Well, it’s because you are.
Sorry.
Influence: The capacity to shape the beliefs, judgements and actions of others.
(let’s make sure we’re on the same page.)
The approaches you were handed are built for the way algorithms work. Influence, on the other hand, is decided by the way human brains do.
So when you and your team are doing their best, showing up in all of the right places--or at least trying to--you're only focusing on the first “R” of visibility. The one algorithms love.
And that first R doesn’t lead to influence, despite everything you’ve been told.
The first R of Visibility is “Represented.” That’s when we come face to face with the brains' kung fu filters. Influence and buy-in require getting past these. Being represented means you've got a shot at it--it's the minimum viable option. But it doesn't guarantee safe passage to the other side. The same way handing you a microphone doesn’t guarantee people will hear you. That's why the 2nd R of Visibility is so important.
The second R of visibility: Remembered. With this R, we’re beginning to address how human brains work. Once an idea is past the kung fu filters, it gets stored in our long-term memory. Think of your long term memory as a galaxy, and each memory, a star. There are neighborhoods of stars. Groupings. Constellations. When something is remembered, it is placed in one of these constellation.
If you want influence and more reliable buy-in, your star needs to be in the right neighborhood. Being remembered doesn’t guarantee that. After all, you can be remembered by the wrong people. At the wrong moments, for the wrong reasons. That's why, ultimately, the 3rd R of Visibility is the gold standard as far as the brain is concerned.
Traditional approaches stop here.
And this is why they fall short.
Worse yet, they don’t account for little things like systemic visibility biases—the learned brain chemistry in our heads that allocates our attention in discriminatory ways.
So if folks are, say, 33% more likely to overlook you[1] or the communities you represent, it's fair to say the typical approaches to building, managing and raising the profile of an idea or approach won’t work as well.
So why do we pretend that they do?
We've been told wanting recognition is needy. That it gives away our power. That the strength of our ideas will speak for themselves.
Recognition is simply when something or someone is remembered by the right people, at the right time in the right way and the acknowledgement that arrives in response to that.
When people sit down to make decisions, they consult their long term memory--that galaxy of stars. More specifically, they pull up a star map of relevant neighborhoods or constellations and consider it as they make that decision. Being recognized means being on the star map people pull up as they decide to move forward.
Recognition is both a cognitive state and a behavior.
The Cognitive State: Being remembered in the right way at the right time by the right people.
The Behavior: Acknowledgement of the importance of one's ideas, work, person or contributions.
Working Consolidated Definition: a behavior of retrieval and acknowledgment in response to a relevant cue.
You can't have influence without recognition.
This is why I call recognition the invisible currency of influence.
The more recognition you have, the more influence you have.
So if you’ve been pouring all your blood, sweat and tears into the first or even the second R of visibility, you aren’t building the actual resource you need.
And if you’re also the sort of person that society has been taught to overlook and underappreciate, well.
You’re dealing with underrecognition on two fronts.
[1] This is a real thing. It’s a result of the visibility bias called the Racial Attention Deficit.
Also breaking: it’s not your fault.
When you (or the communities you’re looking to elevate) are underrecognized (read: if you’re here, then you are), you face systemic barriers to visibility, influence and success. Full Stop. And if you're trying to make the world a better place at the same time? You've got a triple bind:
People have been conditioned to ignore you. Attention is literally allocated away from you (visibility bias).
It actually costs you more to pursue greater visibility (The Invisibility Tax)
This status quo has learned brain chemistry on it's side
That isn’t an accident. It’s a centuries old feature. Conclusion? Cookie Cutter isn’t going to cut it.
Ever been told to ditch your imposter syndrome?
*deep breath*
Putting aside the very well documented reasons why using the term “syndrome” is deeply problematic, underrecognition as well as its causes and costs demonstrate that Imposter Syndrome is a long con.
It’s Accountability Laundering of the most egregious kind.
An “individualization of responsibility” we’ve seen before with the climate crisis. Remember the influence campaign our most culpable companies leveraged to burden us with the task of reducing, reusing and recycling our way out of their monstrous environmental negligence?
Well, in like fashion, you’ve never just happened to feel like an imposter.
You'd had that burden foisted upon you.
You were dealing with the Imposter Complex—as in the Imposter Industrial Complex.
It is a system of people, structures and conventions deeply invested in certain people feeling like imposters. In its targets dissipating their energy with that emotional hurdle.
The penalty levied against you was likely a kind of Credibility Shakedown. You’ve been told to pay up—to give more in qualifications than your typically recognized peers—in order to be deemed competent.
That’s an Invisibility Tax.
The huge mistake traditional visibility and influence work makes is not accounting for the visibility biases you face as an historically underrecognized leader and the Invisibility Tax you pay as a result.
