Keep telling people about the work you do.
When you don’t, your work is nonexistent. It is not imperfect, it is not in progress, it is not almost there. It is simply nonexistent. Out of any radar.
When you do, you open yourself to your audience. You get to know what they like, what they need, what they would like to see next. You start a cooperative work, whether you realize it or not.
And you might also find unexpected contributors.
It is no longer enough to tell that you work in marketing, that you are a great communicator, that you are an expert in corporate finance, that you have decades of experience in consulting.
That is the same thing thousands of other professionals can say at any given time, in any geography, with any type of degree and certification backing that up.
If you want to really stand out tell about the time you have leveraged your knowledge of customers to deliver unexpected growth; about the time you have changed the culture of a company who was struggling to engage employees; about the time you found a nasty mistake in the accounts of a potential acquisition, saving the buyer money and time; about the time you have turned around a stagnating start-up by suggesting they exploit an unexplored market opportunity.
We are not looking for marketers, communicators, accountants, or consultants.
We are looking for stories.
Your story.
If you want people in your team to truly work as a team, help each other, keep each other accountable, and achieve common goals, then stop leveraging your position of power to get things done.
When you do that, people will think that the only way for them to get ahead is to take from their peers.
Dominance does not set a good example.
Imagine approaching your team with the suggestion that this year, for Black Friday, you could dedicate your site’s home page to a message of social responsibility.
Imagine suggesting that the headline could stick to the version your team crafted after months of customer research, rather than make space for the latest look-at-me PR sensation.
Imagine recommending to continue with something that has been planned for months, rather than replacing it all with some shiny hack that will boost one of the vanity metrics.
They would look at you and think you are crazy.
Not every cause leads to an effect. Not every effect can be immediately linked to a cause.
The fact is, we are not rational beings and we merely use reason to find an explanation to things that have already happened, to decisions that have already been made.
That’s why brands and stories have so much power. They don’t engage with reason and they leverage the most tribal and innate of our insticts.
Belonging.
If your company wants to measure brands and stories, if they want to find the thread that links brands and stories to material results, they are probably missing the whole point. And the opportunity to establish relationships with employees, customers, stakeholders that can determine long-term competitive advantage.
You got to have faith not to miss this opportunity.
You've got this 