There is still plenty to be said about the power of identity -- the process of designing, building, and delivering yourself. In this TED Talk, Bryan Stevenson shows us the power of sincerity.
The very idea that people have just only one identity is an attempt at oversimplifying life and negates the reality of business and the opportunities with social.
People and organizations have two things in common: they both spend a lot of time analyzing the past and forecasting (or hoping for) the future.
Corporate connections
In corporate design work, we use conversation to map the brand to understand the buy side and sell side as well as the business model.
Brand strategy is where you do research to substantiate a set of choices distilling customer insights and informing product development. Then you build programs to support the business promise, identify when things need to get done, and keep an eye on the delta or gap between what you promised and what you delivered.
Connections are formed in the present moment
Conversation should be used to uncover those opportunities that allow you to design, build, and deliver yourself. This is important particularly given that we make decisions based upon how we think about ourselves -- our identity.
In a decision-making situation we ask three questions:
- who am I?
- what kind of situation is this?
- what would someone like me do in this situation?
Decisions are here and now. When we look back, we will see the result or outcomes of all those decisions -- in aggregate at best, just the good ones or just the bad ones, depending on how they made us feel. The future starts now.
Purchasing decisions and business relationships originate and flow from who we are as well. Identity is made up of several things. Among them are:
- heritage -- where we were born, where we live, our age, educational background, etc.
- environment -- external factors such as the economy
- needs -- they include both what we truly need and what we think we need and actually just want
- interactions -- we also define ourselves in relationship with others
When we talk about instilling and living core values, both at organizational and personal level, we're talking about speaking clearly and acting appropriately. And you can do that when you know yourself.
You know yourself after doing the hard thinking and getting clarity around what different things mean and how they relate.
Our ability to grow depends upon our ability to shift from a fixed mindset -- we are who we are and our wins are attached to that identity -- to a growth mindset -- tweaking the levers above to design, build, and deliver ourselves.
The fixed and growth mindset concepts come from the work of psychologist Carol Dweck in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (aff link).
[video: hat tip Diego Rodriguez]
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Presenting the Conversation Agent WORKSHOP, a day of brand execution work.
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