Phyllis Shabad, Executive Brand Coach

BREAKTHROUGH CAREER IDEA #3: EXECUTIVE COACHING ADVICE

Phyllis Shabad — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:47:53 -0400

CEO / C-LEVEL PERSONAL BRAND AUDIT

I recommend that every CEO, Board Director and senior executive manager take stock and evaluate the whole concept of personal branding as it applies to career, leadership and organizational issues. As a CEO and business leader, you're deeply familiar with the core beliefs and values of your company's mission and how that squares with products, services and target markets. And you validate that mission with short- and long-range plans that focus on quarterly profits, revenues and competitveness, among other things.

No matter how and when you stepped into the role of CEO, current expectations for leaders make it less about the business lifecycle and more about ensuring a world-class firm's brand and legacy. Are you able to get your company to adapt as economic and market realities shift--and embrace change management activities seamlessly? And as a CEO, can you lead your firm with the versatility required to pursue mulitple strategies that ensure long-term success?

All of this speaks to branding on an enterprise level. In other words, the brand is about the company's unique promise of value.

But what about your own brand and its unique promise of value?

PERSONAL BRANDING EXAMPLES ~ CEOs

Think about Apple and the company brand. In full disclosure, I'm writing this post on my MacBook Pro with my iPhone by my side. Apple's product suite has a devoted fan base to be sure, and I certainly would attest to how uncomplicated and user-friendly it has made my professional and personal life. I don't just like the utility and the aesthetics--I also like the customer service. In other words, I'm drawn to the company brand.

The parallel story is about Apple's executive leadership brand. Although media discussions have lowered the volume on the debate about leadership styles of Apple's current CEO Tim Cook and founding CEO Steve Jobs, there is a case to be made about each CEO's personal brand and the impact it has had on the company brand. Here's an interesting article from Entrepreneur Magazine about their distinct management, leadership and personal characteristics. The article also highlights these differences in a spot-on Infographic.

To underscore how relevant personal brands are in business, politics and society, Chuck Todd--the new moderator of "Meet the Press"--suggested on cable news yesterday morning that the winning margins in the 2014 midterm elections may come down to a candidate's brand, pushing the usual distaste for dysfunction and ideological schisms off to the side. And, despite some former presidential advisors having low regard for the concept of personal branding, in politics and business, you do come out ahead when you understand your brand and communicate it to your demographic early enough so your competition is prevented from doing that for you. Or in this case--to you.

PERSONAL BRAND DEVELOPMENT

You can start to identify and embrace your personal leadership brand immediately. Your goal should be to create content that is honest, credible and authentic.

How To Start Your Story:

> Write a brief narrative and describe what makes you tick. Every leader has a style of thinking, philosophy or approach to accomplishing goals. How do you deal with people, motivate them and get them to carry out the mission? In other words, a leader leads only if there is someone to follow. Your answer can be based on the personal as well as the professional.

> Collect feedback from multiple networks. Instead of making a general request for a testimonial from the willing, direct your endorsers to write a paragraph that summarizes a war story to showcase your best work, knowledge and expertise. Obviously, these should be people who know you well and can deliver something that is concrete. Tell them to go easy on the adjectives and superlatives.

This is the beginning of identifying your personal brand, of course. Branding is a process, and requires more input, development and management, but at least you have a baseline idea.

I wrote a workbook geared only for CEOs, Board Directors and other senior executives to create and roll out branding campaigns that are the cornerstones of an overall career strategy. The workbook drives the process and helps me write career marketing material for clients, such as resume portfolios, speeches, articles, presentations and other pieces. The two bullets above are examples of a much more sophisticated process and structure.

Conducting a personal brand audit will give every CEO or C-level executive a fast start in breaking through to a crowded marketplace.

