We have covered two of the major steps towards greater self-knowledge and its application to real-world success in business.

First, you want to know the internal thought, emotion, and behavior that defines and drives your organization or community.

Second, you want to contribute your most successful and original traits to become more relevant to others.

Third, you want to align your character and relevance with future events and trends.

This third step will connect your community or organization to the future. Naturally, you want to catch the wave of what is coming down the pike in the world economy and create your place in it.

To get there, we’ll need to do some market study. What major trends do we see occurring that are already shaping the future? We want to look at technology advancements, ethnic and cultural influences, work process transformation, corporate mentality and pressures, and shifts in government.

To get more specific you might find data on:

• Changing internet and social media patterns
• Increasing virtual companies, work groups and networks
• The role of alternative energy and local foods
• Movements in food and water security
• Trends on the future size and role of government

Next, you’ll want to observe and predict the future based on patterns you see now.  Take a stake, based on all your research, at where the world is going.

It’s not news that we’ve shifted from an industrial, mass production consumer culture to a knowledge based world economy. The question is, as a result what changes will occur in the future and how will we flow with these changes?

Personally for my industry, branding and marketing communications, I think the face of marketing business in a world economy has changed significantly and I think, in general, my industry is lagging behind. This provides an opening, an opportunity for my company to contribute in a new way. The point is, you want to find openings and fill them.

Here’s one of my predictions: I think the age of high pressure selling is fading. Instead of branding’s customer centric perspective that is based on selling material commodities to consumers, we are seeing a new era evolve that is more focused on relationships and substance.

Edie Raether, an authority on the neuroscience of success and breakthrough thinking, has some wise words in her article, “Chasing Customers is Like Herding Cats; Why Attraction is the Heart of Customer Service:”

Chasing customers is like herding cats. Customer care is not about competition, but cooperation and collaboration. The rules in sports are not universal laws. Know your game, the league you’re in, what balls you’re hitting and where you want them to fall. Be a risk-taker, not a risk-wisher who merely goes with the flow. A risk-taker creates the flow. Know who you are, what you want, and whom you want to attract as customers to best fit your niche. Believe in yourself and your customers will trust and believe in you.

It is my belief that commodities, customers and competition are being replaced with purpose, relationships, and contribution. It’s about finding your passion and mastery skills instead of pushing commodities. It’s about building authentic relationship, not winning customers. It’s about contributing instead of competing.

The outcome of this third phase will be strategic action based on aligning your character and relevance with where the world is going. Truthfully, it will take thought and observation after you’ve done the digging to figure out what action to take. To hear the answers, listen patiently.

In previous posts, I outlined two major steps on the path to greater organizational and community self-knowledge. First, we develop a character profile to articulate the collective thought, emotion and behavior that both drives and defines your organization or community. This is an accounting of your originality and success. These assets are what make you feel good about yourself and attractive to others.

After we’ve defined your character, we apply these assets to increase your contextual relevance. We use the goods on the inside to contribute and integrate with the outside world. Here are examples of goods that can be packaged and applied:

• Personality traits
• Vocation Archetype
• Mastery skill sets
• Ownership niches and positions
• Innovative models/process
• Relevant product advantages

Part of arriving at contextual relevance, a place where we increase the odds of becoming more relevant to our customers and other key constituents, is by developing greater mastery. All the features listed above express mastery, which leads to your advantage.

In my last post, I said your contextual relevancy can be based on inherited or learned assets. A learned asset is one that has been mastered through development of skill or knowledge. You master what you repeatedly choose to focus on. So one of the ways to gain mastery is by learning it, if you have not inherited it. This is what we want to touch on in this post.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. He coins the term “10,000-Hour Rule” in the book, claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

While branding is built on competition and taking market share, in contrast, creator mastery attracts more business in the areas where the organization or community excels. You can and will “own” what you’ve mastered.

Gabrielle Hamilton, renowned chef and owner of Prune in New York City, speaks of success through mastery in her trade in her recent book Blood, Bones & Butter: “Get in the kitchen; cook well; and the rest will take care of itself;” “Put your head down and do your job and let the recognition end of things sort itself out.” (Source: Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones & Butter, page 206 and 204)

Now, I recommend arriving at mastery and advantage by following passion, the flow of energy, to gain consummate skills, ownership positions and leadership roles. You will master what you love and practice.

Do this simple exercise for the next week. Watch what you repeatedly find yourself wanting to do. Pay attention to where your joy wells up. Discover what you really love to do. Then follow that energy vein. Conversely if you have low energy, watch your thoughts and what you are doing. Then, shift to something you love to do. Drop the work that is causing resistance and energy depletion and pick up something that energizes you.

