Ann Reilly wrote in LO15492:
> Simon, how 'bout a brief explanation as to what you define as 'brand'?
Ann, one of the central message in "Unorganization: A handbook for
individual transformation" is that people should think of themselves as
brands, just as products are brands. Everyone should be a brand, not just
filmstars.
To develop themselves as a brand, people cultivate multiple "lifestreams":
these are alternative ways of earning an existence. This is a learning
process- becoming an expert. Such lifetreams constitute the best form of
security there is in the unorganized world- they are choices that help
ensure independence.
My 3 lifestreams are unorg, collecting Coca-Cola (photographed at
http://www.unorg.com/a24.htm) and the Short Message Service (SMS) on
mobile phones. Fortunately, once I have alienated everyone with my unorg
message, I can at least earn a living in other ways- open a Coca-Cola
museum or whatever!
Too often, our workstream is our only truly developed means of earning a
living, yet people collect and are interested in the most amazing things.
These days, it is newly possible to earn a living from obscure hobbies- I
could not make a living trading Coca-Cola cans with the 2 other collectors
here in Britain, but globally, I can put photos of my collection on the
web, buy and sell lists and so on and communicate with the 10,000 or so
collectors, mainly in the US.
This is of course a different kind of world. We used to be rewarded for
complying with societal norms and not being different. Increasingly in the
future, our value will be in our uniqueness- our unique (work) skills
already get us into static "teams" and our lifestreams will get us into
dynamic "collapsible corporations" as well.
Hence, the need for a complete redesign of organizational systems such as
general pay levels, org charts, job descriptions, work places and so on-
because people are different and do different things in different ways in
different places, yet our org systems persist in treating people as
interchangeable units of economic production (that I call employees/
rankers) rather than as branders.
Of course, once people are a brand, exit from such organizations is
possible because they can sustain their own existence outside of
traditional org boundaries and without traditional relations with orgs.
Hence, I advise my consulting clients to couple downstructuring to develop
their people through branding (get rid of job titles which mean that only
3 people are in sales: everyone in the company is in sales!) with
partnering. If your employees leave, as they inevitably and increasingly
will, because they can, don't call them competitors or traitors but see
them as partners. After all, they understand the way your company works.
Read the book and let me know what you think!
Regards sincerely Simon Buckingham
Unorganization for Individuals just live at
http://www.unorg.com/index3.htm
--Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>