Brand Me™
from
November/December 2007
by Don Morrison
Enough about me. Let’s talk about what you think of me. Better yet, let’s talk about how I can turn myself into somebody you can’t avoid thinking about: a must-have director, the go-to guy (or gal) of governance, the alpha and the omega, the Sarbanes and the Oxley, the man in demand with a plan. Gimme ink, gimme airtime, gimme face space on YouTube. I’m tired of directorial anonymity. I want to be a star.
Now, I’m no attention-crazed egomaniac. Just going with the flow, staying abreast of the times. The era of the faceless, stalwart career drudge is over, as Tom Peters and a mob of motivators have been saying for a decade now. In today’s global, nimble, and bracingly insecure corporate world, the race goes to those who can burnish their skills, raise their profiles, and turn themselves into a brand. Forget loyalty. It’s all about me—Brand Me.
CEOs have learned this lesson well. Jack Welch, Sandy Weill, and Lou Gerstner became icons not just because they ran their companies with skill but also by virtue of their speeches, interviews, talk-show appearances, well-groomed charisma, and turbocharged public-relations staffs, who got the boss exposure.
So why shouldn’t you, as a director, make the same grab for glory? Your life has grown more insecure, your responsibilities more onerous, your longevity more short. Ask all those loyal directors who have been shoved aside as boards trying to self-improve got smaller, more diverse, and less entrenched. All you have is your reputation, and that doesn’t pay the rent.
How do you turn your board-worthiness into a brand? The first step is to think deeply about your values and then incorporate them into a mission statement.
The second step is to set this document aside and never look at it again; introspection has no place in the career path of a would-be celebrity. The third step is to plan a relentless program of profile-raising. Some time-tested techniques:
• Get busted for substance abuse, announce that you’re entering rehab, emerge two weeks later on the Oprah, Letterman, or Leno show, apologize, weep, and talk about how God has changed your life.
• Just kidding about that one. But you should court media attention—perhaps by mastering a narrow management or governance subject, writing op-ed pieces about it, making speeches, offering yourself for interviews, and otherwise becoming known as an expert.
• Start a personal blog that carries your thoughts on the issues of the day. The Web is so efficiently self-selective that you’ll be addressing people who share your interests and maybe know somebody who knows somebody who’s looking for a director.
• Keep networking. You’ve done it for years within the industry, but now’s the time to branch out. Join more nonprofit boards, teach a course at a local college, or volunteer as a panelist at a conference outside your field. Hand out a suitably impressive business card promiscuously.
Of course, none of this will work if you lack the burning, shameless urge to become famous. That’s essential for any celeb wannabe. While this quality is not what most companies are currently looking for in a director, that might change—and it could just be that the
Wall Street Journal
, now part of News Corp., will lead the charge toward covering board members as the stars they really can become. In most of his other publications, after all, News Corp.’s chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch, has demonstrated a vast preference for sizzle over steak.
