“I want to thank me for believing in me, I want to thank me for doing all this hard work. I wanna thank me for taking no days off. I wanna thank me for never quitting.”
– Snoop Dogg
My church stocks the pews with little “I Gave Online” cards for people to drop in the offering buckets.
Give me a break. What are you looking for, credit? Validation? Don’t broadcast your contribution; get back to work.
We’ve said it before: it’s not about you. It is, however, about effects and not efforts. Which offering buckets are you (unwisely) seeking out in your organization?
- That slide you added to the briefing just so everyone will know you were there.
- That special logo you made for your own Public Affairs team, rather than repping the greater organization.
- That briefing you added to the training schedule to pad your own evaluation.
- That fit you pitched about needing more people or resources?
Which offering buckets are you (unwisely) dropping your organization into?
- That article you wrote without finding a news hook. (Example: “Commander visits X” or any vanilla award/promotion “article” that doesn’t tell a story)
- The press release about something the press will ignore.
- Countless tweets and posts, flooding the web with noise but no signal.
- Community relations events more focused on the photos you’ll take and plaster all over the Internet, rather than genuine engagement with the human beings in front of your face.
- Trying so hard to get photos with your unit patch onto sites so your senior leaders will see them. In my day, this was the AKO front page, and various command pages we knew were the programmed home page on our unclassified networks.
There’s something to this: people love to talk about themselves; and people also love to consume media about themselves. As a communicator, this give you a leg up. If you want to reach an audience, and give them something to remember and share, then give them an opportunity to read and talk about themselves.
It’s not about you. It never will be. We have so much more at stake; we protect America. Connect to your audience and the higher mission. Focus on effects, not efforts.
It’s not about you. You’re not important. Talk about something important.
(Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Dustin Williams, DVIDS)