BREAKTHROUGH CAREER IDEA #2: EXECUTIVE COACHING ADVICE

Phyllis Shabad — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 17:12:37 -0400

Strategized Research

I'd like to tell you about an excellent client I worked with more than a decade ago. He had been working as a Chief Marketing Officer for a top, global financial services brand in the payment processing industry. Since his marketing group was a cost rather than a profit center, when the firm took a hit during a less-than-robust business quarter, the CEO and CFO reduced the headcount in the marketing unit until staffing was skeletal--compared to its fully functioning former structure. This senior executive--although not forced to make a move--decided to take a package out of the company and enter the job marketplace for the first time in more than 15 years. He contacted me and I introduced him to my thinking about the overall scale, shape and timeline of a job-search plan that he could execute to satisfy his goals.

But my client did what too many others do when starting a job search--even with the help of an executive coach, business and resume writer. Although he accepted the wisdom of constructing an integrated strategy--one with clear goals, targets, action plans with subsets, accountability and well-reasoned allocation of resources--he let emotion prevail and retreated into the comfort zone of a standard job search. To clarify, that was his comfort zone because it was familiar and felt right, and he accepted "security blanket" assumptions that other senior executives make when they want fast results. All of this is understandable, because we are all capable of letting emotion take the lead in a very subjective process. His standard job search began with full reliance on a recruiter, and, while working with a good recruiter is validating, it is by no means the only activity nor the highest and best investment of your time at the start. It is not proactive, and it generally will not accelerate the timeline.

Career transition and growth is ultimately about change management. As a business leader, for example, you would never make important decisions without developing a strategic plan and conducting research at the outset. Research provides information, closes gaps in knowledge and sparks ideas. You cannot and should not begin the market-entry phase of a job search without comprehensive research. It is a crucial tool, and one that shouldn't be outsourced 100% to a third party.

I like fast starts, and so do my C-Suite clients. I flip chronology, ideas, plans and execution to put real speed on the process. Research opens the gateway to targeting and decsion making.

What was the remedy for this client?

I refocused his acknowledgment of a better process, and coached to turn off the background noise of those around him who wanted an "action first" approach. Spending a few hours a day for a week (or a little more) actively engaged in research doesn't look active at all to others, even though it is. If it doesn't make sense in business, then don't do it in job search. Common sense rules.

Here are 3 myths about research that can derail any executive job search:

It will take too much time becasue there is too much information to wade through.
It will cost a lot of money to get the precise information that matters.
It is too late to add to the "what you know" as opposed to the "who you know."

The above is pure mythology, not reality. In my one-on-one and group coaching programs, I show executives (even truly busy ones) how they can work around what are really minor challenges in appropriating platinum information and current data.

How to launch the research process:

Shortly, I will release an updated summary version of a "clients-only" guide to the public and include interesting, curated research tools that are low- or no-cost. For now, here are several questions that must be asked and answered to build and tighten research activities.

Do-It-Yourself Q&A to shorten the research timeline in job search ~

What do you read--online and offline?
What business issues matter most to you, and what have you learned in the last 6 months about these issues?
What and how much do you know about activity in local and regional domestic markets in your industry? In international markets?
Are you able to identify and speak about new or emerging markets that relate to your industry or field?
Do you know about well-funded startups in growth areas?
How will you uncover information about target companies in the privately held sector?

There are numerous other questions that I put into my coaching process and action plans with executives in order to research efficiently and secure meaningful information. It is easier to do than you might imagine, and really, really worth it.

BREAKTHROUGH CAREER IDEA #1: EXECUTIVE COACHING ADVICE

Phyllis Shabad — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 18:13:46 -0400

Assessment

No, not that. I'm not proposing a standard career assessment that addresses your skills, values, aptitude, interests and behavioral traits. Those types of career assessments are important to establish and quantify personal baseline information and to identify suitable careers and roles. They are often used to begin a career path or make a transition.

For CEOs and later-stage senior executives, another approach to career assessment can be more useful in charting where and how to find the next leadership opportunity. Of course, the key word is leadership. Fundamentally, leadership implies inspiration, followership, influence, innovation, creation, effective decision-making and delivery of ideas, among other things.

My C-Suite clients will pursue and secure next opportunities if they are able to continue in some leadership capacity that's interesting, rewarding and relevant. Even if you step down from a CEO or Chairman role, that doesn't mean your job-search strategy will necessarily diminish your career. Job search for senior executives should be a logical extension of experience and self-awareness. So what do you need to assess?

