Approach Your Personal Brand Like a Project Manager

By Dorie Clark and Antonio Nieto Rodriguez
Harvard Business Review
May 13, 2022

Summary. The truth is, everything you do that’s visible to other people in some way — be it in real life or online — will factor into your personal brand. It’s important, therefore, to ensure you’re taking steps to convey the right messages. The authors apply the principles of project management to personal branding and outline six tenets to follow: 1) Identify your purpose 2) Decide on your investment 3) Get clear on the benefits — and how you’ll track them. 4) Identify your stakeholders. 5) Lay out your resources and deliverables. 6) Nail down your plan.

By now, most professionals recognize the value of having a strong personal brand. After all, if you’re not associated with particular concepts or strengths or characteristics or viewpoints, then you’re probably invisible inside your organization. That might be fine for where you are now, but if you want to advance, you need to distinguish yourself in some way. Conversely, if you have a strong personal brand, people often seek you out for opportunities or want to work with you, specifically. A strong personal brand is a form of career insurance.

But many of us feel way too busy to give sustained thought or focus to cultivating a strong personal brand, even if we know it would be beneficial in the long-term. Amidst the crush of meetings, emails, and other obligations, how can we carve out the time to make progress in this crucial area?

One solution is to apply the principles of project management to your personal branding efforts. Drawing from Dorie’s work in how to reinvent your personal brand and Antonio’s background in project management, we’ve developed a framework that may be useful as you embark upon the important work of getting recognized for your expertise.

Not every element of project management transfers perfectly to personal branding — for instance, in personal branding, your “project sponsor” is almost always yourself! But here are six key project management tenets you can follow to make it far more likely your personal branding efforts will succeed, despite the distractions and busyness almost every professional experiences.

Identify your purpose.

Developing and honing your personal brand takes time — and it’s almost never “urgent.” So why bother? It’s essential to get clear on your purpose before starting, or your motivation is likely to flag quickly when time pressures emerge. An easy method of finding the purpose of your personal brand project is to ask several times, “Why am I doing this project?”

The answer might be: to be recognized for my expertise. Then ask yourself again: Why do you want to be recognized for your expertise?

You might answer: To have more impact in the field of sales. And again — why? The answer might be anything from providing for your family to getting your product or service into more people’s hands. There are no wrong answers, but it’s important to understand your motivation and how much it matters to you.

If after the exercise you don’t reach something relevant — something that will motivate you to work on it — then we strongly recommend that you not start the project.

Decide on your investment.

How much will the project cost? If we’re talking about a corporate project, the cost might be measured in staff time, advertising spend, research and development, prototyping, software, manufacturing, and more.

When it comes to your personal brand, even though there may be some investments (you might decide it’s useful to create a personal website, for instance), the majority of your investment will be in the form of your time. For instance, you might decide to focus on building your network, creating content (such as launching a blog), or cultivating social proof. It’s important to recognize that building a strong personal brand is a project that will take years to accomplish in the form you’d like. Antonio has been concertedly working on his brand since 2012, for instance.

In her book The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World, Dorie observes that it often takes two to three years of effort to attain even minor recognition for your work, and five years or more to attain meaningful recognition. It’s a long road, and you may decide it’s not worth it for you, or at least not at this time. But it’s also possible you may decide that time will pass anyway, so it’s important to get started now. Either way, it’s important to recognize and proactively choose the investment you’re committing to.

Get clear on the benefits — and how you’ll track them.

Here’s an essential question for any project manager to ask: How will you know that you’ve been successful? What will have happened, and by when?

For instance, you might be seeking benefits such as revenue (more clients seek you out because of your strong brand); impact (you’re offered the chance to write a book or a column for a high-profile publication); or career progression (in a crowded field, you’re chosen for the coveted promotion).

Building a strong personal brand is a process that plays out over many years. The benefits rarely accrue in weeks or even months. But in order to keep yourself motivated during the process, it’s essential to develop a hypothesis (perhaps through conversations with colleagues whose career path you admire, or researching the biographies of people you don’t know) for how long you suspect your project will take…[MORE]

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To read the entire article by Dorie Clark and Antonio Nieto Rodriguez at The Harvard Business Review website, visit: Approach Your Personal Brand Like a Project Manager