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GIRIJA SUREKA: Welcome everyone, welcome to the
Authors at Google talk.
It is my pleasure to introduce Dorie.
I'm Girija Sureka, by the way.
A brief introduction about Dorie.
She is considered as the branding expert.
She is a former presidential campaign spokeswoman.
She is also a frequent contributor to "Harvard
Business Review," "Forbes," and other publications, and
she's also given lectures all over the world.
She's here to talk to us about her book, "Reinventing You."
And without any delays, I'll let her begin.
Please welcome.
DORIE CLARK: Hi everyone.
I'm really glad to be here at Google today.
My journey toward writing "Reinventing You" actually
started because I was a journalist.
That was my first job after graduate school.
And as you can see I worked for possibly the
coolest paper ever.
We had rock stars wearing cat masks on it.
It was an alternative weekly paper in Boston called the
"Boston Phoenix."
So I got to go to any event I wanted.
I got to ask people obnoxious questions.
It was a fantastic career.
But a year into my career I got laid off.
And we probably all know the root cause for
some of these things.
You probably recognize this ransom note like interface.
And between the years 2001 and 2009 nearly 40% of US
journalists lost their jobs.
And so at first I thought, you know, I'm just going to get
another job.
I'm going to get hired on at another paper.
And I slowly began to realize that that was, in fact, not
going to happen.
And so I needed a plan B. And over the course of the ensuing
decade I feel really fortunate that I was able to do some
very cool things.
I was a presidential campaign spokesperson,
as Girija was saying.
I ran a nonprofit.
I made a documentary film.
And seven years ago I started my business doing marketing
strategy consulting.
But one thing that I have learned over the course of
time when I was changing these jobs and careers and was so
excited, because I would have something new going on, and I
sent out emails and let people know--
and people would still ask me, when I'd run into them, a
question about the job that I had like four years ago.
Oh, so, what campaign are you on now?
And I had already moved on to the next thing.
And so ultimately I think we all live in a world where we
may be on the verge of at least feeling like there's too
many connections.
We have 1,000 Facebook friends, 10,000 Google+
friends in our circles.
And there's just too much to keep up with.
And so for most people, and maybe some of you guys have
had this experience, I feel like their perceptions of us
may well be out of date by two years, three years.
You run into people, and it's like, oh, and you've had a
baby in the interim since I've seen you.
People are not keeping up.
And so ultimately that's not their fault.
We have a lot of things that we need to be
keeping on top of.
But what it does mean is this that if we want to be the ones
considered for new opportunities, for promotions,
for the chance to do the really awesome projects, then
we need to make sure that somehow or other people hear
about and know about what we're doing, what we're
capable of, where we are now.
But the trick, of course, is that as with all things
personal branding, you can't do it in an obnoxious way
where you're just sort of foghorning your way into
people's consciousness.
You've got to find a better and more subtle way of
conveying your value, and your worth, and what
you can really do.
And so that's what I tried to capture in "Reinventing You"
is someone who had been through that process a lot.
Whether you're reinventing yourself in a really dramatic
way, by having a totally different career, or whether
you're moving around.
I mean I know at Google, for instance, you're encouraged to
get new positions and new jobs every couple of years.
You have the opportunity, working at a place like this,
to move to different country offices, to do rotations, to
move into new areas.
This is a company that wants you to learn and grow and
reinvent yourself.
But when you're doing it you also need to be perceived in
different ways.
People look at you in a different context when you're
a software engineer, versus when you're doing
philanthropic projects, or when you're working in
advertising sales.
And so that's the question.
How do you really determine how you are viewed
professionally?
And how do you make sure it lines up?
And so I'm just going to see if this magic large clicker
actually works.
Maybe not.
So I'll keep strolling back and forth periodically.
So that's what led to my book, "Reinventing You." So there's
three basic phases to the reinvention process.
The first one is really drilling down and figuring out
how you're perceived by other people.
That's kind of the starting point.
The second step is determining what you want to be known for.
What's the brand that you really would like to have in
the world, and setting that out.
And then thirdly finally, which we'll be talking about
each in turn, is how do you manifest that brand?
Because once you've settled on something, you don't just kind
of come up to people and say, hi, I'm Dorie
and my brand is XYZ.
We don't put it out there like that.
What we do is, we are in the world.
We do things.
We participate in activities.
We interact with people.
And from that, people extrapolate what our brand is.
It's not something we say.
It's something that we live.
And so the question is, how can we live in such a way, how
can we do things so that people are more likely to get
the right impression of us?
I know sometimes even the concept, even the phrase of
personal brand is something that kind of gets people's
back up a little bit.
And maybe that's the case first for some
of you guys, even.
Really where it comes from, in 1997, a gentleman named Tom
Peters, a well known management thinker, wrote a
famous cover story for "Fast Company" Magazine called "The
Brand Called You." And it sort of launched the modern era of
personal branding.
But when I used the phrase, I want to be clear, what I'm
talking about is simply a synonym for your reputation.
