What is my message? is a question that has an out-sized impact on our lives, even when we aren’t aware of it. We are forced to answer the question in all sorts of ways. It comes up in the essays we write as part of our college applications, where admissions officers strain to figure out which candidates to accept and which to reject. The question raises its head again as we search for jobs after graduation – whether from high school, college, or graduate school – and are faced with the not-so-simple task of expressing who we are on one or two pieces of paper called a resume. 

If you succeed in your job, you come face to face with the question again, as you rise through the ranks to a supervisory, or leadership, position. What is your message, then, to the people who work for you? …

… Not, what tasks do you want them to complete, but, rather, why should they follow you, beyond the fact that you’re their boss? 

The question slips into our lives on more modest levels as well: for instance, at large social gatherings when you are introduced to people for the first time. Or, at intimate dinner parties, when you are one of only a handful of people, who are thrust together for three or four hours and need to figure out how to keep the conversation going. 

In all of these situations, you have a choice. You can try to discern what is important to someone else and tell them what you believe they want to hear. You can supply information you feel is safe and easy for others to digest. Or, you can make a point of finding ways to tell people something about who you are at your core, and risk making yourself vulnerable, if only for a moment. 

The fact is that taking the “safe” route isn’t safe at all. Most people, from college admissions directors and would-be friends, to the people who report to you at work, are searching for signs that give them reason to believe that you are someone with integrity — someone they can trust. 

This is where identity comes into play — those special characteristics that reveal how you create unique value in the world. Your identity is ‘an integrity machine.’ It expresses what makes you the individual you are. It invites people to trust you. 

Hiding what you stand for takes a toll on everyone. It may make it easier for you to navigate business or social relationships that require chameleon-like skills to maintain, but, over time, it erodes your sense of self-worth: you know you’re faking it. Moreover, keeping your true self hidden makes life harder for others by keeping them guessing; off balance, in fact. 

Until I faced an auditorium full of people who were interested in the subject of identity, I had kept my message under wraps, at least publicly. For years, I’d lived under the radar. While working with companies and individuals, I knew who I was, and, certainly, I let my passion for identity show in everything I did. Yet, I never had the courage to stand up and be counted. I had let my writings and my work speak for me. Now, I would speak for myself; I would make my message clear: I am Larry Ackerman and I am driven by the need to help people to see. As I spoke these words in that auditorium that day, I exhaled deeply. I felt completely naked as I stood before my audience, knowing there was no going back. I was finally free. 

Answering the question, what is my message? Is liberating. It frees you from the fear of telling the world who you are and doing what you know you must. It brings the self-confidence to not be deterred by what others may think of you, even in the face of possible rejection. You may also realize that you no longer have a choice: you must take a stand. 

Consider your message a personal declaration — a commitment to follow one path and walk away from others. What makes declarations so powerful is their intent, which, in short, is to remove doubt. It is to make something clear to people that wasn’t clear before. Personal declarations lift the veil of mystery. They state something emphatically about who you are, often, for the first time. 

Your identity is the source of that declaration, the essence of your message. It’s a message the world needs to hear. 

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With good reason, companies today are increasingly seeking to put a stake in the ground that illuminates what they’re all about, why they’re here, apart from the need to make money. Getting this right is a powerful force that can, like a magnet, help attract and hold the right people for the right reasons, improve customer loyalty, and even draw investors, whose time horizons are well beyond the next quarter. Many books and articles have been written that assert seemingly critical differences among various kinds of company statements and, further, how to craft each one. These include mission, vision, purpose, brand, and identity statements. An online review offers these general descriptions:

A mission defines what an organization is, why it exists, its reason for being

A vision isfuture-based and is meant to inspire and give direction to employees

A brand is your promise to customers and other stakeholders, derived from who you are, and who you want to be 

Purpose is the driving force that enables a company to define its true brand and create its desired culture

Identity clarifies who you are as an organization, and what distinguishes the company 

Allowing for a few differences, these descriptions are largely the same. They all potentially represent a company’s “north star,” pointing the way forward in a manner that is designed to guide decisions and behavior. Here’s a statement that, with a few, small word changes (or none at all), conforms to all of these descriptions, equally well. It is Ikea’s stated mission: To create a better everyday life for the many people. The company’s declaration effortlessly translates as follows:

… As its vision: A better everyday life for the many people

… As its brand promise: To create a better everyday life for the many people

… As its purpose: To create a better everyday life for the many people

… As its identity: An organization dedicated to creating a better everyday life for the many people 

Clarifying the logic of one 

There is simply no good reason a company must have a mission, a purpose, a brand promise, and a vision, or even two of these. One will do. And, one type of company statement is not more important than any of the others. What matters most is that whatever statement you select be informed by the unique contribution your company is capable of making in the world; i.e., how it creates proprietary value. 

There are three other criteria worth mentioning. Your company’s north star needs to be distinctive – it is about your company and yours alone. It needs to be authentic – it cannot be fabricated, or invented; it can only be discovered. It must be sustainable – it has to have the bones to be nearly timeless, despite how often you may need to express it differently to maintain its relevance.

