THIS ARTICLE BY MARK DI SOMMA IS TITLED:
Branded Purpose:
Singing in the rain

The three things you need to build a brand-aligned culture - information, inspiration, motivation.

There’s a wonderful moment in the classic musical Singing in the Rain, as the incredibly talented Gene Kelley sings, dances and splashes his way through a musical sequence in the middle of a downpour. It’s inspiring because of Kelley’s infectious exuberance and the utterly charming song that captures his frame of mind.

Watching it yet again one rainy afternoon, it prompted me to ask the question, “what would it take to get employees to behave like this?” Not literally of course – but what do companies need to do, what do they need to commit to, in order for their people to come to work with the same joie de vivre, the same zest and energy as Kelley has in those few hundred frames of celluloid?

Today, everyone’s looking at the customer, and as they do so, they’re all asking the same question: what is the most efficient and effective way we can get our stuff to their door? Efficient processes, streamlined operations, CRM, e-commerce and web-enabled transactions - just some of the many advances in relationship and profit management and retention that have dominated business thinking over the last decade or so.

That’s fine – to a point, but the question that nowhere near enough companies are asking is: “And what is the experience that will convince customers to have us ship them anything?” Because it is then - at the touchpoint where the customer makes contact - that relationships are made. That exact point is when customers decide that they want to form a relationship with you, or they’re “just looking thanks”.

Anything before that is marketing. Everything after it is process.

People make that touchpoint magical – providing of course they understand what is expected of them and they are fired up to deliver on it.

The problem for those charged with making this connection, and all those who work with them in the preparation and delivery of the goods or services, is that they often don’t know or understand what that customer expectation is. They are not tuned into the customers’ understanding.

The reason is simple. It’s not on their radar. No-one’s explained or sometimes even made them aware of the connection. As a result, the communications that make the promise to the customers, and the culture and processes that bring it to life and deliver it, are not aligned. And the people have no reason to believe in their culture – because it does not deliver them anything to believe in. There is no cause or purpose. It is simply a working environment.

It’s a sad fact that most of the people responsible for convincing the customer to buy the brand they work for have no idea themselves why they come to work. The reason is simple - there is no compelling, singular, riveting idea driving their work. They are not on a mission. They are taking up a seat. They are meeting a job description. They are collecting a pay packet. Their ROE - return on emotional investment - is close to zero. The only things that get them up in the morning are their own ambition and the alarm clock.

Passion = purpose, purpose = profit

By contrast, great brands, exciting brands, loved brands represent much more than the products or services they peddle. They embody an idea. They represent a cause. That cause fires up the customers. It also excites the people inside the culture. It provides them with a purpose, something to believe in and deliver on. ESPN, for example, has a really simple cause - to share its love of sports with other sports fanatics. It’s not about being a broadcaster. Their people aren’t part of a media giant. They belong to a community of sports addicts. They come to work to share a passion for games with their subscribers. A simple idea, that is hugely endearing.

People need that. They need something to commit to; something they feel will actually make a difference. An idea – a big, glorious, wonderful idea – that lights them up, that justifies spending the huge amount of time they do at work. Otherwise, what’s the point?

As Walt Disney said, “You can dream, create and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality”. Perhaps that’s why Disney don’t have staff. They have cast members. 120,000 of them worldwide. They come to work to create magic.

When you give your people a cause to work for, and a direction in which to take that cause, you give them purpose.

When an organisation has a cause, it has focus. A culture with purpose defines “us”. It unites the individuals within an organisation behind a single idea. It defines the role and expectations for every person within the culture. It keeps the company faithful to its customers by ensuring everyone understands what they are there to do. And it does all this against the backdrop of the company’s business strategy, its market positioning and the factors and mindsets that make the enterprise unique.

It’s like the famous story of the cleaner at NASA. “What are you doing here?” “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.” Question: what does your cleaner say?

This cause is not a slogan, a strapline, or a jingoistic phrase. It is your company’s mindset strategy. It determines the headspace in which your people work and in which you as a company go to market. Ask any top performing athlete how important their mental game is? ... Exactly. So why should your people be any different?

In a world market that is as competitive, as commoditised and as product equalised as the one we work in, the mental game is vital. If your people’s headspace is wrong, you’re at a disadvantage. In other words, you need to align your people and your culture to your brand and your customer expectations for exactly the same reason as you spend so much money on IT, business restructuring and research and development. It makes you more competitive. Period.

Frightening thought: the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers. So if you constrain them, they’ll restrain your customers. If you treat them with dignity, they’ll behave with genuineness and warmth. And if you inspire them – then they’ll do more than just live the brand, they’ll evangelise it. They’ll believe – and your customers will believe them. Passion is infectious.

Ownership has nothing to do with shareholding

My favourite branded culture in all the world is Southwest Air. In one of the most viciously competitive and serious service industries in the world, these guys are crazy enough to buck all the rules and to have enjoyed year on year profits for most of the company’s history.

They were the first airline not to issue seats, just tickets. They were the first to introduce the 15 minute pushout. Hell, they once even resolved a legal dispute over the right to use a slogan with a televised arm wrestling competition between the two CEOs. They have a party every day to celebrate something. From what I’ve heard, they’ve never laid off an employee. And when the airline went through hard times, the entire workforce asked the Board for a pay cut.

They have some inspiring ideas about people. Let me share just two. Firstly, find a purpose you’re crazy about. At Southwest, they believe that in their heart of hearts, all people want to make a difference. They want to know that they contribute to the success of an organisation. The people at Southwest Airlines work there because they believe that frequent, low cost flights allow people all over the United States to do things they never dreamed of doing. Result: these guys aren’t in the airline industry. They’re in the business of making people happy for a living. That’s their purpose. That’s the idea they own. That’s what gets them up in the morning.