This is a consequence of the Reciprocity Gap—disparities in returns on social investments between groups, largely determined by worth and cultural membership in a society. Underrecognized folks are often asked to meet a higher threshold of investment in order to activate a willingness to reciprocate. Translation: Getting less than your peers because of a marginalized identity.
That unenviable position wickedly smart and constantly overworking leaders from underrecognized communities often find themselves in: validated—in the rooms where decisions are made and shots are called, but only as a token or a figurehead. Sentenced to posing gratefully for the opportunity to lead with very little actual power or influence.
The sum total of social, professional and financial costs the underrecognized face for their ambition (h/t Stefanie O’Connell). Often mislabeled as a “Confidence Gap,” in women and girls.
We need to up your recognition.
We build a platform that actually takes into account how human brains work. Leveraging the four forces that drive all behavior.
We cultivate a Circle of Recognition that strategically connects you to the people, communities, and decision-making spaces from which recognition, endorsement and opportunities originate and spread.
We design Decision Architecture to nudge every stakeholder towards the behaviors that will build your momentum into social gravity
NobiWorks does all of this leveraging a systematic understanding of human behavior and an equally rigorous measurement of the distribution of power around you.
I’m N. Chloé, the Brand Scientist™ and recognition advisor. I’ve advised everyone from small island nations and the first refugee delegation to the UN to small, black owned mom and pop shops. And all of them were socially innovative brands ready to give the status quo a good shove.
That mom and pop shop? Brad Pitt’s now a fan. That small island nation? The coalition of countries they formed got kudos from President Obama at the COP26 conference. Can I promise these results? No. But I can promise that the same methods I developed as an international conflict mediator–the very same methods I used with these clients–are what I will bring to bear in our engagement.
It actually started with building my first computer.
I was maybe 10 years old and quickly realized I had a knack for figuring “this stuff” out.
Over a decade later, with (bafflingly) a degree in (neuro)philosophy, political theology and Japanese of all things, I sat at a desk in an Israeli non profit, presenting a quick website I’d coded to a small group of my supervisors.
Sure, being the young person in a public sector organization meant I was also on tech duty, but this crew had not actually expected me to be some sort of high functioning tech nerd. Once the cat was out of the bag, tiny non profits and advocacy groups all over the world ended up requesting my support. Some of that work supported me through mediation grad school.
A few years after finally becoming a conflict mediator (why yes, that is social psychology in high stakes situations), I had a crisis of faith.
I’d become a mediator because of it’s potential for initiating power parity. Leveling the playing field. But as I facilitated these high level discussions, I realized that certain folks weren't even getting to the negotiating table.
Mediation is a voluntary process, so a group with power usually only negotiates with an actor they are unable to overlook. And in global conflict there are tons of folks we're "able to overlook" who *should* be at those tables in order for the change to stick sustainably and equitably.
So I decided I would help make those folks impossible to ignore.
I returned to my tech nerd powered roots to do it.
And realized brands were the key soon after.
That’s how NobiWorks was born.
This lab tends to attract trendsetters and innovators, so if that sounds like you, welcome; you’re already my favorite kind of person.
We’re absolutely going to get into all sorts of trouble together.
What's all this about brands?
A brand is a system of ideas that influences the behaviors of others.
(a bit different from what you’ve heard before, no?)
Said another way, brands are a kind of influential real estate in someone’s head. Remember the galaxy of stars and it’s constellations? Think of brands as a kind of star or even a kind of constellation. In the international politics set. brands are also resources of something we call “soft power.” It’s why you knew not to make certain moves with Germany or France—because their brands informed you how they would respond. It’s why brands can become legacies. Soft power, involves the use of appeal, attraction and persuasion to achieve objectives and to shape the preferences of others—which is exactly what effective brands do.
But you’ve got to be noticed and remembered and ultimately recognized for any of that to work. And recent studies are empirically demonstrating that underestimated people are and have been systematically underrecognized, overlooked and undervalued. Translation? Society has been conditioned to ignore us.
The huge mistake traditional brand work makes is not accounting for the visibility biases you face as an historically underestimated leader and the Invisibility Tax you pay as a result.
Don’t even get us started on Backlash and Likability Heuristics…
Recognition equity is a quantifiable status. It is the point at which we reach a critical mass of influential, underrecognized leaders strategically positioned for ultimate social impact. We’re not there yet—otherwise your ideas would already be catching on. But that is the vision this lab has for the world.
Because we grew tired of optics.
And representation is the bare minimum we should accept.
Answer a couple of our director’s questions and you’ll be guided directly to your best next step. Promise.
partnership is built into our process. we guarantee you’ll love what you get.
the process couldn’t be easier. your client portal will keep everything in one place.
everything we do, every choice we make or advise you to make is backed by science and rigerous equity standards.
A majority of my clients are based in the US, and so investments are quoted in USD. However, as I work with clients across the globe, I invite my international clients to utilize this currency converter or another of their choosing for an estimation of what these numbers mean locally.