Collective groups, organizations and communities, can harness what they love and become much more productive and satisfied. And they surely will attract business in the areas they master. Customers and audiences will recognize your relevance, expressed as mastery of a unique niche or role, as evidenced by what you know, do and love over and over again.

In a sense, you can forget competition and focus on mastery. It will be hard for others to touch you in your mastery area and they will excel in other complementary areas.

Doing what you know and love moment by moment is the way to “compete.”

We have been focusing on how communities and organizations can look inward to discover the internal forces that define and drive them. You first look inside to find what is original, authentic, and innovative.

As a result, you’ll create a more invigorating culture, increase confidence, and stimulate innovation and creativity.

This week I invite you to look outward to see how your community or organization fits into the bigger picture. During this second step, we will consider what you’ve “got” on the inside that is relevant and of value to others on the outside.

You will identify how your community or organization uniquely contributes to external entities. I refer to this “other” reference perspective as contextual relevance. We explore these areas:

• Competitive comparison and analysis
• Current market environment and conditions
• Organizational relevance and positioning
• Service/product relevance and positions
• External audience demographics, psychographics and prioritization
• Market segments and prioritization

This is much more like conventional marketing and branding, except we are building on a strongly articulated self-reference platform that includes more originality assets. This gives us more opportunities to identify contexts where you are relevant to others.

Here’s an example:

Krikawa Jewelry Designs, an award-winning jewelry design and production studio, asked WestWordVision to develop a national advertising and public relations campaign that would position the company as the premier international custom jeweler. After creating a character profile of the company’s unique personality, culture, products and processes, we began evaluating the company in light of its market relevance.

Our discovery process substantiated two things we already knew regarding product and market niche: Krikawa Jewelry Designs had created a portfolio of beautiful, unique products and Krikawa had carved out a niche in the wedding and engagement market.

What we discovered that was new and useful was that Krikawa had built a direct line from commissioned fine art to sophisticated art connoisseurs around the world by marrying high-tech advancements with high-touch service. This enterprising approach had become the cornerstone of the company’s huge growth and success. We compared the company to other fine art custom jewelers around the world and found no other with a successful international business model like Krikawa’s.

We leveraged this innovation in a press kit that tells the remarkable story of how owner Lisa Kriakwa had designed an art form into a beautiful business. In addition, we embedded the company’s newly articulated collaborative and inventive personality in an advertising campaign that invites readers to co-create the art of their imagination with Krikawa.

Your contextual relevancy can be based on an inherited or earned asset, like nature vs. nurture. Krikawa had earned its innovative business model as an adaptive strategy when the traditional route didn’t work. An earned asset is one that has been mastered through development of skill or knowledge. You master what you repeatedly choose to focus on. We’ll dedicate a blog post to this topic next.

Here’s an example of an inherited asset:

As with many small, rural communities near urban centers, the Town of Marana saw itself as potentially squeezed or overshadowed by neighboring Tucson. WestWordVision realized that Marana had a superior geographic “porch position” between Phoenix and Tucson on a busy, historic trade corridor.  As a result, we recommended that the town actively take advantage of this inherited position in two ways. First, Marana can observe what’s going on with other satellite communities near Arizona’s two commercial markets, then act by embracing what works and discarding what doesn’t. Second, Marana can create the best of both worlds by drawing on amenities from the nearby urban centers and maintaining a Western, rural lifestyle through careful open space planning.

And of course, we all know how Tombstone leveraged an inherited historic event, the gunfight at O.K. Corral, to build a successful tourist destination.

Contextual relevance, the second step in the process, is when comparison with others using your character profile begins. We define how what you’ve both inherited and earned can contribute to ownership position in the marketplace!

As a result communities and organizations will:

• Establish a distinctive platform for marketing and branding
• Capitalize on niche mastery to gain distinct market advantage
• Showcase originality to attract new customers and audiences

Our first step, character profile, discovers and excavates the goods on the inside. Our second step, contextual relevance, contributes the goods to the outside. And with more originality assets on the inside we increase the odds of being relevant to others.

Ah! There is so much more to be discovered inside that can then be used to succeed.

Previously I invited you to indulge in some self-centeredness to discover what’s truly original about your community or organization. As a result of this inward look, you will gain greater self-awareness and create a business inventory of unique assets….both of which can be used to differentiate your organization and its product, and attract your audiences.

What I call self-centeredness is simply a way to move the focus of organizations and communities to the inside. So what on the inside is of value?

Character.

Character begins and grows from the inside. You will not arrive at community character or corporate character by focusing outwardly on customers or competition.

