I was listening to an interview of Seth Godin, where he posited that you can have maybe two or three attributes that stand out at the office. If you are consistent with these attributes, it will eventually become your personal brand. So pick carefully and don’t ever break these promises you make to your customers.
Assuming that I only pick out two items to promise to my customers (Seth stated that two is doable, three is difficult, and four is virtually impossible), there are four major questions that need to be answered.
- Who is my customer? Is it my immediate supervisor, or his boss, his boss, her boss, or the Governor? Is it the using Agency? Is it the consultants that I manage? Is it the silent investors behind the project (all the taxpayers of Nevada)?
- What will be attribute X
- What will be attribute Y – and if I put attributes as a simple X-Y matrix, is there anyone else at the office that already fills that niche?
- Given that I’m unwilling to sacrifice my personal life for the division, what am I willing trade off to make sure I never break the promise of X and Y?
It’s an interesting rubric, but there won’t going to be an answer here. To pick out only two attributes is going to take some hard thinking. As always, choices are more difficult when it means excluding other options.