Anyone who watches the Pro Bowl–the NFL’s fan chosen all-star game–knows that identifying specific players isn’t always easy. Players from all teams shed their standard uniforms and don game-specific duds that identify either the AFC or the NFC. The only thing that saves us visually challenged fans is that they get to keep their regular helmets, shoes, and accessories. Only from the topside can a fan pick out a Colt, a Dolphin, a Jaguar, or a Seahawk. Even then, it can get a bit blurry in the fast action.

Except for the Packers players.

With nothing more than a sidelong glance, any fan can immediately pick out a Packers player. While these guys fit right in when they’re playing with the full complement of their team, the glaring PMS-1235C gold of their helmets and shoes (not the glittery gold of royalty but a revved up version of 1962 refrigerator) makes a pretty bold statement against the blue and white of the NFC uniforms. Indeed, I have to say that it looks downright gaudy.

And that’s okay.

Those colors (as a metaphor for the team) earned those players the right to be there. It was the combination of team play and their contribution to it that made “The Chosen” stand out. Without those colors, those guys wouldn’t be there. Whether a player’s colors are green and gold, orange and black, or blue and white, he should wear them proudly.

Even though you may not be a football star, that goes for you, too. Your colors are really the sum of your experiences–those same experiences that brought you wherever you are today. So don’t hide those experiences; instead, wear them like badges for your lessons learned. Even if you move on from your team or perform outside your normal arena, don’t hide who you are. Show your true colors. You’ve earned them.

A few years ago, my staff members introduced themselves round-robin style to a visiting vendor. One by one, each told who he was and what he did for the company. Eventually we made it around the table to one of the newer members of my staff, who gave his name and said, “I’m just a web designer.”

I stopped the conversation right there.

It was really important to me that this person understood his contribution to the company–and that it had value. A company needs every employee, from the CEO to the accountant to the lathe operator to the groundskeeper to run successfully. Each part contributes something to the whole.

One of my favorite anecdotes from my professional experience was relayed to me years ago by the woman who cleaned our offices. She normally did her work after most people had left for the day, but one evening the then-CEO stuck around for a late meeting. When he saw her in the hallway, he pulled her into the board room and asked her to tell his visitor why she was important to our company. Though this exercise was totally unexpected and certainly unrehearsed, she didn’t miss a beat. She told the visitor what she did, why she did it, and how it fit into the company’s values. She was right on target.

No one is “just” an anything. We all offer an activity that is necessary to the success of our employer, or we wouldn’t be there. If you don’t know why you’re important, figure it out. Once you find your purpose, you’ll be amazed how it affects your performance. I’m willing to bet that others will notice, too.

I’m not a feminist crusader. Although I’m not oblivious to the issues, I honestly don’t think of myself in terms of a gender when considering getting a job done. I’m just me. Either I can do the work or I can’t. If I can, I’ll work hard to prove it.

Even so, here’s a plain truth: guys can carry steno pads.

If you read my earlier post, Steno-sis, you understand the reference. After I wrote it, I thought of a long-time colleague who always used a steno-pad as his note-taking medium of choice. I’m sure he had scores of them stashed around his office, filled without a second thought to how he looked scribbling beneath the spiral binding.

What gives?

He started at the company around the same time I did, is fairly close to my age, and our careers followed the same general trajectory. He never got the speech, and it didn’t seem to hurt him. The main difference? He’s a guy. No one ascribed secretarial allusions to his persona, simply because of that fact.

I’m not complaining. This guy was really good at his job and earned every promotion he got; he just had to worry less about appearances.

And that’s the way of the world. It just is. Frankly, I care a little, but not a lot. I can’t change it by myself, though I do believe those perceptions will eventually shift, however slowly. In the meantime, it makes more sense to put my energy into understanding my world and learning how to navigate it most effectively. Rather than bemoaning the unfairness of this scenario, I’ll move the needle far more by ditching my own steno pad and doing great things, proving that I have the mettle to get the job done–with another kind of note pad, alongside my steno-bro.

And that’s my analy-sis.

P.S. You really should read Steno-sis if you haven’t. This post will make a lot more sense with proper context.

I may have written about this before, but the topic keeps resurfacing in my world. Whatever you do in life, remember this: the measure is not the mission. It’s perfectly acceptable to look at your paycheck or your bonus as a measure of your accomplishments. It’s standard practice to gauge your company’s success by earnings per share or net income. It’s okay to mark your weight loss progress on the scales.

BUT…

Those results are indicators of a successful mission; don’t let them become the mission itself.

If your mission is to write critically acclaimed fiction, your first few successes will net promising royalties and advances for new works. But if you fall in love with the money itself and start writing for the mass market to generate more cash, you’ve undermined your original goal. Your quality will suffer as you crank out more books, faster, without being able to give appropriate attention to the content. (Sorry, James Patterson.)