I'm happy to share some pieces of how I coach executives to develop a smart job-search strategy.

Assess the following:

Network utility.

Identify who is in your network first. Then prioritize the strength of your network, how it can be extended and what result you would like to achieve from each individual in it. Do you have overlapping or distinctly different networks? What do you know about the relationships that your connections have? Do you have a plan to cultivate all networks?

Marketplace knowledge.

What industry or industries do you have experience in, or well-established expertise? Do you have tenure in one industry that you believe will hurt your ability to transition to another industry? What do you think your learning curve is at this stage of your career? Would you consider a stretch role if your story resonates, or do you prefer the comfort of a similar assignment in the same or related industry?

Competiveness.

How do you think you compare to other CEOs who are exploring the market? If you have accrued most of your experience in major-market public companies, what stories will align with middle- or small-market enterprises that have the potential to be a good fit? If you are a successful entrepreneur, what value would you bring to a company role in which you are not a consultant?

There is more to the assessment that I execute with each client. The important takeaway is that you will be able to design a truly smart career strategy that is targeted, and shorten the timeline to a desirable result.

WHAT ARE THE 7 BREAKTHROUGH CAREER IDEAS THAT ALMOST ALL CEOS DON’T USE?

Phyllis Shabad — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 15:23:56 -0400

Whether you are a working CEO secure in your tenure (for now), an entrepreneurial CEO who founded and successfully sold off his company—and is searching for the next opportunity, or a very senior executive who is preparing to step up to the C-Suite or boardroom, there is a high-results framework to boost and sustain your career that is almost always overlooked. This framework can and should be applied in a continuous cycle—not just when you feel overlooked, underutilized or undercompensated. You know the feeling: the future is somewhat murky and you want a reliable blueprint in place so you can explore and enter markets, engage with peers to develop and strengthen relationships and execute a plan to reach defined goals. But you lack a framework and blueprint. And you don’t work on your career until you absolutely have to—when there is a higher degree of uncertainty, disruption and coherence in the decision process.

Let me emphasize that last word: process. Process is the key to improve performance, achieve career satisfaction and secure advantageous position. Time spent on your career should be part of a continuous cycle and not a “sometimes” effort that you squeeze into an overloaded schedule. It must be orderly, energizing, creative and intelligent—not a mirror image of what the vast majority of executives do when they work at their careers. That amounts to a series of tactics that buy into stale ideas that yield few if any successes.

Over the next week or two, I’m going to describe the framework and process that should be the backbone of every CEO’s career plan. And I’ll explain the activities you should use that will become easy-to-adopt solutions that respect executives’ calendars.

Your takeaway will be 7 breakthrough career ideas that you can “take to the bank.” I use these ideas in my executive coaching practice, so each idea should resonate and be easy to apply. In other words, I’ve partnered with clients who have used these ideas to their success. Here goes … but first, the framework.

FRAMEWORK:

Plan

Lead

Acquire

Execute

Plan: map out your goals and include short- and long-range priorities. Do not use a file or keyboard at this point; instead, put pen to paper. Make it a grid, graph or chart of your choosing, and ensure that it’s both comfortable to use, visually appealing and accessible. I want you to be able to see it multiple times a day. This is low-tech, but it works.

Lead: don’t expect that you can outsource the entire plan to others. Yes, get help. You can hire an executive coach and/or a business writer to develop strategies and tactics; mentor you and hold you accountable; brand you and create your message; expand your knowledge. But leading means that you expect results will come from your active participation and the agenda that you understand. Lack of time can derail any plan, and if you think that you can delegate and depend on others for success, then you have lost control and will extend the timeline—probably with less than desirable results. Be the Chief Executive of your plan and lead.

Acquire: allocate the appropriate resources to help you move the needle. You don’t need to justify anything here. This is Career Management 801 and a fundamental piece of your ongoing managerial and leadership development. Development of a personal brand, communications set, concentric networks and internal/external relationships also serves to strengthen company opportunity in sales, marketing and revenues. Don’t think of the framework as something closely held and only in support of your career success. Realistic understanding of associated costs helps to streamline and accelerate your results. DIY doesn’t connect in a straight line to successful, accomplished CEOs.

