Executive Branding: from executives to changemakers

It's interesting the expression “Changemakers“ used by the authors of the book "Social Selling", Tim Hughes And Matt Reynolds (Kogan Page, 2016). We could literally translate it as "making of change", although the most accepted expression is "agents of change".

Without a doubt, the drivers of business in organizations are the sellers (Commercial, account managers...) along with the executives who make the big decisions. But with the fourth revolution a new figure has emerged: The Changemakers or agents of change.

My colleague Eva Collado defines these Changemakers As informal leaders organizations, Connected, Formed, Informed, and that end up making key decisions that the big managers previously made (Hughes calls them C-Suites). Raquel Roca I'd rather call them Knowmads, those nomads of knowledge that many believe are always free agents, but we really also find them in companies working as an employee.

From executives to changemakers

Organization executives are no longer just tasked with making big decisions, manage teams or customers. Your top priority, in the connected economy, is to act like Changemakers, as agents of change. But, Why?

Because yesterday does not exist, although the mark you've left can affect tomorrow. And the decision, the process of change, you have to take it today. This temporary gibberish may be the key to justify these new executives acting as agents of change in a difficult environment. We live in quick waters, where past successes not only do not guarantee future successes but deny them.

This barrier, made up of atoms and bits (the real and the digital) requires changing the way executives think to adapt to unforeseen situations, untreated yet in business school case studies. If we used to think that failure is the antechamber of success, now we should understand that change is the lever of survival and growth.

It fills our mouths with digital transformation, but that's not the fuze of change

The expression digital transformation is being spent for overuse and misuse. I'm working with a manager from a telecommunications organization. Talking to him, working on your business model, I realize something important:

First it takes to work on the transformation of people and the cultural change of the organization, and from there to digital transformation

And that's where I see the true sense of change. People, First. Organizational culture, After. And digital transformation, in the end, as one of the lines of change.

The mistake that many executives in organizations make is to try to implement digital transformation without first having worked a change of people and business culture. Start the house on the roof. We often get carried away by words rather than concepts and action plans.

Executive branding for Changemakers

Executive branding is a personal branding process designed for change agents, for professionals who must decide and manage transformation.

Some business schools have already included in their training plans. But in my modest opinion and based on my experience, an executive branding process is closer to consulting than training. We cannot consider an individual who must make critical decisions as if it were a collective.

Branding for agents of change is a very introspective process, where personal values play a significant role, and where empathy becomes the lever for the transformation of people and teams. Organizations are their people. And those who run them should print their DNA and thus enrich excessively undifferentiated corporate values.

Executive branding isn't just about empowering executives to develop their personal brand or train them in digital skills. It should be more ambitious and orderly, with the idea of managing a permanent change in people, Culture, organization and business development. Only in this way can you reach digital transformation, a concept that has left 15 Or 20 years of existence until millennials And centennials become positions of responsibility.

The process and the architects

For not extending myself - and for protecting the method a little- I will not break down the process of executive branding, but the resources needed to carry it out.

Since for me it's about consulting, it's an encore. But not from a consultant to a "client", but from a team to a customer.

1. The introspective part requires, to my way of looking at it, to a person trained in psychology. Recently, self-awareness has been very focused on coaching, but I refuse to believe that four or five years of training in psychology can be compared to six months or a year of coaching. If in addition to psychology there is training in coaching, Best, but it's not indispensable.
2. The strategic part requires two key elements: on the one hand someone with a mentality and experience in strategy, and also someone with management and cultural transformation experience.
3. At last, the communication part requires someone with skills and experience in this area. Someone who can not only develop but accompany an action plan to put the value proposition and change the service of the organization and its main stakeholders.

In short, I would say that to forge a changemaker they need Changemakers. Have an inspiring week.

Dedicated to Christian Fernandez, a real changemaker. And my good friends psychologists and personal branders Helena Casas, Fran Segarra, And Elena Arnaiz.

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