Brand 'Me', Part II

So in Part I there was an example of bad branding and I mentioned that I'm somewhat apprehensive about marketing in general. So in this segment, what's MY brand?

I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now and it really just came to me a little while ago. My thing is that I'm really good at figuring out how things go together, what the various parts are, and how to improve the bits and provide service to the customer. In my two previous positions I was hired into one job and within a few months, promoted into a much higher level position. I attribute it to my ability to quickly get the lay of the land and being able to make improvements in bite-sized chunks and after enough chunks, you can have a pretty big meal. That's what I do.

When I left my previous position at the University I got some really flattering farewell messages from a lot of people but also several from people with parallel responsibilities operating outside my department and division. I hadn't actively thought about it but I was able to facilitate service because I knew what the various parts were and was able to involve the right teams to solve problems. I think this comes back to my personal adage: It's not what you know but it's about being able to find what you need to know. When a couple of research departments were thinking about building a collaborative project that required technology support they didn't go to the individual responsible for the infrastructure, they came to me. Naturally, I involved the infrastructure team and even though the departments knew who was responsible for that portion of the University's technology, they wanted me involved. I took this as a huge compliment and after a while with meeting with the responsible parties and the researches together I was able to hand it off but I really like this reputation. This is part of my brand.

The other thing that I heard from people was that I was pleasant to work with. This bugs me; not that people find me nice to deal with, but that it seems to be so uncommon with technology people. There is a certain arrogance and lack of communications competency that seems so prevalent within technology that it's really quite embarrassing to me. More than once I heard about this from people after they met with some of our most talented individuals. It makes me shudder and as a manager we can try to coach people on these things but the reality is that they need to make a decision to be civil and professional. We as managers CAN NOT continue to give these people high marks based on their technical skills alone. Re-write the job description if you need to but let's not give people a reason to want to outsource their technology needs!