Brandspresso

This is a continuation of the previous interview with a Spanish interviewer.

Q. I have the luck of being able to live doing what I like and according to my values. This should be the norm but in this hectic world, as you point out in your book, it is not. Do you think recession has changed anything in our priorities and if so, do you think the change will be permanent?

A. I think that the recession has had some impact on how people evaluate how well their values are aligned with their employer or future employer. People feel less secure about their employment status so their connection with their employer is weaker. In that case individuals are more likely to look for a new employer when the economy improves. In the U.S. studies indicate that about 50% of individuals say they will look for a new employer when the economy improves. I believe they will be looking at employers who share similar values as themselves.

Generational attitudes are playing a much bigger role in individuals comparing their values to their employer’s values. People in the so-called Gen-Y demographic are clear about their relationship with their employer. An important question being asked by these individuals is “How does my job or relationship with my employer fit into my lifestyle and values?” I know this attitude is standard in the U.S. and is most likely flowing to other parts of the globe. The one clear implication of the changing attitudes of employees is the growing mandate for employers to pay attention to employee engagement and seriously consider implementing organizational development processes that will increase the level of active employee engagement.

Q. I have some doubts that alignment with values is the only and best way of getting people live the brand in an organisation. Alignment looks for uniformity and absence of dissonance. Isn’t this a bit contradictory with the personal branding philosophy in which you try to get more of what you are, no less?

A. Alignment is not the same as uniformity; it’s about congruence or compatibility. The Brand Tool Box® Personal Brand Model is a tool for individuals to discover their authentic personal brand. Our model of internal brand building is based upon a concept called the Power of Brand Alignment. This model is based upon alignment not compliance. The Power of Brand Alignment model is built upon a foundation of employees understanding their authentic personal brand well enough to examine where their values, attitudes and competencies align with their employer’s business brand. This is an opt-in model providing the employee with the opportunity to make a conscious decision about how much alignment they have with their employer.

When employees are able to identify areas of alignment and find ways to leverage the connection with their employer, their level of engagement becomes evident. Each employee will be able to contribute based upon his or her distinctive talents and engagement. Aligned personal brands bring a level of diversity that is valued and encouraged by innovative, high performing organizations.

Highly engaged employees are the drivers of high performing organizations. Disengaged employees are a drag on an organization’s performance. The largest segment of employees are uncommitted or employees unaware of their level of engagement. Employers focus on inspiring highly engaged employees to be more of who they are. Uncommitted employees are encouraged by employers to discover their level of alignment and then be more of who they are. Disengaged employees are urged to comply by adhering to uniformity and dissonance is discouraged because it is unproductive and distracts aligned, engaged employees.

Q. Sandford Meisner, probably the best ever actors’ trainer, teaches how one of the essential of good acting is to truly connect with your partner. And I think this is very applicable to a personal brand building. I totally agree with the conclusion of your book when you say that what really enriches our life are relationships: people you connect with, people you like, people you love, people you trust. How do your tools help to better connect with others?

A. Our tools of personal brand are based upon authenticity and alignment. Our Brand Tool Box® Personal Brand tools help individuals build and nourish relationships in three different ways. The first tool is a framework of defining an individual’s authentic personal brand. We help people make a clear connection between their most important values and the way they interact with others. That framework is called a Personal Brand Platform. The next tool we have is called a Personal Brand Assessment. This is a tool individuals use to assess how others perceive them, providing them real information to determine their personal brand strengths and weaknesses. Finally we have tools to help people find productive ways to create alignment between their authentic self and the needs of others. A stronger connection will enable an individual to make an authentic difference for another person. In addition when an individual consistently lives their authentic personal brand they will develop trusting relationships. Strong, trusting relationships are a very important asset of successful professionals and create ultimate fulfillment in life.

From time to time, foreign journalists ask to interview me about the concept of personal brand described in Be Your Own Brand and more recently on my perspective on internal brand building. For a whole set of reasons I happen to find the interview questions submitted by non-U.S. journalists to be curious and interesting. The perspective behind these types of questions piques my interest and encourages me to answer them with a new eye on clarity. I recently responded to an interesting set of questions submitted by a journalist from Spain and thought you might enjoy learning from both the questions and responses.

In the spirit of brevity, I will include the first question of the Q & A today. Check back next week to read the remaining Q & A’s.

