Upgrading your brand for a time of disruption
…in four proposals.
The world is changing fast right now: the economy is turning upside-down, a global pandemic is changing how we live and work and parent and learn, climate change is accelerating and bringing ever more severe crises, and the Black Lives Matter movement is asking everyone to re-evaluate everything about how our societies are organized, and what we think is possible for social change. If you are taking that seriously, it's triggering questions and growth in many areas of your life and work.
It's a time of devastating loss, and also thrilling visionary imagination and change. We never really knew what the future would hold, but it now seems more unknowable than ever.
Given all this, what's important to pay attention to in our changing businesses and brands right now?
1. Sharpen your vision.
Your business can be a prototype of the world you wish to make more possible. It's like taking a seed from that vision of the future world, and planting it right at your feet. People can feel it when there is a deeply held, powerful, specific vision growing through a business.
So much violence is laid bare right now, and things can feel really dire. But these are the moments when new systems can be imagined and built. There is an opening here that we can step into as collapse happens around us.
Your work is a part of it. Change is, happening everywhere, in every industry, around every topic, not just the places labeled "social justice" and "activism". Right where you are standing: that’s the place to enact your vision of the worlds and societies we are are building now.
This doesn't mean you have to take it all on. Your business is one small, specific, powerful place where you claim one small, specific, powerful part: your part. You commit to it, and you commit to being a vibrant cell in this big collective body of new beginnings.
The Question:
If you cast your imagination out 50, or 100 years - how does THIS part of the work - YOUR part - change the world? What are the consequences of the vision you are holding, if it were to ripple out and change absolutely everything it touches, year after year, for decades? If YOUR vision is the global template, what does that look like and feel like?
Dream. And then make it real in your next choices and actions in your work. Draw us into it. How will you let us see it, hear it, taste it, experience it in your brand?
2. Refresh your values.
The Black Lives Matter movement is inviting us to question whether our values and our actions are aligned.
Of course we all falter around living out our values some of the time. Brand hypocrisy in in our operating system. In the United States, "liberty and justice for all" was NEVER a value of the European settlers and colonists, contrary to the content of the American "brand." And the more privileged identities we carry, the deeper this schism, this cultural pattern of dishonesty, is in our souls. This society literally rewards people for creating the appearance of a virtue, while acting violently towards the earth, towards workers, towards black people and all other people of color and indigenous people, towards women and families.
This directly influences how we relate to branding: the art form of capitalism. Many of us are ambivalent about the word - because we have seen branding used, over and over, to lie. Coke is Life, right? Or an oil company cares about the planet. Or that a cigarette company is feminist. Or Nestle cares about the quality of water people drink in Africa, or the U.S.
Engaging in "branding" feels like inviting ourselves to lie. And that isn't just a "mindset issue" or a "limiting belief." It's true - branding sucks, in the dominant model.
But YOU don't have to be dominant model.
Without the dominant/corporate model of branding, branding is just a sum of its parts: action, experience, image, word. Those are ART FORMS. And those forms are far older, and far more powerful and human, than this recent diluted, corrupted version of art that some of the big corps are peddling.
You can probably think of a few brands right now that you are in intimate contact with - your coach, a small business you are a fan of, even a large company you love that is putting its actions behind its stated values, brands that are honest to their core. Examples are everywhere.
Black Lives Matter is a brand, and it's one where actions and values are inseparable. A brand can mean what it says, through action, word, image, and impact. The "branding" is the outgrowth of the reality, not an overlay of lies.
The Question:
What are the values that drive your work? What if you could boil them down to 3 simple words? Take some time, sit with language. Find your words.
And once you have them, hold them up to every aspect of your work, and especially HOW YOU DO IT. Are these values infused in every aspect? How can they be more so? How committed are you, really, to these values - and how can you be more so?
One of my brand values is play, which to me is a revolutionary word. I have a post-it on my computer that simply says "is it playful enough?" and I ask myself that question about everything I do.
A value I'm working harder on now is eliminating oppression. This moment, thanks to BLM, is showing me that I have rested too much on my INTENTION here, and not done nearly enough to embed anti-racist practices, policies and realities into the concrete details of my business - and that is where IMPACT lies.
Let your values disrupt you and change you. Let them build a business you can't imagine yet. Let them lead you towards the things you don't know how to do yet, so you can grow.
Let your values make your brand a powerful medicine for the world, not a pretty decoration of intention.
3. Tune-up your creative confidence.
This is a time of collective destruction and creation. It means your business is going to need to change and adapt, possibly radically - and if you have strong creative processes and skills in place, and some confidence in your intelligence, that will be exciting for you. If you are hitting imposter complex and feeling stuck for ideas and wondering if you are brilliant, imaginative and nimble enough to do it - you have only one problem: your creative confidence is taking a hit.
Listen to me: you are as brilliant as anyone who as ever lived. And as imaginative, as creative, as able to bring whole new things into being. Healing things, wild things, complicated things. You are able to solve really challenging problems - impossible ones - using the same creativity that allows you to make a good meal, a good email, a good joke. It's built in to your system as a human.
Anything or anyone what has told you (or your people) otherwise is, or was, directing oppression at you. Those messages were never yours. Your story, and your people's, is a story of unlimited creativity.
That's the mindset work.
The practical work of acting on it is pretty simple. Embed some small, low-stakes creative practices into your business that help you loosen up your playful thinking and be rigorous about them. It will continually remind your system of your inherent creativity. Make a bit more time for ideating and brainstorming. Ask others for thoughts that will stimulate your own, if you need to, because much creativity is collective. Every time you create anything, notice yourself doing it.
And remember: disorientation is your art supply. Everything truly new and pattern-breaking that has been created happened because someone was willing to NOT KNOW. Willing to break an old mental model. Willing to be disoriented. Through that exciting wilderness is a clearing where your new idea is waiting.
4. Learn in public.
We are changing the world, and being changed by the world, together - and not one of us knows where it's headed. We are collectively being pushed to our learning edges - and there is truth, power and love in being transparent about what we don't know, dismantling the supremacy in "expert" models, and co-creating this world with the people who pay us, the people who collaborate with us and the people we follow. How can you be more and more real with who you are, what you offer, the bigness of your vision, the depth of your love, and the vulnerability of learning in public?
However you play this one, don't go invisible. Don't hide. It might be worth inventorying what learning was like for you as a young person - and how visible you were, or were not, in your schooling process. What patterns of survival aren't serving you now? Or if you were the one who drew all the attention to yourself to survive (which is also a lonely condition), how could you keep showing up now, but with a different model of belonging and connection?
Come join the fray, and stop waiting to be perfect. Show us what you are learning. Show us the majesty of your mastery (definitely don't sell yourself short: claim what you have learned), and show us where you are just beginning, too. We'll trust you more, and notice that we are all on the same side.
Remember: your brand is the powerful place where the work you do and the quality of transformation you provide becomes tangible to a growing community of people. Use your images, words, sounds, actions, and commitments to let your brand speak the most delicious and healing truths you can. It will transform your business, establish you as a leader, grow your mind and heart, and make make the possible that much more possible.
In cahoots,
Amy
p.s. I've got a free workshop coming up on July 20 and 21 (you pick the date you want) - all about building a visionary brand - whether you are starting from scratch, or making your existing brand more brilliant in its impact. I'd love to have you - registration is here.