Personal Brands Help Fight Corporate Hypercompetition

Oddly enough, in many large companies, managers don't have a clear idea of their people's strengths and capabilities.

The resulting lack of awareness of in-house skills and experience often makes it a lottery when a company is looking for leaders or experts.

This is when effective personal branding becomes a big opportunity for individuals to differentiate themselves.

This is important for companies to nurture, if we consider the concept of 'hypercompetition' -- a concept formulated by Richard A. D'Aveni which frankly states that advantages don't last very long before competition, imitation and matching erodes any competitive advantage. Rivals become more efficient, but don't increase their profitability.

The principles of personal branding help an individual to initially define their goals, identify their strengths and hone leadership qualities, but it also goes on to help establish an appropriate profile with co-workers and management.

This is the kind of environment where leaders spontaneously appear, where people are motivated to improve their skills because the route to greater advancement is very clear.

James Speros, CMO at Ernst and Young U.S. said: "A company, that embraces personal branding as part of their culture... allows individuals to gain recognition for what they do well and move up the career ladder based on their performance, rather than on politics."

You may pick up a vast amount of strategic ideas, tools, programmes and analyses to help you in your strategic development as a company, but the simplicity of each individual developing their own authentic strategy to achieve a highly successful profile that can be maintained over a career lifetime is a potential market-winner.

It's a useful business tool to combat the effects of hypercompetition, by decreasing the reliance your company has on the efficiency processes that are there for everyone to use.

With a strong brand and a clear career development plan of your own you are able to defend your position from a position of strength and awareness. Take advantage of it now, before everyone begins to get the message.

Seen this way it's clear that the concept of personal branding is something for corporate executives to embrace. Be ahead of the field and encourage personal branding to give every individual within your business the opportunity to differentiate from each other in a structured and strategic way, and each contribute to the corporate brand that is respected by your customers.

(Pic: antwerpenR cc2.0)