Q. Karl D. Speak is the creator of a model of definition of your brand essence (competences + standards + style) (we call it the Brand Tool Box® Brand Model) successfully tested with a great deal of companies. To understand the brand as an experience that others have from your company or product was the point of departure of his personal brand research. The model, does it really work?  Aren’t we as people difficult to reduce to such a simple framework?

A. As context for answering your two questions let me provide you with my point of view on personal brand. Following that I will address your questions about how we have been able to apply our brand model to help individuals become more effective at managing relationships in all parts of their life, including their professional life.

Over the past 10 years brand professionals have come to understand the importance of creating a model for personal brand as a viable tool to building a strong corporate brand. In one way we now understand that the enthusiasm and behaviours of employees has a great deal of impact on the strength of a corporate brand. In another way there are certain industries, e.g., professional services, where the brand of the individual has a greater impact on the customer than the corporate brand. Business leaders soon understood that a robust, yet practical model of personal brand was required to increase an organization’s ability to create stronger customer loyalty by using a portfolio of product, corporate and personal brands. Development of a personal brand model has become an important innovation in marketing.

The challenge in building a model of personal brand was to be able to leverage what we knew about business brand building without making the model impersonal. At the same time, the model had to be practical so individuals could use it. The key was to start with the things we knew were common between business and personal brands. As an example, strong personal and business brands share the following attributes:

• The strength of each brand is determined by how others perceive them. The value of a brand is determined by the perceptions of others. Perception is reality.
• Both exhibit a strong commitment to their values.
• They are admired because they demonstrate an ability to use their distinctive qualities to make a difference for someone else and their actions are very consistent. In other words both personal and business brand are perceived to be distinctive, relevant, and consistent.
• Others admire how the brand, in either case, has a vision for how it can make a difference for someone else.
• Both types of brands focus not only on what they do, but hold themselves accountable for the impression that was left as a result of their actions.
• Strong personal and business brands have demonstrated a long-term record of success.

The need for developing a model of personal brand that could be used as a business tool was the motivating force for developing the model of authentic personal brand and writing Be Your Own Brand in 2001.

As we developed our model of personal brand we didn’t attempt to create a model that would define the complexities of the human being. Our goal was to create a model that helped describe how individuals related to each other and how they could use their authenticity to make contributions to other people and to their employers. The objective was to build a model to help individuals build stronger relationships with others by adding value in each interaction, just like strong product or corporate brands.

With this in mind we translated our proven model of business brand (Brand Tool Box® Business Brand Model) that we have been using for over 20 years into a practical model of personal brand. At the core of brand building is making sure that the perceptions people have of the brand are distinctive and valued. The Brand Tool Box® Personal Brand Model is a framework to help individuals manage the perceptions they leave with other people. The model is based upon three simple concepts that individuals can use to define the way they interact with another person and ultimately add value in the relationship. The purpose is to connect each person’s authentic values with the perceptions they create with another person. This model allows an individual to build a relationship with another person that is authentic. A person can deliver the most value in a relationship (at work or in their personal life) when they are true to themselves and others perceive their true qualities.

Does the Brand Tool Box® Personal Brand Model work? Yes. Individuals have been successfully using the Brand Tool Box® Personal Brand Model for over eight years. In fact over the last five years thousands of individuals have used this model in the Brand Tool Box® Brand Alignment training workshops. We have been able to gather compelling quantitative data from individuals that this model has worked in helping them find stronger alignment with their employers and in making a difference with family members and friends.

The virtues of truth and honesty are at the core of becoming a strong authentic personal brand.  When an individual embraces authentic personal brand as an operating principle, the universe of strong, positive relationships is expanded and the possibilities for achievement become so much larger. The potential payoff for embracing the notion of personal brand is based upon whether one views personal brand as an image-polishing strategy or as a framework to get credit for how an individual uses their values and beliefs to make a difference for others. The divergent views of personal brand are closely related to an analogous dichotomy in the way the discipline of business brand has evolved.

Establishing the notion of personal brand as a mere personification of a business-marketing concept can be troubling for many people. After all, brand does have the reputation, if you will, of being the business practice of using emotional manipulation techniques to cajole consumers to buy one product over another. The easy inference is that personal brand is a personal success strategy of manipulating other people by positioning one in the most favorable light. However, if one is imprinted with an understanding of brand as the projection of the values and beliefs of an organization, personal brand takes on a much more wholesome personal development tool.

