【中英双语】拥有强大个人品牌的人，从来不担心失去工作
Approach Your Personal Brand Like a Project Manager
多莉·克拉克（Dorie Clark）、安东尼奥·尼托·罗德里格斯（Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez）|文
Many of us feel way too busy to give sustained thought or focus to cultivating a strong personal brand, even if we know it would be beneficial in the long-term. Amidst the crush of meetings, emails, and other obligations, how can we carve out the time to make progress in this crucial area?
我们很多人都太忙了，无法持续思考或专注于打造一个强大的个人品牌，即使我们知道这从长远来看是有益的。在忙碌的会议、电子邮件和其他职责中，我们如何才能挤出时间在这一关键领域取得进展?
One solution is to apply the principles of project management to your personal branding efforts. Drawing from Dorie's work in how to reinvent your personal brand and Antonio's background in project management, we've developed a framework that may be useful as you embark upon the important work of getting recognized for your expertise.
一个解决方案是将项目管理的原则应用到打造个人品牌的工作中。借鉴多莉关于如何重塑个人品牌方面的观点以及安东尼奥在项目管理方面的背景，我们开发了一个框架，当你想要打造个人品牌时，这个框架可能会对你很有用。
Not every element of project management transfers perfectly to personal branding — for instance, in personal branding, your “project sponsor” is almost always yourself! But here are six key project management tenets you can follow to make it far more likely your personal branding efforts will succeed, despite the distractions and busyness almost every professional experiences.
并不是项目管理的每个要素都能借鉴——例如，在个人品牌中，你的“项目赞助者”几乎总是你自己！但这里有六个关键的项目管理原则，你可以遵循这些原则，使你的个人品牌推广工作更有可能取得成功，尽管几乎每一次的专业尝试都会让你分心和忙碌。
Identify your purpose.
确定你的目标
Developing and honing your personal brand takes time — and it's almost never “urgent.” So why bother? It's essential to get clear on your purpose before starting, or your motivation is likely to flag quickly when time pressures emerge. An easy method of finding the purpose of your personal brand project is to ask several times, “Why am I doing this project?”
发展和磨练你的个人品牌需要时间——而且它几乎从来都不是那么“紧迫的”。那么为什么要费心去做呢？在开始之前明确你的目标是很重要的，否则当时间压力出现时，你的动力可能会迅速消失。找到个人品牌项目的一个简单方法是多次问自己:“我为什么要做这个项目?”
The answer might be: to be recognized for my expertise. Then ask yourself again: Why do you want to be recognized for your expertise?
答案可能是：因为我的专业知识而获得认可。然后再问问自己：你为什么希望自己的专业知识得到认可？
You might answer: To have more impact in the field of sales. And again — why? The answer might be anything from providing for your family to getting your product or service into more people's hands. There are no wrong answers, but it's important to understand your motivation and how much it matters to you.
你可能会回答：为了在销售领域拥有更大的影响力。再问一遍——为什么呢？答案可能是任何事情，从养家糊口，到让更多的人获得你的产品或服务。没有所谓错误的答案，重要的是了解你的动机以及它对你有多重要。
If after the exercise you don't reach something relevant — something that will motivate you to work on it — then we strongly recommend that you not start the project.
如果在练习之后你没有确定一些相关的目标，一些能激励你去做这个项目的目标，那么我们强烈建议你不要开始这个项目。
Decide on your investment.
决定你的投资
How much will the project cost? If we're talking about a corporate project, the cost might be measured in staff time, advertising spend, research and development, prototyping, software, manufacturing, and more.
这个项目要花多少钱？如果我们谈论的是一个企业项目，成本可能会用员工时间、广告支出、研究和开发、原型设计、软件、制造等等来衡量。
When it comes to your personal brand, even though there may be some investments (you might decide it's useful to create a personal website, for instance), the majority of your investment will be in the form of your time. For instance, you might decide to focus on building your network, creating content (such as launching a blog),or cultivating social proof. It's important to recognize that building a strong personal brand is a project that will take years to accomplish in the form you’d like. Antonio has been concertedly working on his brand since 2012, for instance.
