Knock, knock... Who's there?

How do you answer that question?

How often does that answer change?

If we shake hands at the office, I get to know you under a professional pretense.  But if we meet at a neighborhood barbecue in our summer shorts with a beer in hand, am I meeting the same person? Or do you bring different personas to your personal and professional life?  And perhaps yet a third person to the gym or to a charity board of directors' meeting?

Certainly, there are aspects of who we are and how we share that are more appropriate at work versus the backyard barbecue.  I might share stories at work about past projects and former bosses, whereas at the barbecue, I'll probably blather on for hours about my kids or obstacle course racing.  In either case, I might modify the content of my message but I am not really changing me… I am the same geeky but self-assured bookworm always ready to laugh at a joke.

But have you ever met someone at work who presented herself a particular way and then later, at a cocktail reception or chance grocery store run-in, you felt like you were meeting a whole new person?  I don't mean someone having an 'off day' - I mean someone who regularly brings different personalities into different situations.  Perhaps it's a more secretive nature that likes to keep things mysterious.  But I have to wonder: how much work is it to stretch yourself into a different role to fit a different scenario?  And what is the purpose of contorting into those roles anyway?

One acquaintance of mine explained that her job required her to bring a different personality to the table - that she worked in the very constrictive world of investment banking and therefore was required to behave a certain way or risk being 'frozen out'.  I hear from other women that there are plenty of organizations with a similar culture where one feels she must conform or risk being ostracized and ignored. It's not always a male dominated culture issue, but sometimes it is.

It's very popular to talk about being "authentic" and true to yourself.  And on that journey, it can be challenging to figure out who we are if we're maintaining a veneer of someone else in order to just get along.  You have to be clear on where the 'real you' begins and the alter ego ends.  And for those who are in this type of work scenario, is it possible to exist in those restrictive environments and yet still feel you're being true to yourself?  How much of our perception that we must conform is our own assumption?

The real question for you, however, is how do you show up?  Try this exercise - I did it last month and with a few text messages, got a wave of results within an hour.  It feels awkward when you first reach out, but it's well worth pushing past that.  First, everyone you touch is happy to participate.  Second, what you receive back will be both loving and enlightening.  So here you:

• On a piece of paper, draw three columns.  At the top of the first column, write "Family/Intimates."  At the top of the second column, write "Friends & Associates" and at the top of the third column, write "Acquaintances."

• Contact 3-5 people in your life who fit into each one of those categories for you and ask them to describe you in just three words.  That's it.

• Write the words ascribed to you under the appropriate column.  

And now consider what you see: how the people in your world see you.  Which one of those columns is closest to the "real" you?  Which one is the person you wish most to be?  Lucky for you, you already are that person.  You have the power to love that person.  You have the power to change that person.  Really, you have power.

So, how do you show up?

As always, your comments, questions and thoughts are welcome. 
And don't forget to share this blog! 

Natalie Hahn O'Flaherty is a principal at Dirty Girls Consulting, offering special programs that coach women moving into leadership roles. Women work differently, think differently, and it is up to us to allow this difference to become our strengths. We explore breaking free of traditional standards, accomplishing professional and personal goals to cultivate an authentic, fully loved life. Read more Dirty Girl Consulting blogs here.

Smashing Status Quo: Creating Pauses in the Change Process

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. (Lao Tzu)

Human beings are primed for patterns.  We love consistency and predictability. It gives us a sense of security and control.  It allows us to create our own comfortable sphere in which we can rule and relax.

It is a knee-jerk reaction for most of us to resist any new proposal, whether we're in our personal life sphere or our professional life one.

Can Brandon spend the night? No... I'm too tired...  

Can we adjust the agenda to include a benefits discussion?  Sorry, no time...

Should we implement that new marketing automation software? That will change our lead process... oh, dear...

Our "no" response has slipped through our lips before we've given most proposals even two full seconds of consideration.  

But when you are the leader of an initiative to alter the status quo, how do you manage the tsunami of resistance that is inevitably crashing against your sandy shores of change? 

You have to create pauses. That pause is a momentary reflection - for you. For your team. It gives you space to breathe and think about what is really about to happen and put it in perspective.