There is a clear parallel between the development of brand as a business management tool and the subsequent development of the notion of personal brand. To provide more substance to the analogy, let’s look back on the evolution of brand as a marketing discipline.

At the core of brand as a modern marketing technique is the belief there is no technical or factual difference between different products in the same category. The practice of brand building was built around the technique of finding out what consumers desired in a certain product and using marketing techniques, most notably advertising, to associate that desired attribute with a certain brand name. In some cases when the brand images became commoditized, the tried and true technique of “new and improved” became the new brand differentiation strategy. Modern marketers employed a strategy of convincing consumers to buy based upon image not substance.

The real irony surrounding the notion of brand is that modern marketing adulterated the original use of brand. In its original form brand was used literally as a mark that signified an individual’s unique craftsmanship. Brand was created as a symbol to identify the real differences between products. It was an early “marketing” (before the idea of an MBA was ever envisioned, ah, the good old days!) technique encouraging consumers to purchase goods based upon real tangible differences.

Today businesses use brand along these same bifurcated lines. Some businesses use brand as a marketing tool to manage the image around their product or service. Brand in this context is a marketing-driven competency. Marketers are the managers of brand and use the classic 4-P’s framework to build a brand image with their targeted customers.

Other more enlightened organizations embrace brand as a customer-centric organizational development framework. In this view, brand represents the values and beliefs that serve as the underpinnings that support the quality of products they develop and the services that support the customer. Brand to these types of organizations represents their unique “Company Way” of doing business and in all likelihood this value system has a rich legacy within the organization. Brand building is used as an internal culture management tool to keep employees focused on doing business in-synch with the distinctive qualities of the organization. The inherent brand strategy is the confidence that the authenticity of their “brand” of developing products will produce tangible differences that will differentiate its offering from others.

The development of personal brand as a personal development technique has fallen along similar lines as the way businesses use brand. Some purveyors of personal brand, frankly most of them, believe personal brand is about developing relationships with others based upon image. The strategy is all about finding out what’s important to others and positioning oneself in that light, i.e. creating a personal brand that has certain appeal. In essence they are setting forth an image that is so “attractive” that it attempts to discourage others from looking further. The personal brand strategy or emphasis is on creating an attractive veneer.

The notion of personal brand set forth in Be Your Own Brand explores the other version of brand, anchored by an individual’s values. This perspective views brand as a relationship that is earned based upon the authentic qualities of the individual. Authentic personal brand is a different, more wholesome perspective on personal brand. The notion of authentic personal brand challenges individuals to use their distinctive qualities to make a difference for others as a requirement for creating a trusting brand relationship. This is the (personal brand) road less traveled.

There is no doubt that many individuals desire to benefit from the relationship advantages that accrue from being perceived to be a strong authentic personal brand.  It is also clear that many of those same individuals that hope to reap the benefits of a strong authentic personal brand do not display the discipline and courage to consistently embrace the truth and act in a genuinely authentic and honest way.

The way an individual is perceived defines their personal brand and defines the world of possibilities that exists in the relationship.  Honesty is required to understand the perceptions that define your personal brand.  Honesty is required to constrain oneself to avoid attempting to establish a perception that is not authentic. We can only have the personal brand we are and are willing to build and sustain.  For a personal brand to be real and earn equity based upon its merits, it must be authentic. Therefore it requires honesty to be clear about the truth of the possibilities of the brand we choose to become.

In the spirit of building a strong authentic personal brand one must not take George Burns, the famed actor and comedian, at his word when he said - “The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Building a strong authentic personal brand is not natural for everyone and requires a different perspective.  It can be antithetical to a short-term objective of quid pro quo and requires a long-term commitment to one’s authentic values and interest of others.  Every individual who chooses to gain the benefits of being a strong authentic personal brand must be honest with themself and decide to take the high road and let their brand speak for them. Build relationships on substance, not image. Do you have the courage and commitment to build a strong authentic personal brand?