Execute: you know the Nike slogan “Just Do It!” Yes, of course you are required to execute a plan to get a result, but this is one of those easier-said-than-done challenges. You don’t want to get trapped into thinking and saying repeatedly that you should have completed a task and then feel guilty for not having done it. It will become an endless cycle of false negatives impacting real progress. What can you do to execute the larger plan into smaller increments? The answer is to make yourself accountable to someone else and try new things—even if you think that you aren’t very good at them, e.g., social media; speaking. Plans are tangible yet change, because the secret is that the act of planning is a process and therefore continuous. In other words, the behaviors of planning, leading, acquiring and executing should always be on your schedule when it comes to career management.

That’s the framework. It holds no matter what fills your executive responsibilities, personal obligations and day-to-day tasks on the calendar. Time and effort set aside to work at your career is critical to being a good leader. Structure and process go a long way towards achieving goals.

Next, I’ll show you the components of the process that will yield a return on investment of time and effort. The takeaway will be 7 breakthrough career ideas that you can start to incorporate immediately.

Every CEO should make this a habit.

RECESSION CHANGES COURSE OF FORTUNE 100 EXECUTIVE CAREERS: ISSUES AND TRENDS FOR CEOs & YOUNGER EXECUTIVES

Phyllis Shabad — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 18:14:06 -0500

Although less than a third of executives began their careers at the firms where they currently work, top executives are holding onto their seats in the C-Suite. Yes, high-ranking executives are more diverse than they were in the past, but job security is of paramount concern—impacted especially by the 2008 recession.

Again, I’ve turned to a recent study by the same team I cited in a previous blog post: management professor Peter Capelli from Wharton, Monika Hamori from IE Business School and her colleague Rocio Bonet. They tracked “the career paths and qualifications of the top 10 leaders in each of the Fortune 100 companies.” You can read some interesting findings and data in a Knowledge@Wharton newsletter from this February.

How did this recession affect executive jobs, career advancement and flexibility?

The three business professors conclude that the recession affected financial services more than other industries, citing restructuring as the prime mover behind the practice of major finance companies hiring from the outside. “By contrast,” they write, “companies whose businesses are more stable—including Caterpillar, Procter & Gamble and UPS—have tended to promote leaders from within.” That would seem to suggest that if you’re a senior executive looking to make a career move internally, you are better positioned in the manufacturing, consumer products and transportation sectors.

One of the most interesting statistics—and certainly not startling—is that the fastest career path to the top ranks of management occurred at Google, “where it took only 14 years to rise from an entry level position to the executive suite, while it took 32 years at Hewlett-Packard and ConocoPhillips.” Also, the average age of “HP’s 2011 executive team was over 58, while at Google, they were 46.”

Now, we have to make some sense of these findings as they relate to job search and career choices.

Capelli suggests that younger executives who wish to pursue career opportunities in a Fortune 100 organization may find more promise in declining industries, where there is a stronger likelihood of high turnover in managements’ ranks. My view is that this highlights a skill and experience that may be more common among older executives: turnaround management.

The turnaround management industry should be a career option for the most senior executives as they exit their corporate careers. The special expertise that a turnaround manager provides to ailing slow-growth /no-growth companies is advantageous to CEO’s and their teams who are stuck and seek corporate renewal rather than bankruptcy and/or dissolution. Although not restricted to seasoned executives, turnaround management engagements are a win-win for company and senior executive alike, across diverse functions. This is also an industry where more than attorneys and accountants can look for consulting or interim management assignments.

But, it would be an interesting career path for executives starting out if they absorbed Capelli’s advice. Imagine a “hero CEO” role in a major-market company early enough in a career.

Now that is an attractive accomplishment story to tell on a résumé, as well as a coherent point to pitch to a company in the middle market outside of the Fortune 100.

Regard this business headline from January: “Middle Market Expects to Create One Million Jobs in 2014.”

