{"id":471700,"date":"2010-03-25T15:14:31","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T19:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=41586"},"modified":"2010-03-25T15:14:31","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T19:14:31","slug":"forge-ahead-and-build-your-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/471700","title":{"rendered":"Forge ahead, and build your brand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that the recession is officially over in Massachusetts, according to economists if not the public, it\u2019s time to take stock. And the message from speakers at a Harvard Extension School <\/a>panel Wednesday (March 24) was that people should not wait for economic reforms, but instead should build their own brands and skills in order to prosper.<\/p>\n

The panel was the third of four celebrating the Extension School\u2019s centennial<\/a>. Titled \u201cDoing Business in the Post-Meltdown Economy,\u201d the symposium drew a large and engaged audience to Lowell Hall.<\/p>\n

Each of the three speakers viewed the question quite differently. The first, Richard Parker<\/a>, a lecturer in public policy and a senior fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy<\/a> at Harvard Kennedy School<\/a>, took a broad approach, voicing his concern that, in the three years since the financial meltdown began, little headway has been made toward adequate national reform. While many Americans \u201chave suffered losses in our IRAs,\u201d said Parker, and others have lost their jobs and homes, \u201cit\u2019s important to think globally\u201d as the recession increases malnourishment and child mortality worldwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe criticism I have of the modern economy is that it has lost its way,\u201d he said, since it has tended to turn away from Keynesian economics<\/a>, which includes an active role for government, to a point where \u201cthe markets were supremely efficient.\u201d The distribution of wealth has grown consistently more unequal, he said, and \u201cI can\u2019t begin to record the ways in which these inequalities harm our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvard and the Extension School have a moral duty to \u201ccreate a nation of opportunity and justice,\u201d he said. \u201cKnowledge is the antidote to greed and shortsightedness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other two panelists looked at the question from a more personal point of view.<\/p>\n

Stuart Sadick, a partner at the executive search organization Heidrick & Struggles<\/a> who heads the company\u2019s Global Consulting and Advisory Services sector, examined what individuals can do to get back on their feet, post-recession.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about you,\u201d he said, \u201cmanaging your talent, your career, and your brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking a more optimistic view, Sadick said, \u201cI think I have a problem with the word \u2018meltdown.\u2019 I think it was a profound, very scary adjustment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In speaking with dozens of job seekers over the past year, he said, he has found that many people took their job loss as an opportunity to redefine themselves. \u201cThe people who are doing better now are the ones who saw possibility, as opposed to doom and gloom,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen everyone zigs, you better learn to zag.\u201d<\/p>\n

If job seekers simply respond to employment ads on Monster.com<\/a> and other Web sites, for example, they won\u2019t get very far because everyone else is doing that. The people \u201cwho really understand what they are about \u2014 and why they are particularly valuable to any organization they go to \u2014 don\u2019t wait for the job listing,\u201d he said. They use today\u2019s ubiquitous social networking and their own agility to reinvent themselves, \u201cboth inside and outside the organization.\u201d Often the people who kept their jobs during the recession, he added, were those who didn\u2019t say, \u201cIt\u2019s not my job,\u201d but rather, \u201cI have an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadick conducted a small survey in which he found that 60 percent of respondents said their careers had been affected by the financial meltdown. Of those, 70 percent said they had been affected for the worse. But those very people were the ones who often ended up happier in their new situations. \u201cThey bit the bullet, shrugged off corporate life forever, started their own firms, became more focused on building relationships, rethought their career directions. The message from these respondents is people do see tremendous opportunities and possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen A. Greyser<\/a>, the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration Emeritus <\/em>at Harvard Business School<\/a>, examined brand reputation in a trust-intensive era, examining well-known case studies ranging from Toyota to Tiger Woods, with stops at Martha Stewart, the International Olympic Committee, and Arthur Andersen along the way.<\/p>\n

He presented antidotes for those who may find themselves amid public relations crises. \u201cFind the facts,\u201d he said. \u201cTell the truth about them. Address the problems, even if it\u2019s expensive to do so, and work to regain that eroded trust, even if it involves changing corporate behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next centennial panel<\/a> event, \u201cSustaining Our Earth\u2019s Ecosystems,\u201d will be 4 p.m. April 14, Lowell Lecture Hall, Kirkland and Oxford streets. Key environmentalists share their passion and commitment to their life\u2019s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the recession is officially over in Massachusetts, according to economists if not the public, it\u2019s time to take stock. And the message from speakers at a Harvard Extension School panel Wednesday (March 24) was that people should not wait for economic reforms, but instead should build their own brands and skills in order […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}