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference”

…Robert Frost

Strong relationship skills are a common trait of effective leaders. In their relationships with others these leaders are admired because they add something special in the relationship, that is to say they have a distinctive point of view that can make a difference. When the distinctive quality is on display time-after-time, leaders are believed to be authentic in their relationships with others. Authenticity takes a strong sense of self and the courage to consistently apply one’s special qualities. The authentic personal brand framework combines the process of declaring one’s authentic self and the skills to get credit from others for the distinctive difference that defines a value-added relationship.

There are five fundamental concepts to understanding the authentic personal brand framework.

1. The power of positive perceptions.
2. The strength that is derived when perceptions of you are distinctive, relevant and consistent.
3. The trust that results from making a difference, not just the perception of being different.
4. The importance of having the courage to define a strong personal brand platform that inspires you to make a difference in the important relationships in your life.
5. The leverage that comes from the power of alignment in achieving your short-term and long-term goals.

These insights are based upon the experiences of many individuals who have used the authentic personal brand framework to become more effective leaders.

“It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.” - Errol Flynn

Actor Errol Flynn’s profound insight speaks volumes about perceptions. It is an insight that every business professional that values the role of productive relationships must understand to be an effective leader. Perceptions may be the most important of all the tenets that comprise the concept of authentic personal brand. When an individual holds themselves accountable to the perceptions they create with others, they expand the possibilities of the relationship. Embracing the intangible nature of perceptions will expand the possibilities of every relationship.

In some regards perception is a straightforward concept, one that is easy to understand intellectually, but is not intuitive for many people. Perception is about sensing, feeling and empathy and is an example of a “soft” business skill that has, by its nature, limited the way it is incorporated into personal development and leadership. To fully understand the potential of a healthy, productive relationship, one must be willing to be held accountable to perceptions.

The study of the concept of perceptions has its roots deep in the behavior sciences and if you read enough it can get so complex you begin to wonder what side of the mirror you are facing! There is no need for me to present a theoretical construct that supports a purer understanding of perceptions. Applying the notion of perceptions to personal brand building requires only a basic understanding of the concept. The more difficult part is the discipline of viewing things from someone else’s perspective and the fortitude to hold oneself accountable for the perception that is created and not the action that was taken.

Incorporating perceptions into your everyday thought process starts with the following easy steps:

1. Decide what perceptions you want to create in the minds of others. Establishing perceptions with other individuals doesn’t have to be held to chance. Building a strong brand starts with deciding what perceptions you want to create. Determining the desired perceptions is a decision based on careful consideration and commitment. Decide on the set of perceptions you want to create, based on the following criteria: first and foremost focus on the qualities that make you distinctive from others; make sure the perceptions are targeted at what is most important in your relationships; and be sure the targeted perceptions are based upon the qualities you can consistently deliver.
2. Be accountable for creating perceptions as often as possible. Every action leaves an impression. Some perceptions are created intentionally, though many are not. We are all accountable for the perceptions we create. A lack of accountability can create unintentional consequences in our relationships with others. When there is a gap between how you want to be perceived and how you are actually perceived, the relationship can suffer.
3. Measure the perceptions. Perceptions are real and can be measured. Continual improvement starts with measurement. A commitment to consistently measuring and assessing the perceptions others have of you is fundamental to the positive growth of your authentic personal brand.

Perceptions of your brand define the limits and possibilities of relationships with others. When someone’s perceptions underestimate an individual, the relationship never achieves its potential. When perceptions are in synch with the true qualities of an individual, the full potential for the relationship is a real possibility. When perceptions grow with the possibilities of an individual, leadership potential is unbounded.

Understanding the role of perceptions is a good start to building a stronger and more authentic personal brand, a competency that will add to your leadership abilities.

The Halo Effect, by Phil Rosenzweig, is the business book that has been a long time in coming. I love this book. As far as business books go it is a page-turner. If you don’t own it yet (or haven’t checked it out of your local library), get it and put it on the top of your reading pile. Why all the hubbub? For starters, the author provides pitch-perfect insights about the fallibility of most business books that claim to offer the Holy Grail of what it takes to create a high-performing organization. Secondly, after you read this book you will save yourself a bunch of time by not reading too many new business books and spend more time with your family or on the golf course. Besides all of that, the next time that pedantic MBA-nerd in your office tries to impress you by espousing the latest business-guru theory you will have the three questions to ask that will send him packing to Starbucks to commiserate with his social networking friends on LinkedIn.