This is not some new-fangled shenanigan where we're trying
to spit-polish you and package you.
It's about being conscious of your reputation.
And I think for anyone who cares about their career, you
want to figure out, how are you viewed?
How do you want to be viewed?
And if there is daylight between those two things,
hopefully you want to try to close that gap.
And I should also point out the other thing that I hear
often, when we're talking about personal brand, is
sometimes, for some people, it connotes phoniness or
inauthenticity.
And I also want to be very clear that that is not what
I'm talking about.
It's not a question of sticking your finger to the
wind, and trying to figure out what the world wants, and then
molding yourself to that, or trying to get to reinvent
yourself as something you think other people want.
We're actually, I would argue, exiting the era where what
mattered most was, do you fit in?
Do you color inside the lines?
Are you the same as everybody else?
And we are moving more and more toward a world where what
matters is the exact opposite.
What matters is your difference, and what you can
bring to the table that no one else can.
And if you can articulate that, if you can be clear on
that value, then that actually is your career insurance.
That is the thing that makes you
indispensable to your company.
So that's what I wanted to talk a little bit about.
So how do you go about discovering your brand?
This right here is my favorite quote in the entirety of
"Reinventing You." This is an angel
investor named Judy Robinett.
And when I was writing the book I was talking to her on
the phone, and she said, Dorie, this is fantastic.
This reminds me of a Hungarian proverb.
And so this, of course, if three people tell you you're a
horse, buy a saddle.
And what this means, the reason I like this, is that
ultimately your brand is not what you say it is.
It's not what you want it to be, what you wish it were.
Your brain is what other people say it is.
And so the starting point, always, is figuring out what
other people think.
And then, if it is not matching up, taking the
actions you need proactively to get control over that.
So incidentally, I was in London last month, and I spoke
at the Google offices in London there.
They're a great group of folks.
But the night before, my publisher, Harvard Business
Review press, did an event, sort of a big open event where
people came in.
And a woman came up to me afterward and she said, I
liked your talk very much.
I am from Hungary.
I do not know this proverb.
So we will attribute it to Judy Robinett, but the
sentiment stands.
So there's a few different ways that you can begin to get
a handle on it.
The first, obviously, which you people invented is
Googling yourself.
And hopefully, all of you guys, you're paid to do this.
So hopefully you do it every day anyway.
Google alerts are like the greatest gift to personal
branding ever.
But I will ask you, the next time you do this, do it with
one question in mind.
That question, that frame, is if this were the only
information that someone knew about me, what would
they make of me?
Because more and more we are moving to a place where that
is the case.
You're dealing with people, you're working with colleagues
internationally, people who you've never met.
And literally, even though we're three dimensional, fully
fleshed out characters to ourselves and in our own
minds, to them, you're your Google search.
And so you have to pay special attention to what's coming
across and what's being presented there.
The next thing, many of you perhaps have had the
opportunity to work with an executive coach.
If you have, that's a fantastic thing, because
having that outside perspective can be
interesting or useful.
But if folks haven't, because oftentimes companies may not
be able to provide the opportunity for everyone, it
doesn't mean that we can't gain that knowledge.
The first thing that an executive coach will do,
generally, is a 360 interview.
So like a circle, they will interview your boss, your
peers, your employees, and they will try to get a
holistic picture.
What's Dorie really like?
What's she like to work with?
Tell me about her.
And they'll anonymize the findings and then they'll
present them back to you, so that hopefully you can hear
them with an open mind.
And obviously that's a good way of doing it, because
people feel more free to speak if it's anonymous, if it's to
somebody else.
But even if you are doing this on your own, I would suggest
you can get a lot of value out of it.
If you find trusted friends or colleagues and go to them, and
you could almost make it like a parlor game-- you ask, if
you only had three words to be able to describe me, what
would they be?
And if you ask four or five people, you are going to begin
to see patterns, both of what they say and also what they
don't say, which can be incredibly illustrative.
And so that's one way that you can begin to get a sense.
And part of why this is useful it that we
all have blind spots.
One story that I tell in "Reinventing You" comes from
an executive coach who told me about a client that
she worked with once.
And this guy, when she started doing the interviews, the
stuff she heard was actually terrible.
He doesn't respect me.
He's haughty.
He's a jerk.
He's arrogant.
He's full of himself.
And so she started to try to dig, like what was he doing
that was provoking this?
Because it sounded egregious.
And so she dug a little, and she asked questions, and what
she ultimately discovered was that he was not
any of those things.
He was not haughty, he was not arrogant, he did not
disrespect other people.
But he did have a problem.
And that's that he had a bad habit.
He interrupted people.
And because he interrupted people on a regular basis,
that was the story that they constructed.
That was how they understood it and made meaning
of what he was doing.
And as a result, his career was really being held back.
Because people thought he was terrible.
When we think about our personal brand, about change,
things like that, we often think that it has
to be a huge thing.
It's going to take me years.
Changing your reputation, it's so hard.
It's so big.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes it is.