First pause: let's recognize the status quo. Openly acknowledge and understand that this is where we are today, and this is what it means. Take your team through an "impact analysis" (current-state, future-state, gap analysis) exercise.  It's a common exercise, but it's one we often forget to do in the context of helping our teams through the change process. Going through this exercise reveals several important points to - and about - your team:

• it provides an agreed-upon understanding what today looks like
• it ensures a shared vision for where you're going
• it involves everyone in identifying the "gaps"
• it will show you the different levels of self-awareness among your team members
• it will show you who's bought in, who's not, and how far you have to go

Progress is a nice word. But change is a motivator. And change has its enemies. (Robert Kennedy)

The impact analysis exercise will help you identify who on your team can be helpful change agents, and who is going to require some nurturing to get them to the desired end state. While you want to employ your champions to help drive necessary actions, you also want to coach them along helping their more reluctant team members to open up to change. If your champions merely push forward with implementing change, they will be seen as puppets of the regime, enforcing an agenda... not a team player working to improve the business.

One way to help shake up the status quo way of thinking, and empower your team to embrace new and original approaches, is to stop talking and give them something to do.  Second pause: exercises that test their mettle when faced with non-traditional dilemmas.  Do you recall the exercise Mel Gibson went through in "What Women Want"?  He put on pantyhose, wore lipstick, tried to figure out how it felt to be a woman.  Way outside his comfort zone. Maybe you don't have to go that far, but looking at problem from a different point of view - from a different constituent, from a different industry - can be enlightening.  Or think about it from the "Apollo 13" angle: you have a limited number of supplies and you have to solve a life-saving problem - how can you use those tools, not at all designed for your problem, to save lives? 

Less dramatic but no less illuminating is an example I read about in an article last week: hand your team a candle, a book of matches and a box of thumbtacks.  Their mission is to somehow attach the candle to the wall, light it and ensure no wax drips on the floor or wall.  What do you do?  You empty the box of thumbtacks, tack the box to the wall and put the candle in it.  Who in your group, however, will literally think "outside the box"?  But once they see the light (pun intended)... you've shaken up the status quo.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked, "If this were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" 

And if the answer is "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.  (Steve Jobs)

Sometimes going beyond simple acknowledgement can help your team let go of an entrenched pattern. Years ago when we were integrating a new team from a company we had recently acquired, I was battling the newcomers over the fact that we were changing the product name to be more in line with our corporate standards. While logically the team understood why we were making the change, there was still resentment and concern over the process.  Third pause: a mentor of mine made a suggestion that I thought was bizarre... and yet... at that stage I had nothing to lose and after pausing long enough to consider what affect it could have, we did it. We hosted a funeral.  The old product name was dead, but the spirit of the product lives on... in a different name, of course.  But the act of hosting a funeral - well, truthfully, more like an Irish wake with many rounds of Guinness and some great story-telling - allowed the acquired team to both laugh at the absurdity and mark the end of an era.  

We can't always promise that change is for the better. We can't ensure that every team member will embrace it and go forth. But we can be sensitive to the fact that our patterns are ingrained in us, for better and for worse, and if we work with them instead of pushing so hard against them, we can move forward a lot farther and a lot faster.  So pause. Breathe. Reflect. And then find a new way to smash through that status quo that brings everyone along with you, and not just staring at shattered pieces.

CULT-ivating Your Own

Purple sneakers.  White robes.  Secret handshakes.  Mysterious symbols.  

An apple.   A green mermaid.  A swoosh.

There has been a lot of discussion recently around how you can create your own brand 'cult of personality':  creating polarity in your market position, tracking Net Promoter Scores, developing initiation processes, implying secret knowledge and getting your brand to the ultimate aspiration in brand maturity, the "essential" brand.  That's a lot of market-ese.  And just like the recent articles and blogs I've read - with titles like 10 Steps to Create Your Own Cult-like Following and  Developing Your Cult Brand in 12 Step - we marketers tend to over-complicate some pretty simple concepts.

In quest of cult-like status, we develop complex, layered messaging, find controversy with competition, create abstract and sometimes befuddling campaigns... all to get the audience to buy-in to our brand.  In the process of trying to establish that cult clientele, that oh-so-reliable base of fans who readily, even happily, open their wallets and their goodwill, we forget the other audience that makes the kernel of your cult even possible - your internal fan base, the company employees.

The simple truth is that cults are based on a singular, common belief.  That belief may very well be polarizing, it may be controversial, it may even be abstract higher thinking that's meaning is obfuscated to the 'average' consumer.  It could be all those things, but at the core, it's still a single theme that binds.

And marketers can't create cults.  We want to.  We truly do.  And we will continue to try.  But cults are built from the inside out.  Cults - of any kind, religious, business, personal - are birthed through a single person's vision... a compelling personality who pulls others into his vision... and those others adopt the vision as their own.  This creates a team that starts to live and breathe and act according to the vision. This is more than understanding the potential of a product, seeing the opportunity in a market or trusting an executive leader.  