The Halo Effect described by the author is, “The tendency to look at a company’s performance and make attributes about its culture, leadership, values, and more. In fact, many things we commonly claim drive company performance are simply attributions based on prior performance.” The good professor clearly articulates eight delusions that are created based upon how many so-called business gurus have been misguided based upon their attempts to force fit their perspectives and set forth over-simplified formulas that describe high-performing organizations.

I want to bring attention to two outstanding tenets of Rosenzweig’s work. Tenet one: Successful organizations are given more credit for the attributes that supposedly made them successful or enabled them to outperform their competitors, i.e., the popular kids are viewed as being smarter and better looking. Individual business successes are too often over glamorized and the media likes to mythologize the success. (The exception is Lake Wobegon where the kids are average, but it still makes a good story.). Talk up current business success, keep the analysis simple and add a human-interest twist and that story will sell and capture people’s attention.

The business gurus suggest (of course you need to read their book or hire them as a keynote speaker to get the real insights) that if you just follow the blueprint of these captains of industry, the performance of your company will be a hands-down success. Unfortunately there are at least two proverbial flies in the ointment. Companies are more unique than similar, which means the attributes that make a company successful are hard to extrapolate to many other companies. Second, past success is not a very good predictor of future success. This fact is exacerbated when an organization mimics past success based upon the wrong attributes. It’s like driving while looking through a distorted rear-view mirror. Of course what makes matters worse is in hindsight the business gurus have a new perspective on what caused the lack of performance. The author points to many examples where the specific characteristics that made the company successful during its peak, were deemed to be the traits that caused their demise. The author sets forth many examples where a particular attribute, e.g., rapid decision-making or growth by expanding into many new markets, was determined to be the reason for a certain business’ success. Rosenzweig then reports that following relative failure of the same successful business, the business gurus point to leadership’s “rash decisions” and not “sticking to their knitting” as reasons for their current failures.

Second tenet: Business is too complex and subject to too many external forces to attribute one or a few qualities as predictors of future success. Rosenzweig suggests that there is so much randomness and uniqueness to a company’s success that only 20-30% of the variables that account for success can be identified. Mix in luck, fortuitous timing, human intuition and good judgment and it is easy to understand that developing the blueprint for organizing a company for high performance is a crap shoot, at best.

Many companies, more now than ever, are looking for the Holy Grail or blueprint for building a high-performance brand. Let’s be careful not to latch too quickly onto the latest brand-building trend. What analogies from the lessons presented in The Halo Effect can we apply to brand building? Here are a few thoughts:

• Brands don’t create business success. Successfully managed businesses that consistently deliver distinctive value over a long time period create strong brands. An organization doesn’t create a brand because it needs to be more successful. Brands are earned over time. It takes a total effort by the organization to earn or lose brand equity.
• Strong brands provide organizations leverage to grow faster than competitors. Stated another way, strong brands get more opportunities with less effort than competitors. It’s common sense – success breeds success. A strong brand is recognition that the business has been successful. It’s not any more complicated than that.
• There are many organizations that have earned the potential to be a strong brand in their category. Without consistent execution of proven brand-building practices an organization will not get credit for the brand it deserves.
• Don’t try and mimic other brands, especially the big name brands. Businesses are more unique than similar. Big brands play with a different set of resources and rules. Remember, a brand gains its value because of its distinctiveness. Managing a brand mimicking others leads to sameness and ultimately a lack of confidence in your brand. Besides that, when you are not the lead dog, the view is always the same! (Don’t quote me, I stole that from someone whose name escapes me.)
• A brand has its strongest appeal to a target audience. Know your audience better than anyone else. Don’t manage your brand with conventional wisdom. When the so-called conventional wisdom changes you will follow others down the path of brand irrelevance.
• Some of the strongest brands, by any measure, are the brands you have most likely never heard of. There are brands in industries you are not aware of that have brand power that far exceeds that of the most popular consumer brands. Brand power boils down to relationship power and the ability of an organization to use key relationships to grow in ways competitors cannot. Learning from other brands is important and can be valuable. Pick the right role models. Be curious. Look at brands beyond your industry, based in different cultures, brand building that uses different techniques and have different target markets. Relationships are built in many different ways, but the business leverage delivers the same advantages.
• Don’t let your brand building get too cocky. Leverage your success, but know that success has more to do with circumstances created by others before you or unknowingly by your competitors. Humility is the most important quality of any business leader who delivers long-term business success. The same is true about your brand’s success. The most successful brand-building discipline and effort will be known as a great success for the leverage it provides the people that follow you. Embracing stewardship as a primary brand management tenet will ensure that those who follow will not fall prey to building a business on a weak premise. Building on a strong brand building foundation will encourage new brand managers to use their new insights and tools to build a stronger brand, not a new brand.

