Why your personal brand is important for your success

by Stefan Lindegaard

I would argue that your skills are not your most attractive asset on the job market today. In this competitive world they are merely table stakes.  Your career today is no longer just built on what you know and what you can achieve. Today it is very much also about your personal brand and your network of relationships.

“My personal brand? Come on, I am who I am,” you might say. Wrong. You are who other people believe you are, and this will determine how you can build and nurture the relationships that can define your career and determine whether you achieve your vision of success. Whether you know it or not and whether you like it or not, you already have a personal brand....

Time: Do you get enough out of your most valuable asset?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Working with innovation, you are bound to have time issues. This career is time-consuming. You are being pulled from all directions, and no matter how many items you cross of your to-do list, the number of tasks just seems to keep increasing.

Time – or more likely the lack of it – is something we often get into during my network meetings as all of our members spent most of their time in a little box labeled URGENT. We have a general tendency to assume there’s nothing we can do about it; issues with time just go with the territory, right?

Well, that answer is only partially correct. And the reality is that unless you get control of your time management issues, you stand little...

Why should I connect with you on LinkedIn?

by Stefan Lindegaard

What is the reason for being connected to 3,459 people on LinkedIn if I do not know who they are and what they stand for? What if someone asks me to introduce them to someone I am connected with – but do not even know? To me, it just becomes too superficial.

That said, I very seldom get such requests to introduce someone to others and a recent online discussion made me reconsider my approach to LinkedIn. The discussion prompted questions like these: Should I view LinkedIn as more of a “see how many I am connected with” rather than a picture of my real network? Should I just connect with everyone and expand my reach even though I find my reach to be just...

Your personal strategy for change at work

by Stefan Lindegaard

I believe everyone needs a personal strategy for change. Here are five steps to help you develop your change strategy based on my work with innovation leaders and intrapreneurs:

1. Realize and acknowledge your issues – and choose to change.
It is quite simple. You need to realize and acknowledge your issues before you can commit to changes. Only you can make changes in your life, and it starts with opening your eyes to the differences between your current situation and the values and picture of success that you’ve developed for yourself.

Here’s something I hear a lot: “I am too old for change” or  “Change is too difficult.” You only need to look at any of the famous examples of people who achieved success...