But sometimes it's as simple as getting feedback, and
listening, and knowing when to keep your mouth closed or when
you open your mouth, whatever it is.
But for him, when he got that information, almost
immediately he was able to make changes that led to him
being perceived in an entirely different way by his
colleagues.
So part of this can be very powerful.
I also wanted to tell you the story of a woman that I know
in Boston named Mary Skelton Roberts.
This is not for everybody.
This is not for the faint of heart.
But I love it as a thought experiment.
Mary, when I was talking to her, during writing the book,
she said, you know, this is so great, Dorie.
I love what you're saying about the 360s, and getting
the feedback, it's so valuable.
It reminds me of that time I had a
focus group about myself.
I said, that's fantastic, Mary.
Tell me more.
And so she was at a career crossroads, and she had a
friend named Don.
And Don said, I know what we'll do for you.
We will have a focus group about you.
And so she invited about a dozen of her friends, and she
was not allowed to say a word.
She had to sit in the corner.
She could only ask a question if there was a point of
clarification.
And for a couple of hours, Don asked her friends questions
about Mary.
If you didn't know what job Mary had,
what would you guess?
Mary's greatest gifts are?
The world would be a better place if Mary did what?
On and on, Mary said that it was one of the most revelatory
experiences of her life.
Getting to hear at a 30,000 foot perspective the things
that her friends thought about her.
She said that it was a completely new way of looking
at herself that really helped unstick her and move her on to
a new phase in her life in her career.
So those are few ways that you can at least begin to get the
juices flowing.
And so next I wanted to talk a little bit about creating your
narrative, proactively, how do you set it apart?
How do you know what you want to be known for?
So you all know these characters.
I have them up here because I used to work in
presidential politics.
And one of the first things that you learn is that there's
a million pieces of information that voters could
learn, that you could push out to people about candidates.
And maybe 1% of all the people who are reading Politico 23
hours a day.
They love it.
They can't get enough of it.
But for everybody else, what they want to know is, break it
down for me.
What is the difference?
How are these guys different from each other?
And how does that line up with what I'm interested in?
And so if you can be clear, as we're thinking through our
brand, on your difference, that's really
what's going to matter.
About a month ago I wrote a blog post for the "Harvard
Business Review." And it was spawned because an executive
reached out to me.
He was a senior partner at one of the big consulting firms.
And he wanted to talk with me because he just
had his 50th birthday.
He was starting to think about legacy projects.
He wanted to write.
He wanted to teach.
He wanted to start doing some different things.
But he came to me, because he said
Dorie, I have one problem.
I don't know what I want to say.
And it's not because he didn't have anything to say.
In fact, to the contrary, this was a guy that
had almost too much.
He knew tons about the industry verticals that he had
consulted in, telecom, biotech.
He had massive global experience.
He had philanthropic interests that he was involved in.
Any of these things, he could've opined about
articulately.
But he wasn't really sure where to start.
He wasn't sure what the core of his message was.
And so what I told him, and what I will suggest to you
guys, is take a morning.
Take a Saturday morning.
Go plunk yourself a coffee shop.
And if you really want to get clear on your brand, you
really want to know what's driving meaning in your life,
start to write down some of your war stories.
And what I mean by that is, we all have stories that we come
back to, things that are particularly vivid, things
that are particularly memorable, meaningful.
Maybe it's the time you first learned what leadership really
looked like.
Maybe it was the time that you failed and you had to pick
yourself up after failing.
Maybe it was when somebody showed you what
a real friend was.
Whatever it was, you can probably ask your spouse.
Because we all have things that we probably say over and
over again, oh, that story.
But what we really are is accumulations of
the stories we tell.
That's how we make meaning in our lives.
And I'm willing to bet that if you write enough of them down,
if you write down a few, you are going to
begin to see a pattern.
You are going to begin to see a thread that connects them
about why those things are meaningful to you.
And that is how you can begin to tease out, authentically,
what your brand is and what you feel passionate about.
And we had Romney and Obama up there a minute ago.
I mean, I know how messages are constructed
in political campaigns.
I've sat in the rooms.
If you look at the polls, and you say, oh, what do other
people care about?
OK, we'll be that.
That's not, as a real person, maybe not even as a
politician, how people should be constructing their message.
I think we should be starting from the ground up, with our
own experiences, our own passions, the things that
matter to us.
And along those lines, I wanted to just talk to you for
a minute about a woman I know named Libby Wagner, who I
write about in "Reinventing You." She has a pretty unusual
background.
She's a poet.
She has an MFA.
She's published numerous chapbooks of poetry.
She was a tenured community college professor of women's
studies and creative writing.
You're probably getting a vision in your head of what
Libby Wagner is like.
Libby Wagner became a management consultant.
She decided, you know what, I don't want to do that anymore.
I want to become a management consultant.
And so she started, and when she first got into it, she was
extremely nervous and almost embarrassed that
she had been a poet.
Because the business professors on her campus had
been so contemptuous of the poets.
They thought, ach, we can't talk to you.
