Archive for April, 2008

In a highly acclaimed song from the movie True Crime, artist Diana Krall poses the question “why should I care?” I reference this song partly because I want to answer the question “why should we care about storytelling and personal branding” and partly because True Crime is a highly underrated movie that proves Clint Eastwood is as good a director as he is an actor.

The concept of personal branding has been around since 1997 when management guru Tom Peters penned an article in Fast Company Magazine, The Brand Called You, arguing we have entered an era where we are all CEO’s of Me Inc. Essentially, globalization and technological innovation put the nail in the coffin of the social compact between employees and employers. Now we are all free agents as companies routinely “re-organize” and employees switch careers. Career counselors estimate those in generation “y” and beyond will change jobs, on average, nine times. This trend makes it virtually impossible to accurately answer the cocktail party question, what do you do? You do lots of things and will do lots more over your career.

Professionally, the return on investment (ROI) for taking the time to decipher your own story and understand the concepts of personal branding is the ability to show how your disparate skills, passions and personality traits make you a free agent worth bidding for.

While many have written about the professional advantages of personal branding, few have delved into the personal advantages of personal branding (given that personal is in the name of the concept, this is a shame). Did you know studies have shown that the average 26 year old woman has been hit on 5,000 times? It is no wonder it is so difficult to meet someone given the competition for companionship. If we take the time to understand what emotional needs we can fulfill for someone else, we will have a much easier time in finding someone we can build chemistry with.

Personally, the ROI of developing and telling your story is the ability to show, in a couple of minutes, how you have a combination of traits, passions and skills to help another person be happy.

I believe it would be a true crime for you to miss out on this opportunity to develop a compelling and interesting personal story. Come on I know you are as good a director as Clint Eastwood.

Do you believe the hype? I am always up for a good debate. Let me know honestly what you think.

I celebrated a good friend’s birthday yesterday and on my subway ride home I started thinking about how age affects our behavior and consequently our personal story. Most people say age brings more experience and wisdom. However, I believe age affects us in a more complex and subtle way.

Today’s society tends to value what Zen Buddhists call the “beginner’s mind.” It implies fresh insight unfettered by experience. With this in mind, I contend age means less now than a couple of decades ago. In today’s world most people are drawn to innovation, creativity and passion. None of these characteristics inherently grow with age.

In a seminal book on age and leadership, Geeks and Geezers, author Warren Bennis suggests age does strongly influence our values; more so than any other attribute including birthplace, race, ethnicity or religion. After interviewing 43 leaders of varying ages, Bennis concludes our deepest and most strongly held beliefs tend to correlate with what generation we come from. He defines anyone under 35 as a geek and anyone over 70 as a geezer.

Bennis suggests “geeks have bigger and more ambitious goals than geezers did at the same age; they aspire to ‘change the world’ and ‘make history’, whereas geezers were concerned with ‘making a living.’”

While I agree with Bennis that our core values are highly dependent on the generation we grew up in, I do not believe age is a significant indicator of compatibility between two people, success of an individual or even a signal of experience and wisdom.

The age of age as a standard for experience and wisdom is over. The most widely lauded and valued characteristics in society today - including innovation, creativity and passion - are age indiscriminate.

So happy birthday dear friend. I am sure you are glad to hear I believe getting older brings you nothing. Except sometimes you get a free drink at a bar.

Blankster is back. I chose today, April 23, to relaunch my blog on personal branding and storytelling. The last few weeks have been spent on website technical development. But now it is time to get back to the task at hand: helping all of us find our unique and compelling story.

You may be asking, why am I spending time and money on this activity? Simply because I get the sense that in this world where home is Facebook, Blackberries are more pervasive than books, IM is preferred over phone calls, we change jobs on average nine times in a career, and online dating is more popular than face to face introductions - we have lost a sense of the power of stories. How can we tell a powerful provocative story in a one line text? How can we feel a sense of purpose when we jump from organization to organization every couple of years?

It is time to cut through the clutter and develop lasting, meaningful relationships based on the connections we make through our most authentic and interesting stories.

There is a classic novel that illustrates the virtues of telling authentic and interesting stories. Anyone remember Heart of Darkness from AP English? Author Joseph Conrad, who learned English as a fifth language, tells a story about a protagonist named Marlow who is sent to investigate the atrocities of another named Kurtz, who apparently has been murdering hundreds or thousands in Africa shortly after 1900. It turns out Kurtz wrote a manifesto decrying the African people and outlining his views on society. Marlow becomes intrigued by Kurtz, a man who has perpetrated genocide. Marlow rationalizes he sees Kurtz as a remarkable man because “he had something to say. He said it.” This is not to say that racism and appaling violence should be respected. It is an acknowledgement that it is quite remarkable in this world to find someone with a story and purpose.

As Marlow watches Kurtz die, he explains

“He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief, it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appaling face of a glimpsed truth - the strange commingling of truth and hate.”

Conrad’s illustrative prose suggests it is a great virtue to have conviction, passion and the courage to tell your story.

Who is willing to follow me into the Heart of Darkness, a place where we find our trueselves, for better or for worse, and dare to be true in our expression to others?

Does anyone not know the story of Alice in Wonderland? This story includes a white rabbit, a mad hatter, a cheshire cat, a Queen of Hearts and many other characters that have become sources for contstant literary reference. Written by Lewis Carroll in 1865, Alice in Wonderland is considered a classic example of the genre and of English literature in general. For those that have been living in a hole (get the pun?) their entire life, the novel tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantastic realm populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures.

The narrative structure of Alice in Wonderland has influenced countless other novels and movies and is respected as one of the best structures for a story. I use Carroll’s work to explain to others how to tell a story in an interesting way. You may not realize it, but the story of Alice in Wonderland has been told over and over again since 1865. If you think the Wizard of Oz was completely original, you need to wake up from your dream. And for all the special effects and great Keanu Reeves acting, the Matrix Trilogy was really Alice in Wonderland repackaged for the 21st Century.

What is it about Alice in Wonderland that made it such an archetype for the telling of a fantastical story? While we all remember the crazy adventures of Alice and the mystical creatures she encounters, we all forget the beginning. How did Alice get into this mess in the first place? Alice and her sister are sitting next to a tree in a calm field when Alice becomes tired. At this moment she suddenly sees a white rabbit with a watch and follows it down a rabbit-hole. This story makes such an impact on our psyches because it juxtaposes a relevant and grounded situation with adventures that stretch our imagination. Without the normal everyday setting of a lazy afternoon in a field, Alice in Wonderland would be considered a story for drug induced junkies.

Lesson: Start your stories from a grounded place. Show your audience how exciting and fun your stories are, given the circumstances. Audiences want to relate, no matter how crazy your story turns out.