Newsletter #22

Me, My Business, and I

Hi there,

When Your Identity Hijacks Your Business

I joined Tayburn (the brand consultancy I ran for eleven years) in June 2005.

From day one I was keen to make my mark on the business. I’d recently come across the concept of ‘the first 100 days’ and so I was eager to have an impact straight away. I questioned things. Changed things. Scrapped things. Initiated things. All in an effort to push the business closer towards my idea of a good business. In my mind, the job to be done was to make Tayburn a more creative, more strategic, more modern, and more visible business than it was.

These were the things that I thought were important in turning the business around.

But it’s only just dawned on me that what I was trying to do was turn the business in to something that reflected well on me. Being more creative, more strategic, more modern and more visible were important to me. Therefore, I assumed that they should be important to the business.

As it turned out, my strategy worked out pretty well for the first few years. The business did turn around and it did become more successful. But in doing so, I inadvertently meshed my own identity with that of the business. My own personal identity was so caught up in the identity of Tayburn that it became a limiting bind for both me and the business.

A Business is its Own Entity

Tayburn was officially born on 5th March 1979. It’s still going strong today - nearly 46 years later. It’s one of the oldest marketing business brand names still in existence in Scotland. The business had been around for 36 years before I got involved. It had grown, evolved, succeeded, failed, pivoted, survived, and thrived for many more years than I had been working.

As part of that 36 year journey, Tayburn had evolved many strings to its bow. Everything from corporate reporting to advertising, digital marketing to brand identity. One particularly strong string in the bow was something very specific - technical artwork and reprographics for large scale FMCG brands.

For the uninitiated that means Tayburn was amazing at doing all the technical, behind the scenes work that made sure brands like Heineken had a consistent brand representation on all its cans, bottles, labels, and promotional items. Where ever you saw the brand, you saw the same logo, the same colour, the same fonts, the same everything. Pure brand consistency wherever it went.

The Tayburn team that did this work were brilliant at their job. They were valued by the client. They delivered time after time. And as a result, they were a highly profitable part of the business. The problem was, it wasn’t making the business more creative, more strategic, more modern or more visible. Or to be more accurate, I didn’t see how it was making the business more creative, more strategic, more modern and more visible. That part of the business didn’t fit ‘MY’ identity as the business’s leader.

I wanted the business to be something else. Something that felt more like me. That led me to doing a poor job promoting that part of the business. And consequently, I failed the business because of my personal desires.

The technical artwork and reprographic business tried its best to tell me what it was. The revenue showed me. The client relationships showed me. The team's skills showed me. But I was too busy imposing my vision to hear what wanted to emerge.

The False Self Business

This is what dawned on me just the other day. When our identity as leaders gets tangled up with our business's identity, we're no longer leading the business - we're projecting our ego’s desires on to it. The business becomes a vehicle for proving something about ourselves. For validation. For the story we tell ourselves about who we are and the specific type of success we yearn.

This is false self business. Business leadership driven by the ego. Driven by lack of awareness, driven by fear of losing control, driven by the need to be seen a certain way.

Tayburn has continued to grow, evolve, succeed, fail, pivot, survive, and thrive as a business without me for the past 10 years. It has continued to express what it needs to be rather than what my ego wanted it to be.

And front and centre of the Tayburn offer these days is the very same technical artwork and reprographic skill that was always there. That is the nature of the business that has bloomed, year after year, for the past few decades. And it’s only now that I realise how much I undervalued that and missed the point completely. Blinded by my own ego.

It’s only now that I realise that the businesses we lead, aren't there to complete us. They’re there to express their own unique nature, to serve what the world is asking of them, to develop the capabilities that they are uniquely positioned to develop.

What Wants to Emerge

This has led me to the conclusion that true self leadership asks a different question. It asks; what does this business want to become? Not what do I (the leader) need it to become to bolster my ego, my story, my sense of self-worth.

When you can separate your identity from the business's identity, something shifts. You stop trying to force the business to validate you. You start sensing what wants to emerge through it.

Maybe that thing is glamorous. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's deeply profitable. Maybe it grows slowly. Maybe it stays small but goes deep.

The business knows. If only you can learn to listen and leave your ego out of the equation.

The Practice

This requires real honesty. It requires looking at where you're using the business to prove something. Where you're resisting what it's actually good at because it doesn't match your self-image. Where you're imposing rather than sensing.

And here's the hardest part: there may come a time when you're not the right person to lead that business anymore. Not because you've failed, but because what the business needs to become requires a different kind of leadership than you're meant to provide.

That's not defeat. That's recognising that you're a channel, not a controller. A steward, not a dictator. That business, at its deepest level, is a creative and evolutionary entity in its own right - not a reflection of your worth.

The Freedom in This

When I look back at Tayburn now, I see what I couldn't see then. The business, especially the technical artwork part of the business, was doing exactly what it should have been doing because that was what the world was asking for. It was being exactly what it was being called to be. Exceptional at its work.

My discomfort wasn't about that part of the business. It was about me.

When we measure a business’s success not by whether it validates our identity, but by whether it's expressing its nature fully - like a child growing up according to who he or she is, and not apologising for failing to meet parental expectations - we release a huge amount of freedom. We allow our businesses to be themselves. We can free them of the apron strings. We fully accept we are not our businesses. And they are not us. We are free. The business is free. It can become what it needs to become without our limiting impositions.

That's true self business.

And it starts with one question: Am I stewarding this business and allowing it to express itself fully, or am I using it in an attempt to look good?

I think I may have finally learned this lesson - 10 years after the fact.

Better late than never I suppose.

Until next time,

Simon