We don't have anything in common.
And so she kept being paranoid that people would ask her,
where's your MBA?
What makes you qualified to do this?
And after a few clients, she realized no one was asking her
where her MBA was.
She could do the work.
In fact, what she realized is that she had skills and
knowledge that a traditional MBA would not.
Because she was a poet.
She had, for years, learned to study the nuances of language.
If you are a manager communicating with your team,
if you are a company communicating with your
customers, you need to understand
the nuances of language.
And she did.
She was able to work for companies
like Nike, like Boeing.
For a long time she hid that she had started as a poet.
But eventually she came to realize that that was actually
where her strength was.
And so today she has an email newsletter called "The
Boardroom Poet," her Twitter handle, @boardroompoet.
She's not afraid to be out about her identity.
And I think that for me, it's an important lesson for us.
That the place where we are different is sometimes the
thing you want to sand down, the thing you want to
minimize, the place where you feel like, I'm not sure if
these people would really get where I'm coming from.
But that is often the source of the place where you can add
the most value.
So I wanted to talk just a little bit moving into the
final piece, about how you manifest that
value in the world.
How you show what you can do.
How do you live it?
So I wanted, I'm going to try to not set
off this loud noise.
There we go.
Just checking in on timing, so we can keep a good beat here.
I also want to say as well that throughout the course of
this, if you have thoughts, questions, stories you want to
share, please feel free to dive in at any point.
At the end we'll take questions too, but I want to
make sure that we're grabbing things and getting your
experiences.
Because those are some of the best parts.
So I want to leave you with a few strategies, talk about
actual take home tips, as it were.
So the first thing that I wanted to mention--
there is a sociologist at the University of Chicago named
Ronald Burt.
And his research, he uses a phrase which, as sociologists
are wont to do, he talks about bridging structural holes and
the importance of that.
But what that means, basically, to boil it down, is
that one of the most effective things that you can do in your
company to build a strong career, to get known and
recognized by your peers as someone with something to
contribute is to become the dot in the middle.
In any organization, no matter how hard you try to eradicate
it, there are going to be silos between campuses,
between buildings, between departments, between projects.
People, they just, they're human.
They don't talk.
They don't communicate.
It's a lot easier to talk to the people next door than it
is the people on the other side of the country or the
other side of the campus.
And so if you can be the person, if you can find ways
to insert yourself and to build relationships across
those boundaries, you can learn things that other people
don't know.
I know that one of the central tenets, party of the ethos of
Google, is the importance of learning new things and
sharing it with your colleagues.
And ultimately the research bears out, that's one of the
best things that you can do for your career.
You'll be viewed as a connector.
You'll be viewed as someone in the know.
You'll be viewed as someone helpful.
And that can be incredibly powerful.
There's Robert Putnam, the Harvard
sociologist, breaks it down.
He talks about two different categories of relationships.
One he calls bonding capital, the other is bridging capital.
And you need both.
Bonding capital is where you're interacting with and
relating to people who are just like you.
Maybe there are people who are in your department.
Maybe there are people who are fellow women, or fellow people
from a certain area, or fellow Yankees fans, or
whatever you are.
But you've got the bond with your tribe, as it were.
But what is equally important--
and if you want to be balanced, you
have to have both--
is bridging capital.
Are you the person that reaches across and builds
relationships with other types of people and people who are
doing different things?
If you can balance those, that's one of the most
powerful things that you can do.
So we all know from all the great media reports and
pictures of Bono and Angelina Jolie, Davos, the World
Economic Forum.
And part of the reason that I love to think about and talk
about the World Economic Forum is that now
it's this brand event.
Every year, every January, all the poohbahs gather.
It costs $100,000 for your company to be a member of it.
It is an international event.
It is an event that was started by a
business school professor.
It was not something that began on high as the most
powerful gathering in the world.
It was a business professor, Klaus Schwab, who said,
wouldn't it be great if we had an annual conference talking
about the European economy?
And he did it, and it became a phenomenon.
And it might seem sort of ridiculous to say,
you can do that too.
You can start your own Davos.
But I want to take a moment to tell you a story about my
friend Robbie.
Robbie is a nonprofit fundraiser.
And like a lot of people, he noticed, ah, going back to
Ronald Burt's research, the nonprofit
community was really siloed.
All the environmental people knew each other, but they
didn't know the health care people.
And all the health care people knew each other, but they
didn't know the anti-poverty people.
Why is that?
Is there any way to fix it?
And so Robbie decided to do something creative.
He thought, how do we bring people together in a way that
doesn't feel like homework?
In a way that doesn't feel like eating your spinach?
And so he created a Meetup group, free, just started a
Meetup group.
It was called Socializing For Justice.
Socializing for Justice was a monthly gathering, where
people from the nonprofit community and their friends
could get together and do bowling for justice, cocktails
for justice, trivia for justice.
They would do fun activities and in the
process solve the problem.
They'd get to know each other, be friends, and it naturally
breaks down the silos.
Six years later the group has 2,200 members.