Character is a word I use to describe what is your very own. It includes originality, authenticity, creativity, ingenuity and innovation.

A character profile, or self-reference platform, will identify what internal forces drive and define your organization or community today. Here are some of the areas to explore:

• Genesis, heritage, evolutionary milestones
• Passions, motivations, avocation
• Vision, mission, aspiration, purpose
• Personality, character, voice, image
• Beliefs, values, principles, philosophies
• Culture, organization, roles, relationships
• Mindsets, motives, perspectives, viewpoints
• Inventions, innovations, discoveries

This is not a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. The purpose of the SWOT analysis is to provide information on strengths and weaknesses in relation to the opportunities and threats being faced.

If you are talking about threats and opportunities, you’re too far down the road. If you are comparing yourself to others, you’ve left something valuable behind.

Your character and it’s of extreme value.

The competitive strategy beneath character profiling is differentiation advantage.

Michael E. Porter, the father of the modern strategy field, is a leading authority on competitive strategy, the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions. Porter identified two basic types of competitive advantage:

• Cost advantage: when a firm or community is able to deliver the same benefits as competitors but at a lower cost
• Differentiation advantage: when a firm or community is able to deliver benefits that exceed those of competing products

With a character profile, we are securing goods for differentiation advantage. If cost alone is your strategy, defining your character will not be of much use. In the global innovation economy, cost advantage is less important for U.S. businesses. Other countries will do much better on that front.

For differentiation advantage, character matters for two major reasons, especially in the innovation economy and with the growing class of Cultural Creatives:

• To communicate originality and competitive niche mastery
• To attract and enroll audiences who love authenticity

You must define and use your character because your audience is attracted to it and your competitive advantage is defined by it.

With a character profile, we are also securing the goods for a new kind of corporate capital: “imagination capital.”

Rowan Gibson, a global business strategist and author of Rethinking the Future, provides an accurate history in his article “Building a company’s innovation capital” on his site www.innovationtools.com. The highlights of his entry describe several centuries in which companies possessed only two kinds of capital: financial and structural. In the 1980s and 1990s, that began to change and British futurologist Hugh Macdonald coined the phrase “intellectual capital” to describe the intangible assets of companies reflected in their stock market value as opposed to their book value.

In 2001, strategy guru Gary Hamel argued that financial, structural and intellectual capital by themselves do not create new wealth. He offered three new kinds of organizational capital for today’s competitive era: “imagination capital,” “entrepreneurial capital,” and “relationship capital,” all of which are different forms of human capital.

And Gibson concludes that: Knowledge has become a commodity. Let’s face it, you can go online and find out almost anything with just one or two clicks. So the issue is not how much you know but how creatively you can leverage what you know. Today, the advantage increasingly goes to those firms that develop “imagination capital” – which is the capacity to dramatically re-conceive what the firm is and imagine entirely new uses for its financial, structural and intellectual capital. Einstein’s oft-quoted reflection that “imagination is more important than knowledge” becomes the mantra of the innovation economy.

If being original is linked to your success, then harvesting and harnessing your originality is the first step to your success.

Last week, I invited you to flip it, and see the market from the inside out. I asked you to forget about your products and services, as well as your customers and competition, just for a while.

Now I’d like to focus on the people who create products and services. Then we can discover what’s truly unique about their community or organization.

This week I invite you to indulge in a bit of self-centeredness. You will gain greater self-awareness and create a business inventory of original and unique assets. These untapped assets can be used to stand out in the marketplace, navigate change quickly from within and achieve business goals and higher purpose.

Our ultimate goal with this inward look is to create a strongly articulated self-reference platform. The outcome of this platform will include:

• Clarity of vision and purpose
• Individual and unique personality traits
• Passion for the business and work
• Commitment to beliefs and values through communications and action
• Awareness of self and others
• Honest and respectful relationships
• Innovative approaches and processes
• Original products and services

So what kind of self-indulgence are we talking about?

Start by describing the circumstances under which your community or business was formed. What was going on in the world at the time? What were the founders thinking or trying to achieve through their action? What were their personal and commercial motivations during that time?

Why does this matter? Because knowing your genesis can provide valuable information about your predominant character traits and purpose, and reveal what kind of role you can play to attain greater results going forward. This is valuable strategic information.

Here’s an example:

To commemorate its 50^th anniversary, Arizona-Mexico Commission (AMC) asked WestWordVision to create a new suite of communications tools to increase awareness of its vital mission. Through in-depth personal interviews and archival exploration, we discovered a link between AMC’s formation during the 1959 cold-war climate of fear and its contemporary role as a cross-border collaborator. As AMC began, so it remains today, a collaborative visionary in the service of regional prosperity regardless of prevailing social and political rhetoric.