ARE YOU A LOYAL CEO? NY-METRO FINANCE EXECUTIVES REACT TO RECRUITERS

Phyllis Shabad — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 17:39:44 -0500

Two top business school professors teamed last fall to examine data from a leading executive search firm on how senior-level executives in financial services respond when approached by a recruiter to explore the outside job market. Peter Capelli—a professor of management at Wharton and director of its Center for Human Resources—reported (to his surprise) that 52% of those contacted said “Yes.”

Based on my work coaching C-Suite executives, this did not surprise me at all. Anecdotally, there is a general acceptance of job-market volatility shaped by economic headwinds, M&A activity, activist shareholders and board director politics and performance. As a coach, I hear clients express free agent values to protect individual careers. Anyone—from the C-Suite down to lower levels of management—would think and act as a self-actuated stakeholder. This does not mean that a CEO is not committed fully to the company mission.

The surprise from the Knowledge@Wharton newsletter article is that these executives expressed high interest in outside opportunities without knowing the basic parameters of the positions. According to this piece, “The two researchers’ data focused on executives in the financial services sector, including CEOs, chairpersons and executive vice presidents as well as directors, partners and principals, among others. The executives did not initiate the search process, and they had to agree to be a candidate before they learned much, if anything, about the job in question.”

Capelli notes that the higher-level executives are less loyal to their organizations than those lower down the ladder. Both he and Monika Hamori of the IE Business School found that most of the companies surveyed are seen as treating their top executives as “disposable.” In other words, the corporate impulse is to recruit talent from the outside rather than a priority placed on a talent management system that develops leadership opportunities from within. In fact, executive education programs are cited as potentially contributing to lack of loyalty. This makes sense: the more wide-ranging your knowledge and exposure to other skill sets, the hungrier you are for a different experience. From my own professional experience working in management development for two Wall Street banks, the data are aligned perfectly with personal observation. The findings correctly point out as well that internal management training and development programs are no longer widely available to executives, if they exist at all.

As an executive coach, I will always advocate that all leaders manage their own careers well, and continuously seek opportunities to diversify knowledge, experience and expertise across industry verticals and, if need be, across regional and international markets. If a business leader cannot mentor himself, and if he finds that his older networks have no pipeline to the future, then he may find as a candidate true advantage in working with a coach rather than a recruiter alone—as a coach is the executive’s advocate. Headhunters have a direct client relationship with the company for which they are seeking talent—not the individual executive.

Two aspects of the executive search process that were not mentioned in the article are CEOs’ longer-term view from the boardroom. Based on my client pool, many executives feel that they want to test the external market because of lack of personal challenge, i.e., they are bored. Or, often convincingly, they feel that it is “mission accomplished” at their current organization, meaning they have achieved the results that they were recruited to secure, and it is naturally time to move on. Why not, then, say “yes” to a recruiter?

More compelling statistics from Wharton and my business and career takeaways:

>> The best-compensated senior executives are less likely to explore external market opportunities.

ExecutiveBrandCoach takeaway: This makes the case for board directors who award what are seen as overly generous pay packages to CEOs and others. More pay, greater likelihood to stay.

>> Executives with greater international experience are more likely to entertain a job search.

ExecutiveBrandCoach takeaway: There is a large community of American ex-pats who work in finance around the world. Greater mobility equals less loyalty, and therefore bigger impetus to leave.

>> Roughly, $10.4 billion was paid out in 2011 by companies to search firms. Also, nearly 2,500 executives polled in another study said that the primary reason for a job search was being tapped by a recruiter.

ExecutiveBrandCoach takeaway: Hasn’t this always been true? The business model for recruitment firms is a percentage fee based on the executive’s compensation. Hence, the more senior the executive candidate, the greater potential fee earned by the search firm. Demographics equal destiny.

>> The two researchers used data from New York-area financial services firms, including asset management firms, banks, consumer finance institutions and investment banks. The largest slice in the surveyed pie—48%—was made up of senior managers, e.g., directors; managing directors; vice presidents; partners; and principals. But they were less likely to give a headhunter the nod. The most agreeable were CEOs, executive vice presidents and senior vice presidents, with EVPs taking the lead.

