The other day I met Scott Simko, who I "knew" through This Week In Startups and Thomas Kiblin, CEO and Founder of Virtacore. I met them as the founder of HueCubed, a web startup company offering a flashcard engine that we plan to scale like Weblogs, Inc. or Stackoverflow. (Create a niche product and then scale it in other vertical markets) Our flagship product, PMPrep Flashcards, was released in March and I wanted to meet the people who are hosting our product(s).
Up to this point, I have introduced myself as Derek Huether, Project Management Professional® and adviser. But these people don't know me as that. They were meeting me as Derek Huether, entrepreneur and founder of a web startup. As a result, I stumbled when it was time to introduce myself. Don't make this mistake!
If you wear multiple hats in your organization, you may need to know who you are to different stakeholders. Is your specialty in Waterfall, Agile, or Kanban? Take a moment and imagine you are being introduced to someone. What are you going to say? This is part personal branding and part stakeholder management. What I needed was a solid 30 second elevator pitch. What's the takeaway from this post? Know who you are and what you represent. It may be different, based on the company you keep.