Sure enough, after Arizona’s passage of Senate Bill 1070 enacting anti-illegal immigration measures, AMC was back in its original position, going against the grain of popular opinion.

What to do? As in the beginning, hold to the universal truth that launched you: cross-border collaboration does indeed lead to mutual prosperity.

It is very likely that the conditions under which an organization was born will contribute to its character and inform the best course of action for the future.

Here’s another example:

Try to hone in on what your community or organization’s professional archetype is. Are you a mayor, engineer, accountant, doctor, professor, or musician? Once you identify the vocation, get more specific and use adjectives to describe more precisely what kind of professional you are.

While doing a permanent exhibit for Waste Management, we wanted to understand what kind of professional the organization most closely resembles to shed light on its product. We realized that Waste Management was not only a supply chain manager interested in the logistics of moving and managing our waste. After thoughtful consideration WestWordVision realized that the organization was an enterprising, efficient, high-tech engineer or production executive. Identifying its corporate vocation explained why it is creating the “seed” for a new commodity from the things we would otherwise throw into the landfill. As a result, we were able to communicate the value of their product in a powerful way through their Arizona Community Ecocenter exhibit.

There are many other internal assets to be discovered and leveraged for future business success. The objective is to create a deep and powerful inventory of original and unique assets that can be drawn upon for marketing, operational and financial strategies.

The first step to flipping your perspective includes dedicating some time and energy to organizational or community self-exploration. The rewards are priceless.

In last week’s post, I made a claim that the branding approach does not sufficiently market non-commodities such as people and places. One reason is that branding at its very foundation is customer-focused in its messaging approach. It is primarily focused on how outsiders see the brand.

In contrast, people and places possess unique personality and a “sense of self” created through internal vision, purpose, innovation and leadership that are then reflected outwards to external audiences, including customers.

According to renowned brand strategy company Stealing Share, their process looks at the market from the outside in:

Your customers’ perceptions form the bedrock and foundation of our brand work. We value the outside-in perspective for branding because it defines the complete category of choices from the perspective of the target market. It sees the category from the most important point of view – the customer. (Stealing Share website: http://www.stealingshare.com/what_we_do/process.htm)

While this “other” or objective perspective is critical, you first want to develop a strongly articulated self-reference platform for your marketing message platform. Why?

Because when organizations and communities base the content of their messages on their deeper more powerful self, not the customer, they create a stronger public persona. I have found that this “inside out” perspective builds organizational and community pride and increases performance in the marketplace.

Specifically, my company, WestWordVision, as well as our clients have successfully:

• Capitalized on our unique market advantages
• Boosted and stimulated our creativity and originality
• Increased our probability for achieving greater profits
• Identified new opportunities for potential products and services
• Made decisions based on rational and distinct advantage vs. impulse and fear
• Established a clear message platform for effective marketing, operational and financial strategies
• Communicated authentically to engage our key audiences

It’s been like digging for gold. We have discovered many valuable and untapped assets at the core of the organizations and communities we work with.

Today, I invite you to flip it, and see the market from the inside out.

Let’s start with you, the people who create products and services. Forget about your products and services. Forget about your customers and competition, just for a while. We’ll get back to them later after we’ve discovered what’s truly unique about your community or organization.

According to Thomas Friedman, in the flat world where everyone has the same technology and tools, it’s all about originality:

“There is no future in vanilla for most companies in a flat world. For most companies, the commercial future belongs to those who know how to make the richest chocolate sauce, the sweetest, lightest whipped cream, and the juiciest cherries to sit on top, or how to put them all together into a sundae.” (Source: Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat, page 105)

So here’s a simple suggestion. Next time you meet with your marketing firm or branding specialist, observe how many questions focus on consumer beliefs, target audience, competition, and the brand identity in the marketplace.

If you’re not spending time talking about your community or company vision and purpose, motivations and aspirations, reasons for success, lessons learned, innovative models and processes, beliefs and values, then you’re likely missing out on some pretty powerful content that has meaning to your customers.

This is especially true in tourism for communities that want to be distinctive, but share similar attributes to other communities in their region. The question becomes, what is the stuff that is you? Why are you different from another community?

I always say promoting a community’s weather, mountains, livelihoods in the West is like seeking individuality in San Francisco through tattoos, piercings, and leather. Everyone has that, so now what? It’s only communicating at a surface level.

So flip it! Go deeper into who your community or organization is and gain more self-awareness of yourself and others. It’s actually really fun and invigorating.

Today I am beginning a series of posts about branding. In this post, I will address how branding cannot sufficiently market non-commodities such as people and places.

