Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It

Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It, by David F. D'Alessandro with Michele Owens. 2004. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. 208 pages, Hard Back, $21.95 Intended Audience: All Major Headings from Table of Contents are the Ten Rules: Try to Look Beyond Your Own Navel; Like It or Not, Your Boss Is the Co-author of Your Brand; Put Your Boss on the Couch; Learn Which One is the Pickle Fork; Kenny Rogers is Right; It's Always Show Time; Make the Right Enemies; Try Not to Be Swallowed by the Bubble; The Higher You Fly, The More You Will Be Shot; Everybody Coulda Been a Contender; Make Sure You Stay One. How is the book most useful for its intended audience? This book gives a practical, first-hand look at how a strong personal brand helped the CEO of John Hancock improve his leadership style and advance his career in the real world. This book is useful for readers who are interested in propelling their careers forward by building a unique personal brand that gets noticed. The top five things you learned from reading this book: 1. Hard work and accomplishments are necessary, but they probably will not set you apart from your peers. 2. Good personal brands are usually built brick by brick and day by day. 3. The formula for a successful personal brand is pretty simple: become self-aware. You can't build a good personal brand if you can't see yourself as others see you. 4. Inquire about the reputations of the people for whom you'll be working, not just the reputation of the company, but also the reputations of the people. 5. Use your brand as a template for all your actions. Ultimately, if your brand is to mean anything, you have to live it, and you have to go on living it to the very end. A firm believer in the mantra, "Don't tell me, show me," David F. D'Alessandro's ten rules for building a successful personal brand and fighting to keep it guides professionals through the steps necessary to advance their careers. This personal look into his own career strategy is an easy and enjoyable read. Although insightful, it often makes you smile as you travel back through his career with him. Within the first 20 pages, he captures your attention by relaying an account describing how he took his youth and inexperience and turned it into something that had value. He notes that the best way to establish a brand when you are new to an organization is by offering something that the organization is missing. Naysayers lament that personal branding is a gimmick and nothing more than common sense, but Mr. D'Alessandro's book is a vivid example that proves them wrong. He marries his observations of the "basics" of organization life with his often-repeated statement that good personal brands are built brick by brick and day by day. For instance, in a frank statement, he says that to be considered for the upper ranks, you must get into a position where you are making money for the organization. Called a business classic, this book demonstrates how Mr. D'Alessandro developed his reputation for leadership. He says, "At some point your ability to do things yourself becomes meaningless. What counts is whether you can get other people to do them. …