They declared it Robbie Samuels day in Boston last
year on his birthday.
The Boston nonprofit community is not that big.
And I would posit that most of the communities that we are
in, the communities that matter to us, in the end
they're not that big.
If you take the initiative to start something new and
different, and really own it, you can become the connector
who is adding tremendous value to your community.
And every month, multiple times a month, all of those
2,200 people are getting emails with Robbie's name on
it sending them invitations of things they want to do and
making sure that they remember who he is.
I can guarantee you that anytime he wants to get a job
there are going to be dozens of people that know exactly
what he's capable of and want to bring them on to the team.
So taking the initiative to dive in and get started,
whether it's cross-departmental
initiatives, ways to meet people, Google is especially
good at this.
I know with the Authors at Google series, bringing in
musicians, anything you care about or are passionate about,
there's a way to plug in and int the process build
connections, not just with cool people outside Google but
within the company so that your ties are strong and that
you are becoming a hub.
It's far more possible than you might think.
So I also, since we're here in Silicon Valley, wanted to tell
you a Silicon Valley story.
So as I mentioned I worked in campaigns.
In the 2004 cycle I was the New Hampshire communications
director for Howard Dean.
His campaign, of course, is famous for being the first
really internet savvy campaign.
And that was great.
Why?
Why were we the internet savvy campaign?
We had had good staffers, we had all these nice things.
Howard Dean certainly let it happen, but Howard Dean is not
Mr. Internet Savvy.
This is not him staying up late at night and tweeting.
That's not his deal.
The reason that we were the internet campaign is because
Joe Trippi, who was our campaign manager, went to San
Jose State.
And that might seem a little bit random, but he was there
in the late 1970s when all of this was starting to burst,
when all this was starting to happen and to take off.
And he noticed and he watched.
And 20 years later, he was there and said, how can I take
this blogging phenomenon which was a niche thing at the time,
it was early 2003.
It was still a niche hobby, web blogging, live journaling.
How do we take it and turn it into something?
I remember being there late at night, knocking on the door,
trying to get statements approved, that
CNN needed a statement.
And he waved me off and yell, come back later.
I'm like, what is he doing that's so important?
What is he doing that's more important than this
statement for CNN?
And he'd be, like, working on a blog post.
And so ultimately, sometimes, we find ourselves in positions
where we are able to see things that other people are
not, where we are in a place where things are happening.
And if you watch, and if you notice, you
can pick up on them.
And it can lead you to ideas that other
people are not having.
Now, a lot of people in Silicon Valley know that
computers are great and blogs are great.
Very few people in presidential politics in 2003
knew that connection, and knew that is was something that
could actually help a presidential campaign.
So being able to understand what's going on, to see those
trends, and to get what makes them important, and to be able
to translate them to the outside world--
you are at the hub right now.
You are at ground zero, where things are happening.
So looking around and finding out where that wave is going
to be incredibly powerful.
Part of the reason why I wanted to talk about this, go
where the wave is going, this all came up because a few
months ago I was interviewing--
I do a blog for "Forbes," and I was interviewing Robert
Scoble, who many of you guys may know, the great tech
opinion leader.
And I asked him, how did you get your start, Robert?
How did you get into all this?
And he said, oh, that's funny.
I was at San Jose State in the '70s.
Sometimes things are in the water.
And I think, when it comes to Google and being here right
now, things are in the water.
And if you're watching, and finding the places where it
starts, you can move forward exponentially fast.
So one of the tips, one of the strategies that you guys can
use today, one of my favorite parts of the book--
I interviewed Professor Robert Cialdini, who is an eminent
psychologist from Arizona State University.
And one of the things that we know about human nature, about
how to express your brand, how to let people know that you're
expert in a certain area is that if you just try to tell
people, if you say, well, I really know a lot about this,
and let me explain why.
People are going to tune you out immediately, right?
They'll think you're a braggart.
They'll think you're a jerk.
It's not going anywhere.
That doesn't work.
But Robert Cialdini shared a strategy with me which is, as
you could say, maybe a work around for it.
That is the email strategy.
It turns out that through a quirk of human nature, we can
get away with writing things that we can't necessarily get
away with saying.
And so if you're going to be meeting someone for the first
time, in advance of that meeting, you can send them an
email and say, Joe, I'm really looking forward to meeting you
next Thursday.
In advance of our meeting, to make it as productive and as
efficient as possible, I wanted to tell you a little
bit about my experience with regards to XYZ that we're
going to cover in the meeting.
And then at that point, you can share your experience.
Share your results.
Share what you've learned.
And it is all in the context of making a better meeting.
When you walk into that room you do not have to say a word,
because your expertise has already been established.
You don't have to prove yourself because
they already know.
And it means that you're far more likely to have a good
experience and to have your opinions
respected from moment one.
So that was one of the things that I really
liked about that tip.
Along similar lines--
we all know it's awesome whenever you can have a Top
Gun slide--
you can't just say how great you are, does not work.
