You’ve been told,

show up in front of enough of the right people—in their social feeds, at their networking events, in their publications—and your ideas and/or work will click, catch on and command buy in.

Well, it’s because you are.

Sorry.

The 3 Rs of Visibility

The first R of Visibility is “Represented.” Representation is hugely important. But being represented doesn't always mean you're seen. The same way handing you a microphone isn't the same as people hearing you.

When something is represented, it's picked up by 1 or more of our senses and gets processed by the brain. More specifically, it comes face to face with our brains' kung fu filters. ​ ​Being represented means you've got a shot at getting by--it's the minimum viable. But it doesn't guarantee safe passage to the other side. That's why the 2nd R of Visibility is so important.

For the especially enlightened, we might go beyond representation and focus on being memorable. That's the second R of visibility: Remembered. With this R, we are beginning to address how human brains work. The problem that arises is what we're being remembered for. Being memorable doesn't mean being remembered in the right light and it certainly doesn't mean being remembered at the right time either.

Once an idea is past the kung fu filters (see the toggle above for more details), 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. ​ ​

This doesn’t mean you’re stored in the right constellation. 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.

This is where those traditional approaches begin to 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.

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. 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 the relevant neighborhoods or constellations and consider it as they make that decision. Being recognized means being on that star map. The one people pull up as they decide to move forward.

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.

[1] This is a real thing. It’s a result of the visibility bias called the Racial Attention Deficit.

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.

Don’t even get us started on Backlash and Likability Heuristics…

Enter Recognition Equity.

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.