Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

Norman Mailer and remaining consistent

The Pulitzer Prize winning Norman Mailer died Saturday at the age of 84. Mailer won the award twice for "The Armies of the Night" and "The Executioner's Song."

I mention the death of Mailer here, because of his consistency throughout his career concerning his persona; something businesses and business leaders need to keep in mind.

This goes back to the consistent branding of ourselves in the market we serve and overall public consciousness.

When you hear the name Norman Mailer, you immediately have something come to your mind if you know him or of him, and that's controversy. If there was some important issue of the day, you could be sure Mailer would in some way take a contrarian attitude toward it. It worked for decades for him, to the point where most people consider him the most well-known author and literary personality over the last 50 years. That's quite an accomplishment.

How this applies to business is the consistency of who he was and the way he acted. He was never ambiguous about what he thought on subjects, and was more than willing to let you know what it was.

That was his consistency over the years, and what made him who he was. If he would have suddenly become "respectable," in that he went along with the status quo, he wouldn't have been understood. It simply wasn't who he was; at least in how he marketed himself and lived before the public.

We must learn to live this type of consistency in our own careers as well as businesses. Those that stand for something and consistantly live it out, are understood and respected in their respective fields. Those that blow with the wind on every new idea or fad, are not only not respected, but aren't understood as far as what they stand for as a company or leader.

Mailer's chosen and lived career was of course writing, his method of presenting himself to the public was controversy. It was a consistent branding of himself that angered, challenged and delighted both his detractors and fans. Either way, you were never confused as to who he was and how he acted.

That's the type of consistency - no matter what we are - that must be part of our lives and the lives of our companies.