But similarly, the research of Professor Cialdini and Jeffrey
Pfeffer, just down the road at Stanford Graduate School of
Business, they've done research into the wingman
phenomenon.
And basically what this means is that if I tell you about
how great I am and how wonderful, you're going to
think I'm a jerk.
But if Girija tells you how great and wonderful I am,
you're going to think I'm fantastic.
So certainly this means that if we all want to hire a
publicist, why not?
That's a great thing to do.
But most of us probably can't hire a publicist.
So the alternative, the way around this, is that we can
have a wing man.
If you have a trusted friend or colleague, someone that you
like, that you respect, that you would not hesitate to
promote, make a deal with them.
Make a pact.
And say, if I talk you up, will you talk me up?
At the next reception, at the next cocktail party, at the
next conference, at the next meeting, you don't have to
worry about promoting yourself.
This is great for those of you who are shy, who worry about
looking a little too self-promotional, just set
that aside.
You don't have to promote yourself.
Because it's in someone else's hands.
You're job is to promote your friend and to let the world
know how great your friend is.
Oh, that's so interesting that you mentioned China.
My friend just got back from China and she wrote a
fascinating white paper about the latest economic trends.
I should introduce you guys.
Here you go.
Look for opportunities.
Look for ways to bring them into the conversation, for
ways to help them shine.
If you can do that, you are being a good friend and
they're doing the same thing for you.
Between the two of you, you can make sure that your
virtues are known.
Now I would be remiss here at Google if I did not mention
social media, if I did not talk about the ways that our
digital footprint is shaping our personal brands.
This is a blog post I wrote for HBR last year called, "If
You're Serious About Ideas, Get Serious About Blogging."
And the reason that I say this, you, creators of
Blogger, is that ultimately blogging
is not so sexy anymore.
It's like this old thing.
It's like 10 years old, 15, years old, oh, who blogs.
But that is also part of your competitive advantage.
Everybody's thinking about the newest, latest, flashiest
thing, the six seconds videos or whatever you got.
I think that something that is in short supply in the world
of knowledge workers, of people who are known for their
ideas, is people who are able and willing to contribute to
the discourse.
For all of us, we're in roles where it's often very hard for
other people to really know if we're good at our jobs.
I mean, if you're a graphic
designer, you have a portfolio.
Sure, if you're a software engineer you probably have
your lines of code people can look at.
That's great.
For many of us, I do marketing--
how do you know if I'm any good?
Well, one of the ways that you could put a stake in the
ground is to be that person who shares ideas, who writes,
who is contributing to moving the discourse forward.
Because fundamentally there's two kinds of
people in the world.
There's the people who put the ideas out and then there's the
masses who talk about those ideas and share them.
And so if you are willing to step up and do it, it can be
incredibly powerful.
I mean, you see statistics and some people say, well,
blogging's dying because teenagers
aren't doing it anymore.
So the trend line, it'll be going down.
The reason teenagers don't blog is that blogging's hard.
It is a lot easier to send a tweet, to take a picture.
It's hard, over time, to make a commitment to putting your
ideas out there, for that is one of the most powerful
things that you can do to establish your expertise.
And even, if you are not a writer, even if you don't
consider yourself a strong writer, I will point to this
gentleman as our example.
This is Gary Vaynerchuk, who you all may know, YouTube star
and beyond of Wine Library TV.
Gary Vaynerchuk is not a writer.
By his own admission, he is just not good at it.
But he is someone who has a ton of ideas.
And we all have the technology-- you know it
better than I do--
to make videos.
YouTube is one of the most powerful platforms
that we've ever had.
People can share themselves, can share their ideas, and
upload them instantly from their phones.
And I think it is only going to
continue to grow and thrive.
And so whether it's on text, whether it's on video, getting
your ideas out there, in a lot of ways, it's our obligation
to ourselves, to the world, to share the
perspective that we have--
the perspective that only we have.
We talk about reinventing our personal brands, what that
really means to me.
Why more and more people are doing that now is, we all know
this is not a world anymore where you have the job that
you settle into and you do for 30 years.
Even if you work at Google for 30 years, you could have 20
different jobs doing incredibly different things,
and that is a virtue that is encouraged in this workplace.
Here, and more and more in the world around us, because it's
through those connections through, seeing different
things and learning different things, that we're really able
to do the kind of creative deep thinking that is
necessary to keep the ball moving forward and innovate.
And so that's why it's something so important to be
able both to reinvent ourselves and also to convey
that to others so that they grasp and understand all that
we're able to do.
So I would love to get your ideas and thoughts and
questions and I'm really delighted to have the
opportunity to be here and talk with you a little bit
about "Reinventing You." So thanks.
Are there folks you who have thoughts or their own
reinvention stories that they'd like to share?
The question is about specialization versus being a
generalist, it's also about mentors.
What do you do if there are kind of aren't mentors,
because you're in a field that's so new?
So two thoughts about that--
number one, it is always easier to advance more quickly
if you're a specialist.
