Personal Branding at Google

I'm looking forward to Monday morning.

I know that many people don't. They drag themselves out of bed, get a cup of coffee, put on their longest face, and groan at anyone who says, "Good morning!" when they get to work.

But I really am looking forward to getting to work on Monday. In fact, I think I'll get their a couple of hours early.

I'll be teaching ("facilitating" in Google lingo) a two-hour workshop on "personal branding", based on the notion that everyone sends a message about their work ethic and their value to the workplace. Tom  Peters pioneered the idea in a story for Fast Company, The Brand Called You, back in 1997. More  recently, Dan Schwabel (and others) have taken up the message in stories like Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand, published at Mashable.com in 2009.

Yesterday, I was reviewing the slides and facilitator notes to refresh my memory for the class. Someone, probably the program manager who oversees the course, had changed the materials a bit a few weeks ago, so I had to catch up on the changes. I also usually make a private copy and delete a couple of slides from the sequence because they are not terribly valuable in the discussion.

But I discovered some glaring inconsistencies between the slide sequence, the facilitator notes, and the student workbook. For all I know, those inconsistencies have been there a long time (which would explain why I usually stumble in that part of the class).

I spent most of my afternoon yesterday frantically massaging the notes and slide sequence to better match the workbook that the students may have already printed out. Now I am pleased with the result, but I need to put it through another review with a fresh mind on Monday morning, just before I actually teach, err...facilitate, the class.

All that massaging and re-work of the slides and notes had another benefit. Those notes that were at the center of the inconsistencies are also the core of the class exercises. Yesterday's re-work effort made me more familiar with them than I have been in several months. That should help make the class go more smoothly.

Bottom line: I'm stoked about getting to work on Monday morning. It's going to be a GREAT day.