We’ve lost the knack for trusting ourselves.
I’m not sure how this happened. And I don’t know when. But it’s gone.
As a reminder of that sad truth, I came across this column the other day. It indicates two things: First, how and why self-help books were an $11-billion industry as of 2008. Second, the fact that abbreviations and acronyms have become panaceas – surrogates for self-faith, hard work, and staying the course. Bill Barnett didn’t make this stuff up. He’s just observing and reporting. He reports this:
Your personal value proposition (PVP) is at the heart of your career strategy. It's the foundation for everything in a job search and career progression — targeting potential employers, attracting the help of others, and explaining why you're the one to pick. It's why to hire you, not someone else.
At its core, that paragraph manifests nothing more or less than common sense and self-faith. Translation: Your PVP (I love that kind of talk) is you. As it represents you to others, it’s your brand. Period. Beyond its core, it suggests there may be a kind of formulary magic to branding. Consider:
Your PVP can be accompanied by a personal value statement (PVS), perhaps the profile statement on your résumé. The combination of your proposition and your statement can be abetted by a personal value commitment (PVC), presumably an indication of your determination to fulfill the promise of your PVP and your PVS. If so, you and those you persuade via your proposition, your statement, and your commitment can expect a pretty valuable outcome (PVO). Hence, our magic formula for success becomes:
[PVP + PVS] x PVC = PVO.
The only thing scarier than the very idea is that – if we put this formula in a book today – it would be a bestseller tomorrow. Good grief.
In lieu of such formulaic pie in the sky, consider this alternative. It comprises four simple questions, all of them answerable by anyone or any organization properly focused and, so, on the way to being optimally positioned:
A. Who are you?
B. What do you do?
C. How do you do it?
D. Why do A + B + C make you different from everyone else?
The exercise of answering those questions is best undertaken in full awareness of branding’s Three Dirty Little Secrets. Here they are:
- It’s simple but not easy. In fact, if you do it right, it’s the hardest work you’ll ever do. It’s easier to settle for common than it is to find the truth and state it clearly.
- It’s not magic. In fact, the results of the exercise – if it’s conducted truthfully – will be decidedly devoid of illusion.
- If it were easy, everyone would do it. That’s why the world comprises those who win and those who don’t.
How can you know who’s succeeded at branding and who hasn’t? That’s equally simple: The next time you wonder whether some person or company has undertaken the exercise truthfully, ask for his elevator pitch. If he answers quickly and concisely – in one to three clear, jargon-free sentences – you’ll understand the pitch and know he’s done his homework. If he asks how many floors the elevator has to travel, wish him well and move on.
Oh. And in case you were wondering if any of this is new, let alone magical, it’s not. The last word belongs to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his 1841 essay, “Self-Reliance”.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within … Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. [We should learn] to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility … Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another … Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.