In short, less is more. Employees have enough to do without having to memorize, let alone help operationalize, two, three, or four separate ideas. Make it easier for them to succeed: Simplify! What label you choose is far less important than the substance of the statement you embrace.

Eighteen months after the Dow engagement began, the company replaced three of its original statements with one: To constantly improve what is essential to human progress by mastering science and technology, and modified its values to support this mission. The result helped employees put their collective energy into one, value-creating idea that inspired innovation and commitment, and helped produce the economic, social and environmental benefits Dow’s stakeholders deserved.

If you’re in the market for a mission or a (fill in the blank), keep the following criteria in mind. 

Make sure how your company creates proprietary value is the foundation of that statement.

One statement is enough.

Ensure that your statement is distinctive, authentic and sustainable.

Your employees will thank you. Executive communications will be streamlined. Conversations will be more focused. Expectations will be clearer. The connection between company mission and individual jobs will be easier to make. Accountability will be enhanced. 

When it comes to forging a compelling north star for your organization, the above measures are the only ones you really need. Then the real work begins: how to translate that north star into decisions and actions that will illustrate its power and prove its intrinsic worth. (Stay tuned; that topic is coming up next.)

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I believe that before we can have peace among all of us, we need to find peace within each of us.

To this end, I was struck by a story told to me recently by Jim Hackett, CEO of Steelcase, one of Fortune‘s Most-Admired Companies. He recounted a conversation about the challenges of long-term brand building he had had with Bill Marriott, Chairman of Marriott International. At one point, Bill said to him, “we know who we are not.” Jim saw “the peace in Bill’s eyes” and decided then that he wanted that peace for himself.

That ‘peace in your eyes’ is powerful medicine for many ills. It helps cure greed, insecurity, stress, envy, and a variety of other contemporary ailments that get in the way of creating a more fulfilling life, a more successful business; indeed, a more serene world.

What brings you peace?

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How often have you heard well-intended executives and other high-ranking leaders (priests, coaches) say these words — their goal: to ‘protect’ their institutions from embarrassing publicity, which might muck up their brands.

Talk about misguided measures. At the core of every successful brand is integrity — it’s the only thing that generates trust in whoever your customers happen to be (consumers, investors, college football players, alumni, parishioners). Mess with integrity and you mess with the value of your brand, whether it’s your company’s or your own.

My nominees for most egregious brand follies winners in recent memory are: Penn State, Toyota, BP, Olympus and the Catholic church. Who comes to mind for you?

No doubt, there are more, lurking in the shadows of decency, waiting to shoot themselves in the foot and blow millions in dollars and good will, not to mention trust.

Here, in brief, is how not to become a brand follies nominee: 1) Next time you’re faced with a tough call that might cost the company money in support of its values, write the check, 2) Be real. Share a story or two about when the organization didn’t get it right, but went on to fix the problem, and 3) Take stock of all issues that could potentially rock your corporate boat and figure out how to address them, directly, now.

And your nominees for the next round of brand follies are…?

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Which leads me to my point: Often, a seeming business problem, is something else; it’s an identity problem. You just don’t recognize it.

If you want to know when a business problem may be an identity problem, here are 5 signs to watch out for – any one will do the trick. 1) Frequent re-organizations, 2) a growing portfolio of un-integrated acquisitions, 3) loss of brand relevance, 4) persistent turnover at senior levels, and 5) low employee engagement.

At the moment, the poster child for this alternate reality is Yahoo. The notion that Yahoo has an identity problem is public knowledge; my concern is that Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s new CEO, and her team aren’t going to ask the right questions. (Deciding whether the concern is a media company or a content company is, at best, a place to start.)

If any of the signs I note above apply to your company, change the conversation, now. You’ll be surprised at what emerges.

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I’m concerned that personal branding is about packaging – sizzle more than steak, more hat than cattle. If so, it’s destined to pass like a fleeting fashion. That would be ashame, for one’s personal brand has the real possibility of capturing the truest, most valuable aspects of one’s self – the stuff that accounts for career success like nothing else can.

If there is one statement that,for me, frames the challenge of creating a powerful personal brand, it is The Identity Credo, which is the backbone of both of my books – Identity Is Destiny and The Identity Code. Should you decide to craft a personal brand, do so in ways that will help you live up to the Credo. It will help you become a leader and achieve the success you deserve.

I am alive, I am unique, and I am immutable
Even as I grow and evolve.
To truly live, however, I must express myself fully
And in this regard, have much to give.
But to do so, I need others and am most productive with those
Who need me in return.
To establish these relationships, I must first be recognized for who I am
And it follows, then, that I will receive in accordance with what I give.

How would you describe your personal brand?

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Whether it’s Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton or John McCain, these people have identities that are at the core of how they might create value as president of the United States. It would be a gift to us all, if they’d share these with us. They should be themselves and show themselves. It would change the nature of the race and, broadly, writ, the nature of politics. (It would also put a lot of polling people out of business.)

Absent such courage, politics remains the land of no integrity—a place where what “you” want is what “I” must become in order to succeed. I have often imagined a system where the dynamics of genuine identity played a central role. But, then, maybe such a system would have to be branded something other than “politics.” Maybe such a system would spark, in fact, the next American revolution.

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