In conversations with marketing colleagues, I’ve been told it’s all a matter of semantics, but I disagree.

I believe there is a fundamental difference in perspective and approach between branding a material commodity and communicating an authentic public persona for a human being, organization or community.

People and places possess unique personality and a “sense of self” that is not based on how many products or services it sells to customers. Powerfully performing entities are created through vision, purpose, innovation and leadership that are then reflected outwards to external audiences, including customers.

Branding is based on selling material commodities to consumers.  It evolved so companies could establish a memorable brand for their commodities that would win customers.

Branding is primarily focused on how outsiders see the brand. Brand strategists focus mostly on external factors: consumer beliefs, target audience, competition, and the brand identity in the marketplace.

Branding takes the point of view of the customer.

Phrases like “reasons to believe” and “loyalty beyond reason” and “unique selling proposition” are based on courting customers so they make emotive decisions to purchase more product.

In Lucas Conley’s book Obsessive Branding Disorder, he asks the question: Are consumers so gullible that emotional manipulation will overwhelm their innate reason and logic? Emotion activates the brain 3,000 times faster than regular thought (Scott Robinette and Claire Bran, The Hallmark Way of Winning Customers for Life), and studies in consumer behavior indicate that shoppers are willing to pay up to 200 percent more when their decision is based on emotion rather than reason (source: Kevin Roberts, Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brains).

Branding approaches favor emotional responses over rational, critical-based thinking decisions, because it works!

Today branding has become synonymous with promoting individuals, communities and organizations, presumably reducing them to a commodity for sale.

This week I heard two news hosts refer to Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump’s damaged brands. I thought, “damaged brands? You are who you are. There is no brand, just you.”

I went on to read what Tom Dougherty wrote about Newt’s damaged brand. He concluded that in the end “the brand is better than the man.” That’s funny! But how does this happen? Because branding focuses on selling products to consumers, and I guess Newt was a product gone bad that had to be recalled. And I thought he was a human.

The approach used to brand (sell) commodities does not work for complex multi-faceted human entities.

I think business owners must cringe at the thought of themselves or their organization being branded like cattle. And I wonder why communities accept superficial branding slogans and promote superficial assets and attributes that many other communities possess when they have so much more to offer.

The good news is, we are seeing the inconsistency between the brand and the person or the people.  This makes room for a deeper more powerful approach when it comes to marketing complex entities such as people and places. Stay tuned. There’s much more to come.

In my experience as a marketing consultant, I have observed that organizations and communities press forward with business plans and marketing strategies, but often leave critical assets out of the equation. I think this happens simply because they fail to recognize precious assets as such, and therefore don’t utilize them.

Every community and company has a set of unique assets that can be developed to achieve greater results, elicit peak performance, and reach higher potential. Discovering and utilizing these assets can make the difference between success and failure in business.

If you think about it from an accounting perspective, you likely consider assets as ownership of cash, inventories, fixtures, equipment, or real estate. These are assets, but there are many other valuable assets, just as important, that can be developed to cultivate greater market share, profits, and relationships.

When you examine your interior landscape you will discover a gold mine in your people, as you would expect, but also in your organization’s personality and character traits. Every organization and community has a distinct personality, just like a human, that can be lived to the fullest. Dig deeper and you will unlock power in your vision, beliefs, ideas, patterns, motivations, aspirations and strengths that set you apart from anyone else and bring a natural advantage.

The key to developing these underutilized assets is to make them meaningful and accessible to a much larger audience. Even though organizational assets and attributes are internal and personal, they are invaluable to your business and marketing success. Why? As consumers tune out advertising propaganda and seek relationships with real companies and communities, developing your assets can:

• Instill tremendous pride in your team and staff
• Map and archive your organization’s institutional knowledge and assets for future ready-access
• Attract customers, partners, and stakeholders who share something in common with you
• Inspire and influence other human communities and businesses to be authentic, real, and tell the truth
• Bring very unique products to market that no one else can based on your unique personality

This past Friday (June 25, 2010) our WestwordVision team taught a class to approximately 20 business owners and representatives in Nogales, Arizona. The class was offered through Nogales Community Development. From Customs agents to produce owners to retail shop owners, we introduced some of the most popular social networking environments to participants, and explained how they can be used to the advantage of business. The last part of the 3-hour class focused on creating a Facebook page.

NOTES for Attendees: We are posting the PowerPoint as well as class notes for class participants. Find us on Facebook and let us know what you thought of the class!

Some Downloads
Social Media Class Content (Word Doc)
Power Point Presentation (PDF)

Some Links
Facebook Tutorial
5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page
What is Twitter?