Brand U Business Rules
The smartest company wins To be the smartest company, hire the smartest people To have the smartest people, keep learning[i] [i] “Importance of Learning,” Fast Company, Greatest Hits: Volume 1, 1997, p. 1.
People
Jump on Opportunties
Manage the opportunities change offers. Advertisement.
Brand U Career Questions
Can you homestead your job? What’s the explicit or implicit contract between your employer and you? Do you manage your career? Do you know your organization’s/customer’s work requirements? Are you positioning yourself to satisfy these requirements? Again after reading this book ‘what’s your value proposition’? Do you work in a learning organization? Are you a …
Fail Fast
The smartest people in college and business seemed to gravitate to big companies because of the money, perks, and potential. Now, we’re seeing other trends. Smart Brand U’s straight out of college or B-school go into a big business to learn product development, sales, purchasing, supplier management, customer service and general management. Then, they start …
Entrepreneurship Has Arrived
The paradigm has once again shifted. “Entrepreneurship has arrived. The question of whether it’s mainstream, accepted by the powerful elite, or big enough to cross US borders and thrive is no longer open to discussion. Brand U entrepreneurs are the creators of the New Economy. And everybody wants to be one,” according to Inc. Magazine.[i] …
Work in a Start Up
What percentage of American households includes someone who has started, tried to start, or helped fund a small business? One percent, five, or even ten percent? Well guess again! Thirty-seven percent, more than one-third, of American households are involved with some form of entrepreneurship.[i] Entrepreneurs were once considered folks who couldn’t work in a big …
Key Work Questions
Do you know your employer’s or customer’s wants, needs, expectations, and requirements like the back of your hand? What resources does your employer or customer need to get where it wants to go? Are customer expectations clearly spelled out? Are internal requirements based on customer expectations? Has a new employer-worker model been developed? Are there …
Conduct a Career Gap Analysis
Many companies regularly ask workers to conduct a gap analysis of their skills in relationship to business needs. Brand U’s are then expected to develop skills that will satisfy these organizational needs. Or expressed another way, Brand U’s are expected to look out for #1. Brand U’s reassess their core proficiencies periodically just like any …
How to Ensure Employability
What does it take to be employable over the long term? We know it’s important to develop marketable skills, which can be learned. What’s becoming increasingly important is what I call Brand U survival skills and attitudes, those that last for a lifetime. These personal life and work attitudes may be a sense of humor, …
Enhancing Brand U Skills
Through self-development, Brand U’s are encouraged to enhance their skills, knowledge, and capabilities. A company can tell us what needs to be done to meet its strategic goals but we as Brand U’s are ultimately responsible for ensuring we have the skills to do our jobs. We often have resources, broad direction, networks, and even …