ExecutiveBrandCoach takeaway: There are fewer opportunities at the top, of course. Competition is fiercer, and the entire job-search lifecycle from the executive’s perspective can be grueling and challenging—riddled with complexities, lack of transparency and a lengthy process with the board. Chief executives must exude a brand of leadership today that meets the litmus test of multiple constituencies. They already have experience navigating these choppy waters, and perhaps that contributes to their bias to test them more often than others, as well as tough-minded acceptance of corporate realities.

HOW TO RUIN A BRAND IN LESS THAN 60 SECONDS: Career Turnaround Advice for CMOs & Marketing Executives

Phyllis Shabad — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 18:40:51 -0500

If you lead a company’s marketing efforts as the Chief Marketing Officer, then it’s reasonable to assume that your mastery of marketing strategy is the launch pad for lucrative product suites. That’s an enviable professional story to tell. Despite a long career, you are an early adopter, and wide-ranging knowledge of how to align “old-school” insight with current social media marketing tools has stamped you as a trusted thought leader within and without. To your company, you are the solid partner who builds a culture of marketing execution for all channels, and to your external clients, you’ve earned a reputation as the practical and creative idea generator who always finds the needle in the marketing haystack when no one else can or does.

You visualize, craft and grow brands with sustainability. But are you on a collision course to destroy the one brand nearest and dearest to you personally—and professionally? In less than 60 seconds?

Ask yourself why, then, you have avoided applying even a few core concepts of branding to yourself? Put another way, what would it take to help you transfer your knowledge and expertise of marketing to personal brand growth? You know: you’ve heard a lot of buzz about personal branding in the last decade. Politicians hire big-deal consultants to help brand themselves before their opponents do. Executives at the very top navigate the choppy waters of brand reputation on a regular basis. For all strivers, a polished personal brand can be the most important arrow in your career quiver. Don’t worry about any disconnect, however, because you—especially you—have the appropriate mindset to recalculate and express a vibrant personal brand. The natural barriers to the personal brand solution are somewhat subjective by nature, and no one is at fault here. So let’s take a look at the first steps in your new personal marketing plan.

Avoid Abundant Mythologies

The Theory of the Case:

Everyone needs a résumé, correct? The short answer is an obvious “yes” if you’re in the market to explore career opportunities and pursue access to high-end recruiters, or penetrate the senior executive management tier of companies that you target. The longer answer is “no” if you want to do anything more in the way of solving the personal brand + career satisfaction = success equation. By that I mean having a product in your hand that is much more elastic and incorporates multiple components for a broad spectrum of marketing applications.

Don’t Fall Into the Anti-Brand Trap

Templates are useful and important tools that help establish a framework for a project or product. However, they are the start and not the end point because each template must be customized to be useful. Anything else is a one-dimensional piece fresh from an assembly line. If you were to create a product portfolio where each part was embedded into the whole—complete with an exquisitely rendered brand—you would deliver that to your clients and expect to get results. Of course—you would, and you have. Why not do the same while creating a career portfolio that is a branded product instead of something that walks and talks as if it came from off the shelf?

Avoid Abundant Mythologies? Actually, Explode Mythologies & Launch a Turnaround

The Career Marketing Plan that Drives Your Brand

Before you buy several career guides and résumé books, or look for free samples online, think like a marketing chieftain and lead yourself right out of the trap. If I took away all of the mechanics of what you assume a great résumé should be, you would be left with an 8 ½” x 11” blank space that I’d like you to think of as your whiteboard. And it would be a whiteboard with no design restrictions, no content requirements and no conceptual hurdles to leap over that trigger the wrong question: “What do the hiring managers want?” Go ahead—have some fun, and be fearless! Your new “page one” is like a car in a junkyard stripped of its parts. Bid farewell to the wrong vehicle that never communicated your brand well in the first place.

As a marketing maven, you understand the difference between “want” and “need” and it’s the need side of the scorecard that will drive not only the résumé but your personal brand as well. The only leap that you need to make is one that taps into your business imagination and expresses your values with clarity and distinction.

