Blog

What is branding? It’s not ink and cardboard

January 30, 2017 By Tim

A lot of people think branding is logos and business cards. But those are just channels and products that reflect your branding.

The oft-repeated quote when people talk about personal branding for small businesses comes, ironically, from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

To put it another way: when people call you to mind, what impressions come along with that?

I often talk about foreground and background messages. Foreground messages are what you tell people explicitly, like an introduction/pitch at a networking event or points you make in a blog post. Background messages are impressions people pick up about you, often with little or no conscious awareness they’re doing it – for instance from the colour scheme and layout of your website, or your writing’s tone of voice.

So branding is the process of getting clearer about what messages you want to attach to yourself in people’s minds, then using tools and channels to implement that. [Read more…] about What is branding? It’s not ink and cardboard

Your message matters

November 30, 2016 By Tim

The shape of the world around us isn’t great at the moment. A lot of things that should be right are wrong.

That shape comes from how people act, and that comes from how they think, and that comes from their worldview – from deep attitudes to information they just picked up. And that comes from the messages that swirl around them. It’s like the atmosphere for our brains. We breathe it in and out without realising.

There’s a lot of pollution in that atmosphere. A lot of outdated attitudes, fear-driven behaviour and self-interested spin. A lot of people have got caught up in those things, and then they try to spread them and defend them to make themselves right.

We need fresh air to counter that. Messages of compassion, empathy, insight, inspiration, collaboration. Telling us that there really are better possibilities, for ourselves and our fellow humans and our world, and that we really can head that way. [Read more…] about Your message matters

The two towers – Trump vs fellowship

November 21, 2016 By Tim

OK, let’s get this out of the way.

I hate that Trump won. My weary core sighs that a walking embodiment of ignorance, denial, delusion and prejudice will be the steward of that grand, fractured country where my friends live. A country that desperately needs vision, healing and common purpose.

With dismay I see him gathering a team of ringwraiths in clown suits, high on their own tangled worldviews, floating away from reality, ready to trample the needs of their country rather than ministering to those needs. People whose only interest is for rich white men to have a world that wraps them in cotton wool.

I’m angry that it has happened now, in a crucial time when we need to be mobilising the best of our intelligence, compassion and creativity to steer the world away from peril and toward a brighter future.

Though in a way there’s an inevitability to it, as a symptom of human psychology working its way through. Like here in the UK, most of the people talking didn’t understand what the people listening needed to hear, and weren’t prepared to be 21st century leaders. Energies of dissatisfaction and hurt didn’t get helped or channelled, so they broke their banks.

But here are a couple of ameliorating factors. Trump will tell you how strong and great he is. But atmospheric physics will kick his ass and barely notice. Social and economic problems won’t go away. Reality will come up hard against his frothy pronouncements and his authority will ebb away. But there will be a whole lot of broken bodies, minds and spirits left in the wake of that. A lot of people who don’t have gold towers to take refuge in.

The second thing is more hopeful. Because a lot of people can see that future coming, and it’s galvanising them to step up even more than before. I’ve seen organisations like Avaaz and Open Democracy committing to a new level of activity. Lots of individuals are becoming more vocal too, and seeking channels for action.

It’s the classic conflict of love vs fear. These are the people who carry a great love for our world and its people. Who see truth and feel suffering and loss mirrored in their own hearts. Their tower is not built of gold but of connection and fire. This time round, it’s the good guys who have the burning eye. The other tower is blind.

This isn’t a battle between tribes of people, though it’s easy to forget that. It’s tension and friction between ways of being. Love and fear. Awake and asleep. Vision and darkness.

And it’s not just about Trump. He’s a particularly dramatic symptom, allowing more people to see the lower self in action. You can also look at the neofeudalist government in the UK, or the rise of the far right in Europe, or oppression the world over.

We’ve had so many chances to head off bad things, and too often we haven’t been up to the challenge. Maybe, just maybe, the prospect of a dark lord in control of the supposed bastion of freedom will rouse the world to better.

(With apologies to Professor Tolkien. Though I suspect he’d be unimpressed too.)

Why is it so hard to say what you do?