If your company sets out to roast and deliver premium coffees to an underserved market, its initial success will be visible in financial measures. When the smell of money overpowers the smell of coffee and you look for ways to generate more profit without regard for the principles that got you there in the first place, your premium coffee customers will look elsewhere for their caffeine fix. (Read The Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella for a great fictional illustration of this.)

If you set out to lose weight to improve your health, you’ll obviously turn to the scales to measure your progress. When you disregard what you put into your body in favor of how much (i.e. calories) you put into your body, you can lose weight without the desired health benefits. You can become nutritionally deficient from empty calories, but Wow! What a weight loss success! (Sarcasm intended.)

If you still don’t get my point, think of it this way.

*Warning. Here comes a sports analogy.*

Owners of football teams want more revenue. Fair enough. When a team is good, more people go to the games. More people buy jerseys and t-shirts. More sponsors sign up because they see more fans. When the team starts losing consistently, the opposite happens and the owners sees his income start to drop. Certainly, the owner can try to creatively promote interest and attendance, but unless his team starts playing well, he will likely only slow the shrinking of his wallet. So he goes to work on the team. If he fixes the team’s woes and they start winning, the fans will come back–with their money. The money is the measure; winning games is the mission.

I realize that I’m starting to ramble here, and I apologize. It’s just that I so often see people managing their lives and their businesses to a measure while they ignore what got them there in the first place. It boils down to this. Stick with your mission and do it really well; the rest will take care of itself.

The Super Bowl (er, sorry NFL, the “Big Game”) arrives in Indy in a couple of weeks and I can barely contain my excitement. No, I don’t have tickets to the event itself, but you’d better believe I’m spending that weekend immersed in the fray surrounding it. Even better, my very good friend and her husband are flying to Indiana to join me for the celebration. We’re going to have so much fun!

Yet even as my eyes burn bright with anticipation, a curling tendril of fear has started to rise from my gut, threatening to quench the flame. They’ve never visited me before; what if I screw this up? What if they don’t like the things I have planned? Where should we eat? Will they be bored? Underprogrammed? Overprogrammed? How can I get this right?

I haven’t said a word to anyone about this niggling fear of mine, but somehow my friend must have sensed it. In a recent phone conversation, I was relaying some of my ideas when she stopped me dead in my tracks. “Tammy,” she said, “We are going to have a blast that weekend, but I don’t care what we do. You don’t have to entertain us. Remember, we’re coming to see YOU.”

Whoa.

My friend has never given me a better gift than lifting the burden from my shoulders as she did in that moment. In my planning frenzy, I had become so wrapped up in the idea that I had to impress her with a constant stream of fabulous events that I had lost sight of the most fabulous event itself: our visit. “Yeah,” I thought, internally nodding my head. “Yeah. That’s right. We get to talk and laugh and hang out. The rest is gravy.”

I do that a lot–get so wrapped up in the accoutrements that I forget to focus on the centerpiece. Whether it’s planning a party or a trip or a school project for one of my kids, I often work so hard on the trappings that the event itself roars past me while I’m looking the other way.

No matter what I plan, we’re going to have a great time. We’re still going to go to Indy and soak up the atmosphere, but the exact details of where and when and how no longer loom as large over my head. Wherever we watch the game, we’ll be side-by-side, cheering (or screaming) loudly, clinking our glasses and munching on goodies. Every now and then, we’ll turn and grin at each other, just because we can–because she’s there. That’s what this is all about, and after that phone conversation, I’m even more excited.

Don’t ever forget why you’re doing what you’re doing. “Getting it right” may not have as much to do with the things you think it does.

A colleague of mine is retiring after over 40 years with the same company. That’s a long time. Some people would say that there must be something really compelling about the company for someone to stay that long. Maybe so, but I posit that, at least in this case, the real credit goes to the person.

For a person to survive and thrive (key word, here) for over four decades at one company, he has to be committed to his role in making that company successful. In that sense, he has to be selfless, applying his talents in the places where they are most needed and will do the most good, even when those places may not be where he is most comfortable. He can’t do that without being extremely flexible. He also has to be willing to learn. Even in the very unlikely event that his duties remain the same over the entire course of his employment, a lot changes in four decades–products, technologies, practices. Finally, he has to be able to share his knowledge and experience with others in order to fully realize the benefits of his contribution.

My colleague is all of these things: committed, selfless, flexible, willing to learn, and able to share.

For years, Keith was the best at what he did as the operations manager for the company’s premier manufacturing facility. When his job changed dramatically, he didn’t wade cautiously into the new position–one that appeared only peripherally related to his former position–he dove deep. He not only mastered the new job, he became the authority. He became the trainer. On top of it all, he’s a really great guy. We could all learn a lot from his example, and I know I already have.

Enjoy every minute of your retirement, Keith. With all due respect, you’ve earned it.