My fundamental approach to creating any copy for any reason is that the start point is STRATEGY. Absent a strategy, you will stumble and find your task more than daunting. Instead of real writing you will be dumping data onto your whiteboard that has no clear purpose. How could you possibly expect that anyone who reads your page one will be able to identify, assimilate and embrace your unique characteristics, accomplishments and promise of value in the marketplace if you don’t identify and broadcast these personal brand features strongly and consistently?

Fact or Myth?

Assume that almost all of your “end users” will first scan your résumé to figure out who you are. If you accept the “30-Second Scan” proposition, then what do you think is going to happen if you litter your page one with ambiguous verbiage that’s bloated with jargon and all-too-familiar catchphrases? Hints: Senior Marketing Executive; results-driven; detail-oriented; experienced; excellent communicator. These are but a few deadly examples.

Imagine packing an opening summary piece with broad headlines and worn-out platitudes into a paragraph of prose that’s formulaic. If nothing else, you are on the wrong side of the road and you are well on your way to ruining “the great brand of YOU” instead of anchoring your uniqueness. All it took was a scan of less than 60 seconds!

Career Marketing Plan Checklist

Here are some first-step, basic activities to build your strategy:

Review! Review! Review!

If you have an old résumé or bio, read it several times and prune out your best achievements over the course of your career. Select anywhere from five to seven “ bullets” regardless of where they appear on your timeline. Do you notice any similarities or emerging themes that provide the context to what you accomplished? Write them down onto a scratch pad. Identify the unique attributes, and you can lay out the initial expression of your personal brand.

Boil the Brand.

Capture your brand concisely in a few sentences without sloganizing. Does this differentiate you in the market? Would it have any strong emotional appeal to your clients, or end-users?

Compare and contrast.

If you have built and shepherded a great brand, analyze how you did this, i.e., the process. How was that brand uniquely positioned? Write down the story behind that brand’s success. Now compare that process to the development of your personal brand. What can you learn from your branding and marketing story that applies to you? In other words, if you are the product, how can you translate that into compelling copy?

Be a Master Storyteller.

Remember your whiteboard? Don’t fill in the blanks yet. Instead, take those bullets and turn them into stories that are interesting and relevant to the marketplace. Write as much as you want. If I were to help you execute this, I’d guide you with these points: elevate the stories by using language that is sophisticated and not hyped; eliminate as many adjectives as you can and use some principles of exceptional writing and branding. This means “Show, don’t tell.” Give me hard data and don’t dance around the value—let the story itself drive that. More than that, will your stories get me into your head and not your work cubicle or office?

Personal Brand Futurist

Obviously, there is a lot more work to do to create your page one and animate it with your personal brand. But if you can execute some basic steps recommended here, you’ve already nailed down the hardest part in personal career branding. The product? Make it more than a résumé and turn it into a portfolio with the go-long strategy. Think of it as an executive smartphone with multiple “apps” e.g., short-form to long-form content for social media; consulting projects; articles, speeches and traditional media; shaping and promoting a new business mission post-turnaround or M&A. In a highly competitive, overcrowded marketplace, this can raise your visibility and attract the market to you.

You Won’t Find Her Leading at the Table

Phyllis Shabad — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 18:13:31 -0400

With a nod to Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé —who broke a sales record this year with her debut album that The Beatles had held for nearly 50 years—we women continue to succeed as natural entrepreneurs and business talent in a wide array of fields and industries, and there is much hard data to back up what success looks like across individual accomplishment in small, middle and major markets. While Sandé is on the creative side of the music business, discipline, self-confidence to wield clout and unending drive helped her reach that milestone, and those qualities are an excellent match with innate leadership. But, while more women break records, glass ceilings and barriers of all kinds, one thing we can’t quite do is break through to the boardroom in acceptable numbers.

And what is acceptable? The number of women who hold board directorships changes according to geography, C-Suite tenure, business network, industry, notability, size of company, public vs. private and executive management role and level, to name several variables. While leadership performance and capability should matter, there are significant hurdles in place for women in 2013 to reach gender parity on boards. I’ve pulled some statistics and quotes from leading sources that, while they are by no means exhaustive, shine a light on women “leading at the table.” Mostly, information was sourced from the last two years. Let’s look first at percentages of women in business in the United States.

