One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned from my Microsoft career was the importance of a personal brand. It helped me tremendously while I was at the company. It both served me well inside and outside the company as well. It allowed me to connect my ideas with people even if they didn’t know me personally. This was important because it got me in the door to conversations I wouldn’t normally have, get past that initial barrier in initial conversations and learnings about who I am and what I’m about out of the way and we could focus on problems we needed to solve.
There are many definitions but I thought I would fall back to a Wikipedia on the definition of personal branding:
Personal branding is, for some people, a description of theprocess whereby people and their careers are marked as brands. It has beennoted that while previous self-help management techniques were aboutself-improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that successcomes from self-packaging. Further defined as the creation of an asset thatpertains to a particular person or individual; this includes but is not limitedto the body, clothing, appearance and knowledge contained within, leading to anindelible impression that is uniquely distinguishable.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_branding
As an Enterprise Architect, this is a very important concept. Much of the EA formula to achieving results is through trust and credibility. Achieving trust and credibility isn’t like a onetime event similar to selecting an EA Framework, but a complex people oriented and ongoing activity.
Simply put, the ability to personally brand yourself allows you to stand out in the crowd, get into forums you normally wouldn’t get into, presented with new opportunities and the opportunities to have your thought leadership visible across a company or industry.
Some helpful resources for personal branding can be found:
Me.2.0 Book - http://www.amazon.com/Me-2-0-Powerful-Achieve-Success/dp/1427798206
Personal Branding Blog - http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/
Fast Company Article - http://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you
Forbes What’s Your Brand - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ronashkenas/2011/02/23/whats-your-personal-brand
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