As the CEO of Me.Life, you are responsible for growing your marketable value, creating your sustainable advantage, and building brand YOU. In today's exciting yet challenging business climate, whether you are in manufacturing, R&D, marketing or sales and regardless of whether you are a technician or the CEO, building a sustainable advantage for brand YOU and your company, Me.Life, requires exactly the same dedication and planning as building any company or brand. It takes:

• Developing and implementing a fearless career strategy based on respecting and being able to predict changing market requirements
  
• Building a credible and reliable reputation, and
  
• Ensuring you are capable, adaptable, motivated and committed.

While this can sound a bit daunting, it isn't. There are three key points to remember:

1. Be an over ACHIEVER not an over EXPECTER
2. Maintain your current skills and build new ones
3. Embrace the unknown

1. Be an over ACHIEVER not an over EXPECTER

Gather the important data you need to build your personal business strategy. Know the qualities companies want and which will gain you recognition and support. In studies where employers were asked to name the most important qualities common to the best employees, they cited:

• KNOW your stuff
  
• THINK critically
  
• COLLABORATE across disciplines
  
• LEARN in fields beyond your specialty
  
• ADAPT quickly under changing conditions
  
• WORK well in teams
  
• LEAD as well as FOLLOW
  
• BE CREATIVE and INNOVATIVE
  
• Take the INITIATIVE
  
• Show ENTHUSIASM for your work
  
• Have a strong WORK ETHIC
  
• Demonstrate a SENSE OF URGENCY
  
• COMMUNICATE effectively

How do you stack up against this list? How would your peers and teammates rate you? How would your supervisor or team leader respond about you?

2. Maintain your current skills and build new ones

The skills you need are not only in technical areas. Knowing and being able to use fundamental business principles as well as cultivating strong interpersonal skills are both key for success. Ask yourself the following questions and see how well you do on all three fronts-technical, business, and interpersonal.

Technical:

• Both within and outside of your area of expertise what courses have you taken and which books and journals do you regularly read to keep on top of the latest findings?
  
• How good are your networking skills?
  
• Are you comfortable having a technical dialogue with others regardless of their position in the organization or their degree level? Do you ask questions? Do you present talks?

Business:

• Do you know the critical issues in your industry?
  
• What is your company's business strategy and what role does science and technology play in that strategy?
  
• What role do YOU play in the strategy and can you clearly articulate that role and it's value to accomplishing the strategy?
  
• Can you explain the innovations you have made or contributed to that have had a direct impact on the company?

Interpersonal:

• Are you as articulate about the business and science as you can be? In a business setting are you able to talk about business or do you mostly chat socially?
  
• Are you comfortable discussing your work, and are you able to describe how it directly impacts the business?
  
• Do you know your behavior style and how well you work in teams? If you don't know your behavior style, ask your Human Resources department if they administer the Myers-Briggs or similar personality inventory. There are actually so many it's amazing. These inventories are all situation relative and you have to answer the questions based on the situation. The DISC tool is a well-known example and is available to individuals.
  
• In order to network effectively and get the result you want, can you give a "60 Second Sketch" describing who you are and what you do?
  
• How broad is your network, and do you actively cultivate and maintain it?
  
• Can you "work a room" and get the information and response you need?

3. Embrace the unknown

• Be a role model for change by embracing it openly and without cynicism.
  
  • Do you volunteer for new roles, responsibilities and assignments, or do they have to be thrust upon you?
    
  • Are you a role model for others in embracing change and adapting easily?
• Be a leader in metrics
  
  • How are your leadership skills in developing and implementing measurements metrics as a means for change, improvement and demonstrating accomplishment? You might not need to become a black belt in Six Sigma but you can detail what you can accomplish by when, documenting it, and demonstrating how that links to business performance, which is at the heart of a total quality management process. Getting the skills is usually provided by most organizations and many have these systems and concepts in place today.
    
  • What are the important parameters to measure for achieving business objectives in your work and projects? Do you know and have metrics in place for them? Do you focus on metrics linking the output of your work to strategically critical issues?
    
  • Are you learning and using the tools of Six Sigma and quality to improve your own and your company's performance?

Innovation and building sustainable value are contact sports. They require being creative in order to reap rewards, being consistent to minimize cost to your company, and knowing where the market and you are headed in order to mitigate risk in your favor. And winning in this environment means providing sustainable value to your employer and to brand YOU.

Judy Giordan is Principal and Co-Founder of Aileron Partners, a strategic and human capital services provider, as well as a member of university, professional society and start-up Boards of Advisors and Directors. Her previous positions include Vice President of Research and Development at Henkel Corporation, Pepsi-Cola, the beverage arm of PepsiCo and International Flavors and Fragrances. She has also held management and individual contributor positions at ALCOA and Polaroid.

The author of over 250 web based articles, print articles and presentations in the areas of market and operational strategy development and implementation, organizational and technology leadership, career development, diversity, polymer chemistry, and electron spectroscopy, Judy is frequently an invited speaker at companies, universities and professional organizations.

Related Resources

For more than a decade, consultant Robert E. Kelley has studied what differentiates star performers from their coworkers. His findings appear in How to Be a Star at Work: 9 Breakthrough Strategies You Need to Succeed and How Bell Labs Creates Star Performers.

Total Quality Management (TQM) relies on a single fundamental principle: Maximize productivity while minimizing costs. There are a number of quality methodologies that can be used: Baldrige, Deming, ISO 9000, Kaizen, Lean, Six Sigma, and Tageuchi, to name just a few, that you can learn more about.