October 28, 2016 By Tim

The introduction or ‘elevator pitch’. Those one or two sentences you prepare for opening networking conversations or adding to your website or materials. On the face of it such a simple thing, but the cause of massive frustration and soul-searching.

I’m on a course at the moment about selling (in an authentic non-pushy way). So many of the people there are really wrestling with their intro. Including me!

I think it’s harder for ‘heart-centred’ businesses, and those where you’re not delivering a well-known function, like plumber or accountant: you’re delivering you, and your individual jigsaw of passion, experience and skill. [Read more…] about Why is it so hard to say what you do?

The main cause of climate change is politicians

October 3, 2016 By Tim

Yes, yes, I know that greenhouse gases come from agriculture and transport and energy generation and deforestation. But take a different angle on the cause and effect of the situation we’re in.

How long have we had to take serious action on climate change? 25 years, give or take. Of course it’s been a long process of getting it into the public awareness, in the face of a hostile media and wealthy corporations working hard to keep their racket going. But that’s happened now. The climate on climate shifted some years ago.

The people we choose as stewards of our society, who we pay to run things on our behalf, who have an obligation to be well informed and take a strategic view. Where have they been? Did they look at the potential consequences and start ramping up action to reduce the risk?

Around 1990 when I was involved in Friends of the Earth, we criticised the government of the day for having no coherent energy policy. As far as I know, no UK government of my adult lifetime has had one.

The politicians, barring a few rare champions, are averse to change and see the fossil fuel companies as ‘people like us’. They’ve fudged, prevaricated and misdirected to try to keep things working with duct tape from an outdated toolbox. It’s still seen as tenable to be a climate change denier at a high level in UK politics.

If you travel round Britain today, you’ll see wind turbines and solar panels. That’s because of the enterprise of companies and communities and householders, who see a future shape they want to be part of. It’s not because of a government mobilising support on a grand, enthusiastic and reliable scale. That support has been grudging, limited and unreliable. Indeed, numbers of solar installers have recently been driven out of business by sudden changes.

A new report by Oil Change International has used industry data to show that if we use all the oil, coal and gas resources currently in production or being developed, we’re probably going to bust the 2C target for temperature rise. The international climate conference in Paris in December 2015 pledged to hold it to well below that, and hopefully 1.5C. So basically we need to stop opening up new fossil fuel resources right now, and try not to use all the ones we already have. George Monbiot writes about it in the Guardian.

PM Theresa May has recently said she will ratify the Paris climate treaty on behalf of the UK – but commenters have not been slow to point out that her government is continuing to force through fracking schemes against local community opposition, and to shy away from investing in renewables and efficiency. It’s transparently inconsistent. One of many examples of vital issues being obscured by the Brexit debacle.

The tide has long since turned on climate change. The scientific consensus is there. The knowledge of consequences and urgency is there. The public awareness is there. The support for renewables and other solutions is there. The economic benefits of massive action are there.

When we look back on these times, and a youngster asks us what caused the climate change that’s transformed their world for the worse, here’s one answer. Politicians, a tragically limited lot who failed to engage with reality in service to the people.

Big and little fields – a quick idea for working on your ‘purpose’

September 16, 2016 By Tim

Do you get pulled between an inner urge to make a big contribution to the world and the need to do something useful in the moment, so that you go round and round and don’t get anywhere?

Looking back, that’s been part of my experience. This is a simple idea I hit upon for my own personal development, and took along to a recent coaching session. I’m posting it in case it helps you too.

I’ve met a lot of people who went through a corporate career and at some point had that realisation that it was wrong for them and made a big change of direction. My story isn’t like that. I’ve flitted about doing short stints here and there.

A lot of it was navigation with little training or support, but I think also the feeling that I ‘ought’ to be making a big difference and using all my gifts stopped me settling into roles and activities that might have helped me get there. It wasn’t deliberate, and often wasn’t conscious, but of course it’s a recipe for dissatisfaction and insecurity.

This is an attempt to get a better relationship between a clearer big picture and the activities that can bring it to life. [Read more…] about Big and little fields – a quick idea for working on your ‘purpose’