I just spent a couple of days with my niece, nephew, and my nephew's wife. I have always felt close to my nephew and that relationship feels like it has developed distance over the years. I felt disconnected from my niece until she grew up and moved to Korea to teach English. It was odd, then, to spend the weekend with the two of them. That confluence of change left me feeling quite confused and, in an odd way, lonely.
So much in life happens and you can't really communicate it. Everything seems so complicated; there are all the contributing factors which are, regardless of what anyone else says, unique to you and that moment, that experience, that perspective. Everything is flavoured by the family, as well. Personality, character, and physical characteristics travel in a family. You can see your brother and your mother in your cousins and others.
I wish I could say to them, my nieces and nephew, that they should embrace the joys and sorrows with equal enthusiasm. But, I don't know how to say that in a meaningful way. There are too many examples in my family of people who have taken that concept and ended up as so much flotsam on the beach of life. There is a lot of mental illness in my family and I don't know how common it is, but if I were a generation younger, I'd be seriously worried.
The effort it takes now to achieve anything in life seems far greater than in my parents' generation. Perhaps this is untrue, but I see that advantages that even I had are gone, cut away in the frantic streamlining and cost-cutting spree of the past twenty years (or more). By becoming a less community-minded culture (here in North America), we're creating a division that prevents individuals from changing their circumstances by rising. It is so much easier to fail and fall. There are fewer safety nets and a greater sense of predestination. There is less of a sense that we all rise and fall together; perhaps my perception is tainted by my own experience and by my current location. I rose from poverty not just by the dint of my own effort, but by a communal sense that provided the rungs in the ladder I used. There are those who cannot climb even with assistance but that is not a good reason for removing all assistance from the realm. Relying solely on the contributions of non-governmental agencies does not provide the same, leavened leg-up that a well-reasoned and well-funded government-run assistance program.
Aside from this rather deep, mind-bending aspect of the visit, we had a blast. If you get to Victoria, check out Miniature World. I was, at first, a bit shy about asking to go, but everyone seemed quite taken with the idea. We admired the handy work, the complexity, and the shear magnitude of the obsession that produced the small museum of miniatures. The interactive bits were delightful and I was just a little sad that the fire department regulations had put an end to the miniature saw mill action. The model is still there, but the workings are not activated. We wondered if the creator had used this tiny sawmill to create the boards for some of the other displays. The doll houses seemed a bit uneven in execution, especially compared to the dioramas. I want to go back with a decent camera, a King Kong doll, and a Godzilla figurine so I can act out and capture it in its full glory.

All this focus on the day of exercises to explore the company's brand and how I integrate it into my life and work has gotten me thinking, a lot, about brands. When I look at an ad or a product, I look for its brand. How is the brand expressed?
And I've been doing some reading on branding to discover just what it includes.
Here's what I think so far: branding can be the logo, a phrase, or even a look that conveys some ideal that the company uses to identify itself and its products in the marketplace. With this definition, the company is attempting to connect to the consumer, to have the consumer identify with the company. There is, for example, only one brand of swimsuit I'd consider wearing. The brand is forever associated with my father, with excellence, with the push to do better each time you swim. No other brand says that to me even if the suits are otherwise indistinguishable. I can recognize the suits on swimmers. The brand is seared into my brain on more levels than I can begin to fully enumerate.
That, clearly, is what a company wants to do with a brand.
It can go against them as well; a brand can become synonymous with an event or experience that results in an intense, and equally irrational, feeling of repulsion.
It makes sense, then, that the company would want its employees to relate to the brand when the brand identifies the company. Loyalty to the company as a facet of the agreement between you and the corporation. Loyalty is an idea that has been treated, in recent times, as something quaint and antiquated; loyalty to an employer is something that went out of fashion with my father's generation. My generation is smart, mobile, and dedicated to self-promotion, self-satisfaction, and self-realization. Loyalty to the corporate employer sometimes requires actions that do nothing for me, the individual.
Corporations are having to convince employees that they belong to a community managed by mysterious powers in some remote location. Corporations are, like some countries, a collection of territories taken in acquisitions that are decided not by the employees but by the leaders. Some leaders have made their territories ripe for acquisition; others have struggled mightily, with few resources, to protect their territories. Now, the larger collective has to be converted from a disparate collection of identities into one, monolithic culture. The great melting pot theory.
How reciprocal is this loyalty? My citizenship grants me certain responsibilities and benefits. Will pledging my allegiance to the corporation bring me benefits? I wonder what they are. I get a paycheck without pledging my allegiance. I get a paycheck by doing my job. So, what will the corporation give me in return for integrating myself and pledging allegiance?
What if I branded myself? What if I had a statement that identified me? What would I want it to be? Clearly, I have a new project.