I’m pleased to announce that last week I was brought in to present to some of the employees at Gartner Inc., the world’s leading IT research and advisory company. Their VP of Research Marketing, Jeremey Donovan, invited me to their headquarters to share with his colleagues some of my knowledge on branding as it relates to career development. It was a great experience as over 100 enthusiastic Gartner employees showed up and joined in with some vibrant comments on the topic at hand.

Following my talk, Mr. Donovan was kind enough to provide me with a copy of his book What Great Looks Like, which delves into best practices for leaders in the corporate world. After reading the book and finding it enlightening, I’d like to share with you some key takeaways that resonate within the Marketing and Entrepreneurship spheres:

On Leadership: As a great leader you are building a brand. Even in the unlikely event that you could gain the widely varied expertise of a polymath, people will only be able to identify you with a very small number of attributes. Figure out the skills in which you excel that align with your vision and then invest tirelessly to improve and to share your knowledge.

On generating change: Excellent change managers know that little happens by accident. They do not wait for the welcome, unexpected blue bird to land on their shoulder. Instead, they maniacally plan for, generate, and publicize short term wins. These wins must be unambiguous and directly related to the change effort.
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