As I walked to a meeting yesterday, I looked at the chic little pad of paper I had brought with me for note-taking. It occurred to me that this compact, smartly dressed booklet was really nothing more than a steno pad, and I had to laugh at the irony.

Years ago when I started at this company, I spent a lot of time learning the ropes. Combined with the fact that most of my work was project-based rather than covering a standing area of responsibility, I became pretty closely tied with my boss. Eventually he even moved me to an office adjacent to his that offered a pass-through door. All this together time and proximity meant easy access and regular collaboration, but it gave a different appearance to others. People began to assume that I was his secretary.

At 25 and happy to be there, I didn’t pay much attention to that perception. I presumed that this notion would work itself out over time. Thankfully, a man others saw as crusty and insensitive–my boss himself–saved me from reputational doom. He saw growth potential for me within the company and didn’t want others to pigeonhole me into a permanent admin position. Certainly in this case, he clearly understood the importance of perception.

That’s why the first time he saw me bring a standard steno pad into his office to take notes, he forbade me from using it. He told me that if I didn’t want others to think I was his personal admin, I couldn’t look like it. To further underscore his point, he soon thereafter put a chair in front of my door to his office. I had to walk around to the main door like everyone else. My office was to be my office, not an anteroom to his.

I obliged, of course. I was young and hungry to excel and willing to take advice in whatever form it came. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it; I just trusted his judgment.

I’m glad I did.

The more I’ve thought about his guidance over the years, the more I’ve appreciated its wisdom. Though he has since retired, I am still with the same company. I’ve moved through many positions, but always on an upward trajectory. I’m convinced that his mentoring played a big part in that. He taught me many lessons over the years, and I’ve taken (almost) all of them to heart. This first one, though, is the foundation upon which the rest of them are built: look/act like the person you want to become. If you wait until you get there, you probably never will.

As I looked down at my fancy tablet yesterday and saw a gussied-up steno pad, I silently thanked my former boss for guiding my career in a way that let me carry it with confidence. After all these years, I’ve finally earned the right.

Thanks, Don.

Oh, Paula. Really?

Shame on you. And you, too, Novo Nordisk.

I just can’t stand what you’re both doing to your brands. It feels dirty.

For those of you who don’t know what’s going on, yesterday Paula Deen–the aptly dubbed “Queen of Southern Cuisine” for her ooey, gooey, buttery, sugary, doctors-look-away-please recipes–announced that she has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. You know, the kind that has a whole heck of a lot to do with lifestyle. Oh, and did I mention that she has known this for three years? And by the way, she also announced her paid partnership with Novo Nordisk as a spokesperson for its diabetes drugs.

Lots of celebrities do this, right?

This is different, and here’s why I think so. As I consider other celebrity endorsements of products and programs, all of the examples that come to mind involve some type of change. Kirstie Alley finds (and founds) new weight loss programs all the time and regardless of her level of success, she’s trying to fix the problem by changing her behavior. Jared endorses Subway as a healthier alternative to his former food choices. He changed his eating habits to combat a problem. In these cases, there’s a problem and a solution. There is an intent to fix something that doesn’t work and eliminate the problem. No one continues to promote one of the factors that caused the problem in the first place.

Except Paula.

Step one: show people how to cook delicious, decadent, really unhealthy food. Promote it on TV and make lots of money with cookbooks and supporting items. Further promote your brand in your restaurant by serving those same recipes in staggering quantities. So far, I’m okay with this. I’m in control of what I put into my body. After all, I’m not mad at McDonald’s for serving Extra Value Meals that surpass my daily caloric requirement; I just don’t usually eat them.

Step two: Get diagnosed with a serious health problem, one that millions of other people share. I’m still okay. Everyone needs a wake-up call sometimes. Here comes the rub, though.

Step three: Instead of diving in and making the changes necessary to mitigate or eliminate the problem, endorse a drug that manages the problem, all the while continuing with the behaviors that got you there in the first place.

If you still don’t get my point, consider this. Though she just went public yesterday, Paula has known of her condition for three years. All that time, she has been glibly promoting and profiting from the very behavior that got her there (or at least helped). She’s also pushing a drug that she might not need if she were to change her lifestyle. Eat more fattening, unhealthy food–gain weight–get diabetes–take this drug so you can continue doing the same. It’s like encouraging people to get sick so you can sell them the drug to make them better.

Paula’s making money on both sides, and Novo Nordisk is happily reaping the benefit of her efforts. All I see is damage to the integrity of both brands. To be credible, a person or company can’t support opposing causes.

So which will it be, Paula? Decadent food choices? Or healthy living? Pick one side and go with it. You can’t have it both ways.

Note: Although the main theme of this post is brand integrity, I am shocked, dismayed, and disappointed at this example of the health and nutrition issues facing our country. It reminds me of the movie Wall-E, where instead of working to fix a problem, everyone worked to accommodate it. So much wasted effort.