但当涉及到你的个人品牌时，你的大部分投资将是你的时间（即使可能有一些投资，例如你可能认为创建一个个人网站是有用的）。你可能会决定要专注于建立人际网络，创建内容，比如发布博客，或者培养社交能力。重要的是要认识到，建立强大的个人品牌是一个需要数年才能获得结果的项目。例如，安东里奥自2012年以来就一直致力于打造他的品牌。
In her book The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World, Dorie observes that it often takes two to three years of effort to attain even minor recognition for your work, and five years or more to attain meaningful recognition. It's a long road, and you may decide it’s not worth it for you, or at least not at this time. But it’s also possible you may decide that time will pass anyway, so it's important to get started now. Either way, it's important to recognize and proactively choose the investment you're committing to.
在《长期游戏：如何在短期世界中成为一个长期的思考者》一书中，多莉观察到，想让你的工作获得些许认可，通常需要两到三年的努力，而要获得有意义的认可则需要五年或更长时间。这是一条漫长的道路，你可能会觉得不值得，至少现在不值得。但也有可能你会认为时间总会过去，所以现在就开始很重要。不管是哪种方式，重要的是要认识到并主动选择你所承诺的投资。
Get clear on the benefits — and how you’ll track them.
弄清楚它的好处
Here’s an essential question for any project manager to ask: How will you know that you've been successful? What will have happened, and by when?
这里有一个任何项目经理都应该问的重要问题：你如何知道你已经成功了？会发生什么，什么时候会发生?
For instance, you might be seeking benefits such as revenue (more clients seek you out because of your strong brand); impact (you're offered the chance to write a book or a column for a high-profile publication); or career progression (in a crowded field, you're chosen for the coveted promotion).
假如你寻求的是收益（更多的客户因为你强大的品牌而找你）；影响力（你有机会为知名刊物写书或写专栏）；或者职业晋升（在拥挤的领域，你被选中获得梦寐以求的晋升机会）。
Building a strong personal brand is a process that plays out over many years. The benefits rarely accrue in weeks or even months. But in order to keep yourself motivated during the process, it’s essential to develop a hypothesis (perhaps through conversations with colleagues whose career path you admire, or researching the biographies of people you don't know) for how long you suspect your project will take. Equally important, you should identify small signs of progress to monitor along the path (Dorie calls this “looking for the raindrops”) so you can periodically check your progress against your goals — and celebrate your wins.
建立强大的个人品牌是一个需要多年才能完成的过程。它的好处很少在几周甚至几个月内就能积累起来。但是为了在这个过程中保持你自己的动力，你有必要提出一个假设，预计你的项目会花多长时间（可能通过与你欣赏的同事交谈，或者研究你不认识的人物传记）。同样重要的是，你应该留意一些小进步，这样你就可以定期地对照目标检查自己的进展情况，并庆祝自己的胜利。
Identify your stakeholders.
确定你的利益相关者
Building a strong personal brand may seem like a project that only affects you — but actually, it's worth thinking expansively about the stakeholders that may be impacted. Your boss, for instance, may feel threatened or worry that you’re plotting to leave your job if you suddenly start to get active on social media or take steps to raise your profile. Where possible, it's important to keep them apprised of your goals and enlist their support.
打造强大的个人品牌可能看起来像是一个只影响你自己的项目，但实际上，它值得对可能受到影响的利益相关者进行思考。例如，如果你突然开始在社交媒体上活跃起来，或采取措施提升自己的个人形象，你的老板可能会感到威胁，或者担心你正打算辞职。在可能的情况下，让他们知道你的目标并争取他们的支持是很重要的。
Similarly, it's useful to identify whom you'd like to reach with your newly robust personal brand. For instance, you might decide that you’d like to become recognized for your expertise not just inside your company, but also within your field, so you might think about ways to gain notice, such as applying to speak at conferences or writing for industry publications. (Of course, it's essential to be aware of your company's communication guidelines and policies upfront.)
同样，确定你想利用新的个人品牌与谁接触也是很有用的。例如，你希望自己的专业知识不仅在公司内部得到认可，而且在你所在的领域也得到认可，因此你可能会想办法获得关注，比如申请在会议上发言或为行业出版物撰稿。当然，事先了解公司的沟通指导方针和政策是至关重要的。
Lay out your resources and deliverables.
列出你的资源和可交付的成果
Projects are delivered by people, and they can't be automated. So ensuring that you have enough time to dedicate toward building and managing your personal brand is key. In most cases, before starting the project, we recommend that you stop one or two activities that you are currently doing. Maybe that means reducing your volunteer activities, or quitting your sports league, or recognizing that you won't actually learn Italian this year. But giving yourself sufficient resources — i.e., time — to commit to the new project is an essential starting point.