Here’s their other great thought. Customers come second – because you can always replace the people who buy your product, but you can’t always replace the great people who embody your culture and deliver what you do. In a legendary case, a woman who frequently flew on the airline made a point of always being disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. She didn’t like the fact that they didn’t assign seats, she didn’t like that there was no first class, she didn’t like not having a meal, the boarding procedures, the colour of the planes, the flight attendants’ uniforms, the casual culture, even the peanuts. After every flight, she would write and complain. One day, she wrote a particularly long and vicious piece of correspondence. The staff did their best to respond, but ultimately they were stumped and very down. Feeling they had failed, they went to the CEO and asked for his advice. The CEO thought for a moment, then picking up his pen, he wrote one sentence. “Dear Mrs Crabapple. We will miss you.”

Can you imagine how that made the staff feel?

Information, inspiration, motivation

The good news is that more and more companies are coming to understand that the “people” factor of branding is the success-maker. The bad news is that most of these brand alignment programmes fail because they do not light a fire under the people they are aimed at.

That’s because so many companies can’t relinquish the control to let a culture develop, so they try “living the brand” at a logical level – with policies, procedures and operational changes. People are monitored, assessed, corrected according to rules, targets, guidelines, behavioural overviews. They’re given pieces of paper that tell them what the brand is. There’s a drinks and powerpoint, followed by general apathy.

That’s all head stuff. That is not the home of brand.

Brand internally is a state of heart far more than it is a state of mind. Culture is not a process, any more than brand is just a logo. Getting your people to the point where they can want to live the brand requires three things:

• Information – people need to understand why you’re doing this and what difference it’s going to make. How do you do that? Tell them as much as you can. They have every right to know.
• Inspiration – people need to be inspired. How do you do that? Present your cause in ways that get your people excited. Make them passionate about it. Communicate with them their way.
• Motivation – people need to know what to do next. How do you do that? Give them practical, join the dots tools that light the path for them; that take them practically, patiently and carefully towards the branded culture you have to be to compete successfully.

The first two we’ve already touched on. The third is just as important. Motivation happens on two levels: organisationally and personally.

Organisationally, it’s about aligning everything you do, and the manner in which you do it, to the cause you espouse and the promise you are making. It requires you to take the brand to your business. Why? Because much of the power of a brand idea internally derives from finding and fitting its implications to the everyday working realities. The potency of brand lies as much in what it shapes as what it says.

And personally, it’s about relevance and buy-in. Paul Stewart, who oversaw the branded culture change transition at Baycorp Advantage sums it up really well. He told his people that they were moving their culture from one based on compliance to one founded on commitment.

People need to know – what exactly does our brand stand for? Where does it come from? What are our values and what do they mean for me day to day? How could we do this better? How could we make this align with our big idea? By explaining everything, and helping people make the transitions, you achieve involvement, pride, understanding and contribution. But you need to give people the actions, attitudes, changes and tools that turn the idea into a working style for them.

Again, you need to sell that in. You need to make it relevant for people. You need to frame the brand and what it’s about within people’s frames of reference. Don’t talk to the lawyers about the IT issues, or vice versa. Talk to them about what concerns them. Light their path. Make them see that there are implications for them. Provide them with workshops, coaching and time – enough time - to discuss and talk over the brand, what it is, what it means. Be prepared to review and change policies, procedures and mindsets that are disconnected from the brand you need to be.

So many cultures don’t go there. And as a result, large sections of the organisation are DBZs – debranded zones – because people within these parts of the organisation really believe that brand has nothing to do with them. So they build their own culture to fill the vacuum. And voila, say hello to culture’s equivalent of the black hole - a silo.

If you want to build a branded culture, it’s vital to recognise that most people can’t make the leap on their own. The move from business as usual to business as branded is too far for an unguided jump. With all the will in the world, they can’t and they shouldn’t go there alone. By explaining it to them, you motivate them – and once they are motivated, they will make it happen. Most people want something to believe in. It gives things reason.

Making it personal - the we/me equation

The best branded culture changes work on two levels simultaneously. We and I. There’s a big idea, a promise for everyone to believe in and to be stimulated by – and there’s a personal driver. At Caterpillar, they call this idea “yellow blood” because it’s the sign-up credo that coarses through the arteries of every person who works there. It gives every individual the driver they need – and it provides the collective lifeblood of belief that the company needs to compete successfully.

Companies need we/me because branded culture is a journey driven by commercial realities, but motivated by human needs.

One of the things we’ve starting to do now, once clients get to the motivational level, is encouraging them to segment their messages in much the same way as they might segment external messages. So that the messages really do mean something to them specifically. In their role. In this organisation. Right now.

So, for example, there might be an edition of the internal brand case that makes brand and its implications part of the consideration set for the Board, and positions internally brand aligned culture as a critical success factor to senior decision makers. At the same time, a programme for the sales force might focus on why the company is different and how they can use that at a tactical level to close deals in ways that don’t contradict the brand. And so on.

No-one’s saying all this will happen over night. My best guess is to allow at least a year to make this happen. But what these things do is make the brand very real for the people in the culture. Over time, the kick inside - the mindset that makes you competitive - becomes part of the way people naturally think and work, not just another idea, another project that they must juggle in their working day.

Internal brand alignment is a bit like personal software for your people. You need to recognise that you need it, you need to install it within the culture and then you need to let it run so that people take ownership of it and it becomes a natural part of their working lives.

The sooner you start, the sooner your organisation will be in the position to bridge that vital touchpoint gap between marketing and process, and the sooner you will have everyone, from corporate finance to the call centre “singing in your rain”.

If you want to see how wide the gap is right now, watch the musical, then go to work ...