How’s that for starters? What other thoughts come to your mind? Read The Halo Effect and let us know what you would add to the list.

How well organizations link brand on the outside with the brand on the inside will ultimately determine how strong their corporate brand will become.  There are many implications to this important notion; in particular it is becoming imperative that marketing and human resources executives need to learn to collaborate on an internal brand-building process.  The objective of a robust internal brand-building program is to create a culture that is passionate about the difference it makes for its customers.  Internal brand building is customer-centric culture building.

Most management gurus agree on one thing – the companies that have achieved the most sustainable growth have a strong, focused corporate culture.  Peter Drucker, Peter Senge, and Jim Collins all point to the importance of corporate culture as a key contributor to long-term success.  In fact Collins, in his new book How the Mighty Fail, suggests that weak or underdeveloped corporate cultures is one of the main causes of failure in many companies.  Conversely, he shares that a strong culture often prevents great companies from suffering through extended downturns.

Building and maintaining a strong culture is unarguably important to every organization.  The value of a strong customer-centric corporate culture cannot be overstated.  But knowing how to proactively build one is a real challenge. If a strong culture is important to success, why are the tools needed to build one in such short supply? There are several good reasons.

1. Corporate culture is difficult to define.
   Culture is often described as the psychology, attitudes, experiences and beliefs of a company.  It is the specific collection of strong values and norms that are shared by people and groups within an organization.  Culture greatly influences the way people interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.  Defining the culture in terms of how it is relevant to delivering value to customers can begin to add clarity defining a business culture.
    
2. Corporate culture is intangible. 
   Most leaders believe that you will know the culture of an organization when you feel it.  Ask many companies who are known to have a strong culture and they describe their culture as “the organization’s way” – e.g. the IBM Way, the Apple Way, or the McKinsey Way. 
    
3. Corporate culture is self-sustaining.
   Culture is not a by-product of a single event or situation. It develops over time but can’t be mandated. Corporate culture relies on each individual’s commitment to change. Because when you change people you change cultures. Once established, it can be counted on to manage change brought on by external factors or internal failures.  
    
4. Strong cultures are built on a strong set of shared values.
   At the core of every strong corporate culture is a long-standing commitment to a set of values. Values are not intellectual or passive in organizations with strong cultures.  The values must be perceived to be authentic, consistently applied and durable.  The values of the most successful organizations are admired by employees and customers.
    
5. Corporate culture must impact customers.
   Successful cultures have one thing in common – there is a clear understanding of how the distinctive nature of the organization makes a substantial difference for customers.   Strong cultures are admired by customers, as well as employees.

Here are a couple of examples of how well known organizations have linked their cultures to delivering distinctive value to customers:

Since its inception in 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have worked hard to maintain a small company feel. At lunchtime, almost everyone eats in the office café, sitting at whatever table has an opening and enjoying conversations with “Googlers” from all different departments. This is critical since Google is committed to innovation, and innovation requires that everyone feel comfortable in sharing ideas and opinions.  Moreover the egalitarian nature of their culture resonates and connects with the democratic nature of the Internet itself.

Another example of a strong culture is Southwest Airlines. – the only major airline in the U.S. that is consistently profitable and has a great reputation as an employer. This is no coincidence. In an article written by Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s former CEO, he shared how Southwest maintains its culture as a strategic imperative:

“We are looking for attitudes that are positive and for people who can lend themselves to causes. We want folks who have a good sense of humor and people who are interested in performing as a team and take joy in team results instead of individual accomplishments.”  

Delivering a differentiated traveling experience for customers is a high stress, complex business.  Without a positive culture with a sense of humor, and teamwork it would be difficult for Southwest to succeed with employees and travelers to the degree they have. 

I believe that every organization has the ability to build a strong culture and it doesn’t have to be complex.  There are just a few key principles to understand and ultimately apply on a consistent basis. 

