Full Disclosure

Let’s be completely up-front about this: this is one of those “personal branding” websites.

I never expected to find myself making one of these, and I held out for as long as I could, but in today’s employment market anyone who’s serious about building a career in leadership and management needs to define who they are and what they offer in a way that goes beyond the scope of a LinkedIn profile.

This is my attempt to do that.

What This Isn’t

In bullet-point form, this site is not…

• A side hustle – you might occasionally see an affiliate link but that’s as far as it goes
• A “troll bridge” – I don’t expect everyone to agree with what I’m saying, but I’m not setting out to offend for it’s own sake
• A CV – though at some point I’ll probably post a link to it for anyone who’s interested

There are plenty of reasons why I’ve not built this until now: I have a job, a family, other interests, etc. In short, I’ve been a bit busy. But more than any of that, I’ve always found the format itself to be a bit of a turn-off.

Like every other LinkedIn user, I encounter this sort of site pretty regularly and, with a few notable exceptions, I don’t find them to be especially insightful.

The tech-themed ones always seem to skew really hard towards the tech, which is fine in as far as it goes…

“See how you can [design/deploy/support] an entire [cloud platform/data pipeline/application stack] using just 6 lines of [rust/python/.net] code”

Well done. Good job. I’m happy for you. What does that actually tell me about you as a person?

As for the management-flavoured ones, they’re generally worse. Often much worse. The amount of bandwidth and storage space being guzzled-up by the same sort of cookie-cutter, buzzword-laden, guru/mentor BS is borderline criminal…

“With [one email/this announcement/1 Post-It note], [Steve Jobs/Elon Musk/Bill Gates] changed everything that we know about [leadership/technology/product development]“

That kind of content belongs in a special sort of digital hell, and the people peddling it as a pitch for their consultancy services need to have a long, hard think about whether reheating the wisdom of others is the best way in which to promote themselves.

What This Is

If the last section hasn’t already set a bit of a tone, then let’s get more explicit: as the name suggests, I’m aiming for this to be TheOppositeOf most personal branding projects.

When I’m posting on Tech, it might not have the depth of a Pluralsight tutorial, but I’ll try and frame it in a way that won’t leave non-technologists in a catatonic state.

When I’m posting about management or business, I’m not going to claim that every word printed is the wisdom of the ancients, but it will always be my own perspective.

If you think I’m wrong about something, then feel free to tell me. Not because I’m chasing some superficial “smash that like button” validation: because I’m never afraid to revise my own position on things.

I’m conscious that the approach I’m taking isn’t going to maximise my attractiveness to the widest possible range of recruiters. That’s not an oversight – it’s the entire point.

For better or for worse, what goes on here will be 100% authentically me.

This isn’t “Personal Branding” – it’s “PERSONAL _branding“

If you like it, that’s great, but if you don’t, I’m not going to lose much sleep over it.