In that same conversation with Robert Scoble, his advice
about how people can become a thought leader--
he said, find a niche, find an unexploited niche that is of
interest, that's got the wave behind it, and own it.
And then his example was wearable sensor technology.
Like we all know that's growing, we all know that's
going someplace.
There is not yet someone who is recognized as the
definitive expert on wearable sensor technology.
If you can be that person then you will be
turned to for that.
And then all of a sudden because of a phenomenon known
as the halo effect, people--
if you're an expert in one thing, people will sort of
think you're universally brilliant, and will start
asking you, what stocks should I buy?
And when will the volcanoes explode?
I mean, they'll ask you all kind of crazy things.
So that's one thought.
However, some of us are not wired to be specialists.
And that's the other point.
It is perhaps a harder road, it's a little more circuitous,
I say from example, to be a generalist.
But some people are called to that.
I am not a specialist, because I would get bored being a
specialist.
And so that means that I've done a lot of different things
and it's sort of a more winding path.
I would like to think that in the end, you can get to the
same or perhaps an even richer place as a result, because
you've had these different experiences that you can cross
hatch and bring to bear.
And so one is quicker but the other one
may have other benefits.
On the mentor front, I agree with you entirely.
There's a professor at Harvard Business School named Tom
DeLong who I interviewed last year for my Forbes blog, and
wrote about this.
He believes that there's kind of a, you could call it a
mentorship crisis, in some ways.
Because, he gives an example--
when he goes into a room and he asks people, so, how many
of you have had really great mentors, really great people
that have looked out for you, that teach you things?
And he says that almost everybody over the age of 40
raises their hand and almost everybody under the age of 40
keeps it down.
And he says, and I agree with him, that part of it is
because of increased performance pressures.
In the past 20 years, because of the economy, first it's
booming, then it's busting, now it's in who knows what--
particularly in professional service firms, people are
called upon to be rainmakers.
Everything they do has to be about the bottom line.
And so a lot of the things that are squishier but often
have profound long term value, like cultivating the next
generation of talent, gets overlooked.
And so as a result, we're losing a lot of mentors.
And in some cases, in your field, there's not even people
to begin with.
But the theory that I have about this is that we have to
re-conceptualize mentorship.
I actually wrote a free e-book about it, as a matter of fact,
if you ever want to Google "Mentorship 2.0," Dorie Clark,
you can get it.
It's one of the "Change This" manifestos, which is this cool
thing that Seth Godin started.
But I think that what we really need to do more and
more is to stop looking for this one perfect holy grail
person that'll teach us everything, and instead think
of it more as a mentor board of directors.
Who are the people--
who could be peers, they could be people above you, they
could even be your interns or your subordinates--
who are the people who have slices of things that you
like, that you respect, that you want to learn from?
And how do you go a la Catie with a mentorship?
And hopefully we can learn more in that way.
And so for anyone who couldn't hear, the comment was you
can't afford to outsource your brand.
Because if you assume that other people are evangelizing
on your behalf it's probably not happening and an erroneous
brand might take root.
I think that's really true.
I mean, politics is a good training ground in the sense
that literally, you have people who are trying to throw
arrows at you every day.
They're trying explicitly to define you in a way that you
do not want to be defined.
And so you have to be very vigilant to guard against it.
I mean, fortunately, I hope that for most of you you don't
have people throwing arrows at you on a regular basis.
But nonetheless, even without that people just, they get
impressions in their head.
Where do they get it?
Oh, they saw a Google+ post from two months ago and oh,
yeah, Girija, that girl that likes ice cream,
or whatever it is.
And that's not necessarily the thing that you want.
And so I am really glad that you sparked this piece,
because for a lot of people, they think their work will
speak for itself.
And that's just not sufficient anymore.
If you do that, you might luck out.
You might.
There's some people that succeed that way.
For most of us, it doesn't happen.
And if you don't want to roll the dice with your future then
it's important to least take a little time to be cognizant of
what's out there and how you can begin to kind of stack the
deck in your favor.
You can never perfectly control what other people
think of you.
We're not omnipotent.
We don't have the ability to plant ideas in people's heads.
But we can make it far more likely that people will view
us in a certain way.
And so I think that's a really great point.
Other thoughts or questions that people wanted to raise?
Yes.
The gentleman was just quoting Scott Adams, the Dilbert
creator, talking about specialization.
And the fact that if you kind of combine a couple of
different areas, being a comedian, doing writing, piece
them together-- it's a smaller universe that you're competing
in, which I think is exactly right.
Ultimately, when you're specializing, and when you're
thinking if you want to specialize,
you have to be strategic.
Because it can't be too big.
That's, as a starting point, you have to be smart about it.
It's kind of like in college, you have to write a 20 page
final paper.
And it's, oh, I'm going to write my 20 page final paper
about the history of Rome.
Oh, OK, great, you can really cover the history
of Rome in 20 pages.
It's not going to work.
And so your professor always stops you and says, no, no,
no, maybe you can write a 20 page paper about the history
of upper class women's fashion in ancient Rome in 20 pages
but you cannot write about the history of Rome in 20 pages.