项目是由人交付的，不能被自动化。所以确保你有足够的时间来建立和管理个人品牌是关键。在大多数情况下，项目开始之前，我们建议你停止一两项当前正在进行的活动。也许这意味着减少你的志愿者活动，或者退出你的体育联盟，或者你今年需要放弃学习意大利语。但给自己足够的资源，也就是时间，投入到新项目中，这是一个必要的起点。
It's also important to understand the deliverables you'll be responsible for. All projects exist to develop something — often something new — in the form of outputs and deliverables. In the case of bolstering your personal brand, this may take the form of launching a podcast, starting a networking group, beginning a side gig teaching at a local university, etc.
理解你将要负责的交付成果也很重要。所有项目的存在都是为了以产出和可交付成果的形式开发一些东西，通常是一些新的东西。为了提升你的个人品牌，可以采取以下形式：发布播客，建立一个网络群，在当地大学开始兼职教学等。
Nail down your plan.
确定你的计划
Finally, you need to ask: How and when will the work be carried out? Every project manager will tell you projects have a natural flow. There is a relaxed feeling at the beginning of the project, as the end seems distant. Stress starts to hit as the project moves toward the midway point and teams realize that deadlines are coming quickly. Toward the end of the project, everyone is in a mad scramble to get things done. A key job of project managers is breaking projects into smaller deliverables with deadlines to lessen this effect.
最后，你需要问：这项工作将如何开展，以及何时开展？每个项目经理都会告诉你项目有一个常规的流程。项目开始时有一种轻松的感觉，因为离结束似乎很遥远。随着项目进展到接近一半时，团队意识到截止日期即将到来，压力也随之而来。项目快结束时，每个人都在疯狂地抢着完成任务。项目经理的一项关键工作是将项目分解成带有截止日期的、较小的可交付成果，从而减少这种影响。
By breaking the work into the most important things that need to be completed on a weekly or biweekly basis and then having honest conversations about what they accomplished during those periods, teams hold themselves accountable, focusing on what they need to do. Instilling the habit of making and reviewing commitments each week is a great way to focus on what's important and get a clear picture of what's getting done.
如果你将工作分解成需要每周或每两周完成的最重要的事情，然后开诚布公地讨论在这期间完成了哪些事情，团队就会对自己负责，专注于他们需要做的事情。养成每周回顾的习惯是一个好方法，可以让你专注于重要的事情，并且清楚地知道要做什么。
Developing a regular schedule is important for your personal branding project, as well, because it ensures that even if you get busy, the most important tasks won't fall off your radar. For example, establish a weekly status check on your personal branding project, on the same day and time of the week. Or release your new blog posts at the same time each week, on the same day. Or schedule a networking coffee every Friday afternoon. These small habits will help build habits (in you) and expectations (in others), leading to faster recognition of the brand you’re creating.
制定规律的时间表对你的个人品牌项目也很重要，因为它可以确保即使你很忙，最重要的任务也不会从你的视野中消失。例如，在每周的同一天和同一时间，对你的个人品牌项目进行状态检查。或者在每周的同一时间、同一天发布你的新博客。或者每周五下午安排一次咖啡社交。这些小习惯会帮助你养成自身的习惯和满足他人的期望，从而让你更快地认识到你正在创立的品牌。
We can never fully control how others view us. But when you manage the cultivation of your personal brand like a project – replete with a compelling purpose, ambitious objectives, a realistic timeline, and clear deliverables – your chances of success in developing a reputation you can be proud of will be much higher.
我们永远无法完全控制别人对我们的看法。但是，当你像管理一个项目一样来打造你的个人品牌时——充满了强烈的目的、雄心勃勃的目标、现实的时间表和清晰的交付成果——你成功建立声誉的几率就会高得多。
多莉·克拉克是一位市场营销战略家，在杜克大学富卡商学院教书，并被 thinkers50评为世界50大商业思想家之一。
安东尼奥·尼托·罗德里格斯是《哈佛商业评论项目管理手册》(Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook)、《哈佛商业评论》文章《项目经济已经到来》(The Project Economy Has Arrived)的作者。
