What's Your Signature?

Do you love your signature? I sure do love mine.

It is an intimate experience. Drawing the smooth curves, the angles, the line at the bottom and the dot at the end.

When finished, I look at it for a couple of seconds and gloat within. It is my extension. It exudes power. It personifies "me".

At the risk of being inferred as a narcissist, I've also considered my work as my signature as well. The outcomes & deliverables that I drove, I put the same amount of care and diligence as went in to my signature.

My deliverables and work were easily distinguishable from the rest of the folks and considered a gold standard. Small things like how the files were named, how they were always formatted to be printed correctly, how the contents were organized, how visually appealing they looked, how easy it was to follow and understand the content etc. The technical aspects of the work were fully fleshed out being built for performance, usability and scalability.

The early professional years included working with youngsters fresh out of college. Their biggest complaint was that the work was all tactical and except from "getting it right", there was no other distinguishable edge.

My feedback to them was always the same. Consider your work as your signature. What can you do to ensure that your work personifies who you are and what you represent.

Unfortunately, there's no easy cookie cutter answer. It's always for the person to find the answer for himself.

The fun part is enabling every body on this path while the fulfilling part is in seeing them find the answer.

What do you think? What's your signature?