• Everyone in the corporate culture must believe in the clear connection between the distinctive values of the culture and how it makes a substantial difference for customers. 
• The way the organization leverages its culture, starting with its values, to make a distinctive difference for customers, establishes its “brand” of doing business.
• One of the largest untapped opportunities for building a stronger culture is helping each employee discover their personal brand (attitude, skills, beliefs, and values) and fostering alignment of their personal brand and the brand of the company. 
• Customer-centric employee engagement must be embraced as a sustainable corporate strategy.  Employee engagement and customer engagement are two fundamental long-term strategies of every sustainable, successful organization. 

In both the examples mentioned, the top management of the companies are vigilant about aligning their employees with their organization’s values and their “brand” of making a difference for a customer. Although organizations may have unique cultures, few consciously understand how to create the alignment required to successfully leverage the full potential of their value with customers. The health and vibrancy of a corporate culture is predictive of their strength in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Building a strong culture can be achieved by any organization willing to make the commitment. Strong cultures don’t happen by accident or are only achievable by organizations with exceptional leaders or extraordinary products.  If more companies had access to the practical tools to build and sustain a strong customer-centric culture, it’s likely they would.  Internal brand building is a set of process tools that will build the foundation for creating and sustaining a customer-centric culture. Is your organization ready for internal brand building?

Truly great brands are few and far between. These great brands are in a class by themselves. For starters, these great brands consistently maintain their relevance as markets change through time.  In addition, these standout brands consistently outperform competitors and produce innovations that enhance the usage behaviors of their consumers. 

Great brands have another thing in common. These highly admired brands were the brainchild of an individual, who in their own right, are/were a strong personal brand among their peers. These individuals didn’t set out to create a brand, in the context of a modern marketing strategy. They had bigger, nobler ideas in mind. These overachievers had a vision and an unflinching confidence aimed at changing the way the world worked or the way people lived their daily lives. The special qualities of these outstanding individuals are the souls of the great brands. These phenomenal people are the brands inside the brands that so many admire. These are brand achievers.

Unfortunately brand achievers, like many, phenomenally gifted people are hard to dissect, much less model (of course that’s why they’re phenomenal!). The curiosity surrounding these people has motivated many writers to understand the source of genius that powers these special people.  Recently, two popular business authors have each published books that have added to the body of contemporary literature on the topic. Geoff Colvin, a well-respected business journalist, presents his ideas in his recent book Talent is Overrated. Malcolm Gladwell has presented his ideas in his new book Outliers. 

I think Colvin and especially Gladwell’s point of view is limited, at best. David Brooks, New York Times columnist, is a smart guy and a practical intellectual.  In a recent column David provides a perspective on highly successful people that hits the target and can offer insights about the types of qualities that are at the base of many brand achievers. 

Reading business history is a more direct route to gaining some insights into the brand achievers that created the great brands we know today. If one stays attune to history you will find valuable tidbits here and there. As an example, this recently published article by Michael Schrage provides insights into how some brand achievers changed the game by changing the way product performance is defined. Michael’s perspective is an interesting angle and another tidbit to understand the mind of the brand achiever.  Nancy Koehn’s book Brand New Delivery, a well-written expose on the brands inside (brand achievers) six of the most successful enduring brands in recent history. It’s worth the read. 

Not everyone can be a brand achiever, but learning about the brand achiever behind the brand you manage can provide valuable insights.  The ethos of the brand achiever that created the brand you manage is the soul of that brand.  The more you understand that ethos, the more you will have a profound, organic understanding of the brand.  That intimate understanding will enable you to better manage and extend that brand.  A more profound understanding of the ethos of that brand will enable you to be a better steward of the brand and extend its legacy of greatness.

How well do you know the ethos of the brand you manage??

Recession and economic chaos are key items on virtually every leadership team’s agenda. How do brand managers address or take advantage of these challenging times? Harvard Business Review recently re-released an article titled “Moving Upward in a Downturn” that offers insights that are useful to take advantage of economic slowdowns. The author points to a three point platform to thrive in tough economic times: look bad news straight in the eye and plan for the storm; stay focused on your core business, and maintain a long term view while relentlessly managing costs. 

How can this proven advice be applied to brand building?