This is faith.  

The leader believes so powerfully in his or her singular vision, that he/she takes whatever path necessary to see it through. The employees then drive the vision, the powerful feelings associated with that vision, through to the new recruits.  They push it through sales and marketing channels so that their customers feel it.  Believes it.  And buys it.  The personality of the brand is tied deeply to that singular leader, but it's driven by the employees.  Without them, there is no cult.  The personality is not cultivated, not communicated.  

Think about the brands that do this well... every interaction with every employee, regardless of their position within the organization, has a consistency.  It feels like you're dealing with the same set of core values, the same belief system, that had you buying into the product or service in the first place.  That's not just good employee training.  It's not just a simple, scripted interaction.  It's faith.

If you're looking for that cult-like feeling for your business, you need to look within.  What is the vision of your company that your employees rally around?   Not just the sales and marketing teams, but everyone, from the developers and engineering teams, the customer service team, all the way through to the administrative support teams and up to the executives.  If you can clearly identify that, then your job as a marketer is to amp it up - focus on that single theme and drive your internal culture around it. If you're company is living and breathing this internally, it unavoidably becomes part of your canon - part of the ongoing dialogue that is both internal and external.  And thus, your customers start hearing, seeing and believing the same singular theme.  And buying.

So you can read the articles, you can follow the 10 steps... or 12... but none of those will get you any closer to creating that cult-like customer base you're looking for.  You might create an interesting brand personality.  You might launch some marvelously creative campaigns.  And that can all be good for business.  But if that singular vision isn't clear to you, if there is no focused rallying cry, your job as the marketer is to go find it. Not create it, but find it.  Every company has one - and often it's just buried under layers of data - market analysis, customers surveys, historical buying patterns, product roadmaps, analyst reports and more.  We bury our business with too much data and mislay that initial intention that we got into business for in the first place.

Go find your intention.  Find the faith.  Then you can have your cult.

What You Can Learn About Brand at a High School Reunion

It's a funny thing, going to a high school reunion.  You take all this baggage with you - stuff you didn't realize, until the moment before you walk through the reunion party door, that you had been hauling around all these years.  Or maybe you did realize it... and thought you had "dealt" with it... well, the real test of that comes at that awkward moment when you pass through that reunion party door and make your presence - your new, grown up brand - known to the room.

In that moment, we have a tendency to forget about our new grown up brand.  In that moment we revert to that awkward teen brand that never felt smart enough, pretty enough or interesting enough... (wait, is that just me?  Somehow, I don't think so).

As marketers, we are sometimes so steeped in our brand history, that we forget to look outside at how our customers, our partners and even our competition define us today.  We slip into that mode without even realizing it... you can have all the right feedback tools in place to "hear" from your customers and prospects, to share with partners and to track your competition and their positioning... and yet be so set in your brand identity that you forget to really listen. To stop, think and decide.  Actively.  Who do you want to be when you grow up?  Are you grown up yet?

This is a dangerous trap.  More dangerous now, certainly, than when I was in high school oh-so-long-ago.  The advent of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google+ and myriad other communications channels, not to mention the mobility of ipads and smartphones, means the feedback loop is constant and immediate.  Your brand will change without you if you aren't monitoring it and very quickly your message and your goals will misalign with your market.  Then you are trapped in Reactive mode, not Active mode.  A much more difficult market position to manage.

What you quickly learn at a high school reunion is not just how old everyone got, who's divorced, who's rich and who's still a player... if you listen, you can learn a lot about your own brand.  And it might surprise you to learn how people remember you, what they remember about you, and how they perceive you now.  Layers of yourself you never paid much attention to because you were so busy tending your own teenage angst and baggage.  What happens when you acknowledge these new insights?

The opportunity here is immense.  To see your brand in a new light offers the potential of adding rich new layers to your brand personality.  You can explore new facets of not just your  message, but identify new markets and opportunities in places you might not have considered - but your customers have.  Think about those brands who listen well... Starbucks started serving hot breakfast sandwiches when they realized that after getting coffee from them, their customers were still going to McDonalds.  A Bain & Company survey last year spelled it out beautifully... 80% of surveyed organizations felt that they had solid customer feedback systems in place and responded well to customers.  8% of their customers agreed.  Ouch.

The real fun of high school reunions is discovering who everyone is today... what really did happen to that athlete, that class clown and that prom queen?  Are those high school brands you remember the same today?  If we don't stop, think and decide, actively and deliberately, we become that one person at the high school reunion who didn't change... at all... and if you didn't like her then, you're sure as hell not going to like her now.