No I did not fall on my head. In fact, my brain is cooking, and in a good way.

My friend Daniel Hernandez sent me an article that is really dense as in packed with wisdom, needed 25 minutes reading time, so the editors think, but I needed to give it days of unpacking, thinking and reflecting.

I wanted to call out one of its teachings–a new phrase with a new adjective–to me: axiological design. I never heard the adjective and was quite rewarded by it being the perfect explanation I give clients to plan, design construct, edit, and publish a LinkedIn profile. (See, my head is OK). More on that later.

Axiological.

It was a new word to me.

I invite you to wrap your head with me around this term. One quote from the article I picked out spoke to me, and yes, with a LinkedIn application, from the author’s definition of axiological design:

This is design that acknowledges that in addition to whatever its physical impacts, it is also affecting the behaviors and thus the psychology of the people using it…Technologies are both encoded forms of human values and at the same time encode potential and unknowable new values…This is design that factors and leverages the intrinsic value inevitably encoded in all technology-human interfaces.

Humbly in my opinions offered next, and humbled by the article, I propose this: make LinkedIn your own.

The technology is there, free, and waiting to be massaged, for you to use poorly (let’s hope not), used mediocrely (that is a word), or to use well.

So well, in fact, I hope you eclipse the competition when a reader’s eyes widen as they read your profile: the words, the verbs, the richness of adjectives, the clarity, all rolled into one, to give the mental image of why you do what you do.

LinkedIn’s design gurus must have never imagined the extent to which some people would adapt their messaging to the gaping open data fields, yes those places you can or must fill in that are only bounded by numerical character limits, to be enriched from your heart and mind, to the extent they have.

Same can be said for the myriad of comments and deep personal offerings in the posts open for impression and commentary by now over a billion people.

I, for one, am amazed by the brainpower of people, given the open opportunity to make LinkedIn’s tech their own. Some of you amaze me. Others of you need to get cracking.

LinkedIn is a power tool, as mentioned here frequently, only when used well. Like a chain saw. And when it serves well, it’s without boundary. Only because the owner of that stirring profile  “worked it.” Only because it worked for them in the end analysis, because others made it their business to hire them for the work they hinted at in the profile, enough to “fall in like” with them and contact them.

The “fall in love” part? Well, that’s for the two of them to tango: reader/prospect and profile holder to work out. I can only get my clients to the “like.” But the words and images in the “like” part need to be expressed with the same personality the prospect hears in the “love” part, with the necessary qualification as brought the two together initially, they feel they HAVE to do business.

Tech is your friend when you tease it lovingly out of yourself and onto the LinkedIn screen. Keep making changes as you morph to make your profile reflect on you, as you adapt and mature your mission. Referring back to the quote above, this is “the intrinsic value inevitably encoded in all technology-human interfaces.”

It’s an axiological circle:

Know yourself for what makes you real.

Make the tech interface with your humanity.

Offer new value.

Earn a loving client’s admiration for your value, in retrospect.

Be referred to others who start to read your profile and fall in “like.”

Repeat.