Catalyst.org published research and data updated one month ago showing how thin the air gets at the top of the pyramid. Although women make up 46.9% of the total U.S. labor force—holding 51.5% of management, professional and related occupations—as you climb the pyramid the percentages drop off sharply. Based on a Catalyst Census focused on the Fortune 500 and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2012, 14.3% of women are executive officers, 8.1% are considered top earners and 4.2% are CEOs. Only 16.6% of board seats are held by women. Breaking down statistics by region in 2012, the northeast came in a winner with women holding 18.2% of Fortune 500 board seats. No surprise that New York-metro, Massachusetts and some other New England and Mid-Atlantic states are well represented.

The percentage rise of female corporate board directors in the U.S. is also slight when compared to a few earlier years, and when you examine board seats held by women in other countries, we do not even rank in the top five. Norway, Sweden, Finland, France and the U.K. are the leaders—with a whopping 40.9% of board seats in Norway held by women. Norway’s government mandates that quota, by the way. The U.S. ranks nine among the countries. According to an article by Carmen Nobel in Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge newsletter … “Companies with female board representation routinely outperform those with no women on the board, per a recent study by the Credit Suisse Research Institute.” The same article features research by Boris Groysberg, a professor of Business Administration at HBS. A partial quote of his underlines the core issue of the relationship of diversity to performance: “Diversity is about counting the numbers; inclusiveness is about making the numbers count.”

Breaking Through to the Board: What Makes You an Attractive Candidate?

Phyllis Shabad — Sun, 14 Jul 2013 12:56:52 -0400

Update: Outcomes from the Tuesday, May 21st JPMorgan Chase Shareholders Meeting

As widely reported, the status quo prevailed at JPMorgan Chase, with Jamie Dimon able to retain both roles as chairman of the board and CEO. The remaining board directors also kept their seats although three directors survived with lukewarm vote totals, indicating that the work of outside advisory firms had some impact. Overall, the board will have a renewed focus on oversight and risk mitigation.

Breaking Through to the Board: Corporate Board Issues & Challenges

Phyllis Shabad — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:50:13 -0400

Related to board recruitment and service are issues of expertise, experience and, ultimately, performance. Although these factors apply to all types of boards, governance news over the last several months highlights problems and players in large, public companies. Serving on the board of a corporate giant can be the capstone of a full executive career, but it can also be a minefield for directors less skilled at weaving trust, accountability and transparency concerns with the obligations of oversight and stewardship.

You don’t have to look any further than the financial services sector over the last five years—in particular what is roiling in the boardroom of JPMorgan Chase currently. It starts with the story of the “London Whale” trader in 2012 and may not end with the annual meeting later this month. In fact, the current situation has so many facets to it that it goes beyond the central question of risk management.

According to an article that appeared in the Monday, May 6, 2013 issue of The New York Times “A Call for New Blood on the JPMorgan Board” three directors who serve on the bank’s risk policy committee may be voted out soon by shareholders. In a statement rebutting the findings of the outside proxy advisory firm I.S.S., the bank said that … “the members of the board’s risk committee have a diversity and breadth of experiences that have served the company well.” This is more than a case, however, of “standing by your men” (and woman) apparently. This same article notes that in Institutional Shareholder Services’ 33-page report … “the bank’s biggest rivals have managed to find directors with stronger qualifications.” *Note: for transparency, I worked at JPMorgan Chase for two lines of business in management development.

Here are highlights that summarize some of these boardroom challenges:

Board composition with breadth and/or depth of experience, i.e., inside or outside of the industry

Diversity, including gender and other considerations

Split of the chairman and chief executive positions

Shareholder activism

Outside influencers such as proxy advisory firms

Effective and timely communications between the board and management.

To manage and reduce risk, however, a skill I think directors should have is the ability to ask questions—layered, high-quality questions that are both technical and conceptual. And, of course, the probative instincts of an investigative reporter.