to us.

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative. “ HG Wells. Some of us will have to be able to work well in uncomfortable and strange climates. Adaptability is no longer an emphasis on just technology and processes but about people and processes coming together through technology.

Our lives have been invaded by technology, that’s not a bad thing! However, it does present a paradox; we can work anywhere, anytime. Conversely, it means little escape from work. We tweet, blog, email and talk all the time. Next time you go for dinner, count the number of people who pick up during one of the courses!

We live in a world of interruption. First, it was advertising agencies intruding into our homes, now it’s via a little device that’s in our pockets. We must restore order over our time. Time has lost its boundaries which makes it even more excruciating to manage as we have little of it. We have ultimately lost control! It means that we are not often ‘there’ when we have conversations. We concentrate on several tasks at once rather than one or two that we do truly well. We answer our mobiles, become distracted by emails and faff about far too much. We have given technology permission to control our time not the other way round. For some it gives a sense of being important, but all we are doing is ‘biting off more than we can chew.’ It results in us living fast when actually being able to chill is far more appropriate and conducive to results.

We all need to find ways to control our time. Only opening emails three times a day, switching our phones off when we are at a dinner party, focusing on the people we are having a drink with and finding a little balance. You are dodging the issue if you think other people are controlling your time. It’s about learning to say no constructively. Controlling our time is not just about being more effective, it’s actually more about enriching our lives, enhancing our relationships and adding true value to what we do.

Controlling interruption gives us the opportunity to intensely focus on important, meaningful activity not the sheer volume. Time isn’t to be messed with; we let it pass us by far too easily without feeling it and enjoying it. We only get one shot at that moment in time, that day, that meeting, that client, that dinner party. Rushing through it, slightly dictated by interruption doesn’t add anything, it just really takes away.

The second word from the forthcoming eBook “Hang On.”

It’s about taking the conversation beyond price. Conversation is no longer a distraction at work, it is central to its existence and a leader’s job now is to start those conversations and invite people to take part. Conversation initiates new rules, new ways of engaging. They spring up everywhere. We can’t stop someone from being part of the conversation. Our people are talking to customers, our customers are talking to US and most importantly, our customers SHOULD be talking to each other. We can’t beat them so we’ had better find a way of joining them.

David Weinberger in the book ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’ states “We treasure our conversations most of all because they are ours, the way marketing speak never was.” The conversations we are having right now are so important. They can spread ideas, solve problems, gain agreement, build trust, remove barriers, encourage laughter and promote enjoyment. In the future, the conversations people are having in and around companies will be the essence of success. That means allowing it, encouraging it and facilitating it.

Most managers are terrible at conversation, they are too busy directing, making decisions, controlling budgets and keeping order. If you have ever walked onto the proverbial shop floor and killed the conversation you know what I mean!

Conversations are intimate, they are free, and they are open. They flourish when there is trust and a common commitment. Conversation is equal, it’s diverse, it generates the unexpected, and it’s participative and informal. They are actually quite liberating whilst at the same time conversation gives people a voice.

Conversations though do take control and power away from us control freaks and puts it right back where it precisely belongs with our customers, our community and our people. Charlene Li succinctly puts it this way “Campaigns begin and end, but conversations go on forever.” It’s interesting to sit down for a few moments and reflect on what conversations we are having right now……

The first Word from ‘Hang On’ the new eBook provided by Phil Rees @ www.defacethis.com

Being distinctive defines us. Distinctive is about people (there is that word again) having a distinct idea of us in their mind. For a lot of companies, it’s easier to remain indistinctive than to become distinctive! Our product, even service is probably not as distinctive as it used to be. It’s possible its competitive edge has been backed into a corner by the plethora of new products in the market place, or, the bad ones just caught up.

Tom Peters said years ago “Ask yourself what on your turf (local and global), is clearly unusual about the services you offer.” For me, if we can’t answer that in five bullet points, we’ve lost the right to be a great business. Look at the worst bit of your sector, even your closest competitors and change the customer experience; it at least gives you a stab at the five points of distinction.

We need to almost forget about our product. It’s great isn’t it? Cheaper certainly is distinctive but how is being mediocre? Being distinctive now is about how we use design to differentiate, by building a community from our clients, being recognized for meaningful work, the passion we inspire in people, how we engage and build relationships. Get used to it. Don’t get me wrong it is about developing a sense of currency and curiosity in parallel, however, the biggest barrier to us identifying what makes us distinctive is internal not external.

Little question; is your business more like a circus or the waiting room at your doctors? We really can’t afford to be ignored by the masses and silent to the few. Don’t be known for everything but something! Distinguish by identifying your tangibility.

But can you bring yourself to do it? Pushing the boundaries is something some of us are good at. However, never before have we been asked to push them even further. As well as learning something everyday, we are having to unlearn stuff too.

There seems to be a lot of hype around how things are changing say some. Its not hype, its reality. If you’re feeling it then its real. And, if you’re not feeling it right now you will be soon.

1. A database does not create a community around your business that faithfully loves what you do.
2. Relationships are the strength that drives a business forward both with customers and employees.
3. Its no good being recognised (profile) if you’re reputation (integrity) doesn’t back it up.
4. Move from us believing we want to control to the participation of sharing.
5. Removing aspects that are exhausting and revitalise/introduce those elements that focus on passion and purpose.

The emphasis has changed. Old models are dying and new ones emerging. Decision making, innovation, customer and performance processes are being overturned in order to cope with a new paradigm.

Its fascinating to watch, but I guess that’s my job. However, its hurting people, its hurting businesses that are not responding. Too many people following, too many businesses ignoring. If there is one last thing you do this week, seek out someone who can help you see your way through these shifts.

There is an abundance of information on the web about social media that could take a lifetime to read and be all consuming. For some of us it is! However, there is a scarcity at the moment to how to weave this into an integrated marketing campaign.

Some would have us believe that its the only way forward and its the only thing you need to reach new and existing customers. Thats far too one dimensional and we’ll all fall into the trap of traditional marketing if we take that road.

As Olivier Blanchard said at www.wearelikeminds.com in February “Your business doesn’t plug into social media, social media plugs into your business.” He is right. It’s not an attachment, neither is it the only solution. We must not miss the opportunity to really get to the route cause of why we embark on social media campaigns. We can’t also ignore that its just as important to be gregarious offline as well as online.

Before embarking on any social media activity, we all need to go back to the beginning and think about how it is going to fundamentally change, for the better, the relationships we have with customers and employees. The fact is that social media is creating new vulnerabilities and opportunities for business. That can’t be ignored. There are some big questions to ask before setting a blog up such as; how will social media define what is being delivered to the customer.

We have to remember that, even now, most of our customers and users of social media read content but don’t necessarily post it. What that means, for now, is that social media is in a state of mass consumption, not mass creation. We have a long way to go to create meaningful experiences and that, in essence, is our first task!

We’ve come to accept blandness as the norm not imagination. The basis of imagination is the freedom from constraints, the abolition of conditioning, the space to think and the confidence to push boundaries.

Limitations constrict the ability to break the habit of consistent repetition. As I’ve mentioned before, the tragedy of complacency is eventual failure. Imagination allows for exploration and going places you haven’t been before. Consistent repetition needs to be replaced with consistent imagination, permitting your mind to roam free and play with the existing experience and expertise in your head. Imagination can even sometimes make you believe the impossible.