If you set out and you try to be the expert in sports, you
are going to get pummeled.
You won't ever break through and get noticed, because
there's just too much competition.
But if you want to be the world expert in some variety
of rugby, or something like that, then the
path gets a lot easier.
So choosing well is key, so thank you.
Did you have a thought about that as well?
Yes, so it's a great question, thank you.
It's about staying motivated as you reinvent yourself.
How do you kind of keep going with these uncharted waters?
I think that one of the most powerful tactics, in a lot of
ways, is the public promise.
Part of why I like blogs, too, is--
certainly we all know of blogs that have been abandoned and
whatever, but if you're serious about it, a blog
demands to be updated.
And it's something that has sort of a built
in demand on it.
And so if you put out there, I'm going to start this, I'm
doing it, then there's sort of an internal compulsion to keep
it going and keep it successful.
There's a website that I talk about in "Reinventing You"
called stikk.com, which some of you guys
may be familiar with.
It's S-T-I-K-K dot com, and you make a
public vow of some kind.
So this is like the thing you do only when you are very,
very serious.
And so you say, OK, I am going to lose 50 pounds.
And you put some crazy bet.
If I do not lose 50 pounds in six months, I will give
$20,000 to my friend, or I would give, even better--
this is sort of their innovation--
if you are a Democrat, they will say I will give $20,000
to the George W. Bush library.
And so you are making a public commitment and you are highly
financially motivated to succeed in your goal.
So sometimes just going nuclear, laying down the
gauntlet, and putting it out there.
But I think that your friends, your colleagues, they have to
be in your corner.
It's just part of why I talk, in "Reinventing You," about
the importance of kind of getting your team on your side
and finding a narrative, a way to explain it to other people.
Because if you have the people around you who are sort of
skeptics, or they're sort of nagging at you, or tearing it
down a little bit, it's very hard.
But if you have the team in your corner, you can really do
amazing things.
There's a book called "Influencer," which I would
recommend highly.
It's by the same people, it's five authors, Joseph Grenny,
and I don't remember any of the others.
There are far too many, but the people who did the book
"Crucial Conversations," and "Influencer," and then they
have a sequel called "Change This." And they're both really
cool books about the ways that you can effect change in your
own personal life, or at a more macro level.
So great strategies in there, and if you're interested in
it, that's one way of pursuing it.
Yeah, it's interesting.
For Dean, one of the things that really--
there's sort of an external factor that kind of came in
early on, which is that he was originally--
his record is that of a moderate, centrist governor.
That is not how he was perceived by the vast majority
of the American public for one large reason, which is that at
the time that he was running, the Iraq war had started.
And he was one of the earliest and most vocal
opponents of it.
And so consequently he got branded as this crusading
liberal firebrand.
And I think a lot of people assumed that there were other
pieces, sort of left wing pieces that went along with
that, when in actuality that wasn't really the case.
So I think that one of the challenges--
and at the time, obviously there was so much momentum
behind the anti-war thing, that it was more of a net
positive, at least in the primary.
Although you're right, ultimately because of again,
other interesting outside factors like the 527s, which
was the Political Action Committee that was allowed
time and is no longer, under campaign finance laws, people
were able to give really large amounts of money to target
him, particularly in Iowa.
Anyway, all that being said, how is an individual brand
different from a candidates' brand?
I think that when you are working on a political
campaign, you need to be really mindful
of a few other things.
The first thing that you need to be mindful of is, who are
your competitors that are out there?
How do you differentiate yourself?
You might have a great record as a school teacher, or
something like that.
That's great, but if you're running against another school
teacher, then whatever advantage you have on
education might be neutralized.
You've got to come up with something different.
You also need to be taking a careful look at macro trends.
So the Iraq War would be a big example, what's going on in
the economy, that sort of thing.
When you are an individual branding yourself, those
things are important.
I mean, obviously you need to be mindful--
well, what other types of candidates are
applying for this job?
Or what is going on in the world that would make me
marketable and saleable in the broader marketplace?
But I think it's a difference of degree.
You keep those things in mind.
But as an individual when you think about your individual
brand, what matters most, what matters fundamentally, is
what's coming from you.
It's not these sort of external factors and
positioning yourself.
It's what is true to me and what is that sort of
uniqueness that I can convey?
And so I think that they are similar phenomenons.
The way that they're done is different, because so many
politicians really do you start with polls and work
backwards from there.
But when done right, it's mostly that politicians and
individuals should be looking at similar things.
But individuals should worry far less about
the external world.
I think that for most of us we can solve many of our problems
just by really getting clear on internally who we are what
we bring to the table.
I hope that might answer your question.
Thanks.
So Googlers, it's fantastic to be here.
My book is available.
I'm happy to sign it if you'd like.
If you'd like to stay in touch, I'm on Twitter
@dorieclark.
We can Google+ Circle each other and you can feel free to
friend me on LinkedIn.
I'm delighted to be here.
Thank you.