In the corporate world careers are won or lost by one’s ability to hide who they are and, in the process, they often forget that the best commodity to use in order to get where they want is honesty. We have, in the world of business, become so good at hiding our true selves that polymetric tests and personality-stress questions, the old tools of headhunters and HR executives have become a little passé as we have become adept at guessing what the right answer might be and then providing the expected question.

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Imagine, for an instance, your perfect house. Total opulence, fantastic use of space. Roomy to the extreme, custom-designed to cater to your every whim. Now, look at it from the outside and as you approach notice the horizontal opening placed eight feet above the ground which is the only way in. You need a ladder to get in there. Nothing else will do. The designer, in keeping with the innovative nature of your requests for an extraordinary, innovative, home thought that a door, placed vertically, at ground level was way too traditional and designed something else instead.

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It’s rare that a simple announcement comes with a price tag but in the age of the web, web-based business have the ability to make or lose fortunes pretty much overnight. Google moved into China in 2006, it agreed to abide by Chinese government censorship laws and has, since, worked quietly to open up the market and gain a foothold for its business.

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One size fits all is the sign of an out of date mentality which delivers sub-standard products and services nit really suitable to the job at hand. This sweeping statement cuts across very front, whether you’re getting a facelift across the border in Mexico as part of the medical tourism phenomenon, or getting some SEO done on your website by some student who’s read the latest book on it and hopes to make some quick cash.

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Before the days of the web successful business required expensive advertising, glossy leaflets and catalogues and valuable word-of-mouth recommendation in order to increase their market share. Nothing’s changed! The web has taken the same imperatives and given them a digital spin which means that the potential rewards have become bigger, the risks of not paying attention to the changing market place have become greater and everything has become, faster, wider and more personal.

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Because most ‘great brands’ tend to be owned by large multinational corporations there is a tendency to think that a great brand requires a lot of money to achieve its status. This is not entirely true. Great brands, by all means, require money in order to build a plurality in their appearance and to sustain the momentum of their marketing but the principles of brand-building are applicable to every organization just starting out on a tight budget.

It is these principles which, if understood correctly, will become the driving engine of your brand. Many of these, at the beginning, require little or no cost but all of them, always, require a certain amount of work. Because brand-building is a lengthy process it requires, from the outset, a clear grasp of the inherent values of what is being promoted (or in this case created) and a strategy designed to provide a consistent approach both internally (within your organization) and externally (as you communicate with your potential customers).

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With over 150 million users Facebook has become the symbol of the online life of the Y generation who cut their teeth on LinkedIn and MySpace before taking their entire existence on the web and linking their Facebook updates with Twitter. It has also become the single greatest challenge for any company or entrepreneur looking to take their message directly to an audience which needs their products and services.

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The most overused cliché in business development is “thinking outside the box”, it is also the least believed because it is the least practised all of which draws attention to the ridiculous state of leadership suffered by many business and the reason, for many, of the credit crisis which hit us in 2008 and worsened over 2009.

Groupthink as a recent Times article suggested is the tendency to not rock the boat and back the decisions of a powerful chief executive or chairman of the board. This is, of course, nothing less than a ‘Yes man’ culture, something which officially no company wants to have but one which unofficially is what most powerful CEOs cultivate. The reason it is cultivated so carefully has more to do with the power struggle for ascendancy of chairmen and the personal levels of ambition they need to have in order to succeed and less with the true best interests of a company.

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