• Plan that budgets for brand building activities will become tighter. Don’t go into denial. Now is the time to proactively challenge the effectiveness of all your brand building activities. Look at the “storm” as a way to make your brand building ship stronger and more efficient. Be tough minded, your brand demands and deserves it. Plan for a time when the seas will be less rocky. 
   
• Don’t stray from your brand platform. Now is not the time to let your brand flag. The true character of a brand is known in times of stress and distress (the same applies to your personal brand.) Step up and reinforce the key elements of the brand platform. Don’t let the dark cloud of economic downturn eat away at the confidence in your brand’s platform. If you must revisit elements of the brand platform be sure not to let any gloom and doom bias your thinking about what your brand stands for.
   
• Keep a long term view, build a stronger brand for good times that are sure to come. No one ever knows when an economy turns the corner until long after the bottom happened. Stay intense and don’t let up with your brand building activities, you’ll be rewarded faster than you think. 
   
• “Contrarians know that downturns don’t last forever and, in effect, they make friends with others who are trapped in the same foxhole - employees, vendors, business partners, and customers.” Be an enthusiastic brand leader and enlist all your partners to develop, innovate, and create ways to build a strong brand in these challenging times. 

With the right attitude and discipline these may be the best times to build a brand that will thrive when the good times return. Short term determination + long term perspective = strong brands. Are these tough times exhilarating or exhausting for you? Will your brand be stronger or weaker because of the downturn?

Sounds like a tabloid headline doesn’t it?   Our organization, Brand Tool Box has been conducting workshops on personal brand and the power of perceptions for years. Believe me, you hear a lot of stories about how relationships changed after the workshop from participants understanding how perceptions can affect relationships in all areas of their life. One story struck me in particular about how awareness of the perceptions you’re leaving can really change a relationship for the better.

A couple of weeks after conducting one of our Brand Tool Box Brand Alignment training session, one of our trainers was doing some follow-up with the participants who attended the session. One woman pulled aside our trainer and told her that the workshop had saved her marriage! Kind of a big statement don’t you think? Well it turned out that she and her husband had gone over some the basic principles (intentions vs. perceptions) of the workshop and had realized that many times they weren’t saying the things they meant to and were unintentionally insulting each other with their choice of words, inflection, and tone. They weren’t communicating in an effective manner and by not paying attention to the perceptions they left on each other; they were unconsciously damaging their relationship. The woman said that after they starting paying attention to the perceptions they were leaving with each other they are communicating in a more meaningful manner and their marriage is greatly improved.

While I don’t think we’re ready to get into the business of marriage counseling quite yet, this story is a really good illustration of how by learning to manage perceptions in everyday relationships, you can strengthen and change them, for the better.

What do brand, perceptions, and personal relationships have in common, you ask?  It’s simple. Brands are relationships.  Any brand is defined by the perceptions surrounding it.  When the principles of brand are sensibly applied to human relationships positive things can happen in the relationship.

A recently written column by Nick Coleman in the Minneapolis Star Tribune titled “Cranky lady tangles with Mr. Nasty.” caught my attention.  The title in and of itself is enough to get me to click, I’m a sucker for well-written headlines. I was expecting a story about a strange and slightly weird domestic encounter. But what the article was really about spoke to me on a much stronger and deeper level, a business level, related to brand (bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?).

The story is about a 79 year old woman who was at a Target store trying to return 3 shirts because they didn’t fit and she wanted her money back. The customer service employee would only give her a gift card and refused to give her money back because she paid by check. The manager escalated the situation and told her to leave with her gift card because she wasn’t getting her money back. She refused on the grounds that since they had already taken the money out of her account, they could easily give it back. The heated exchange escalated until the police were called.  When the woman refused to leave without her money an ambulance was called to take her to the hospital to have her mental health evaluated.

When I first read this article I immediately thought that this would be a perfect example of how one insensitive, harried employee can alienate a customer. But then I realized that it is even bigger than that, it’s about inflexible corporate policies.  As I read this story it came to mind that there is maybe a bigger theme here.  A theme about how corporate policy gets in the middle of the relationship between a well-intentioned employee and an upset customer.   An inflexible, insensitive corporate policy that inhibits an employee’s desire to build a relationship with a customer.

Many of today’s large retailers are so into designing corporate policies and regulations for their employees that they don’t allow individual employees the room or the margin for human judgment to help customers as they see fit. Of course I don’t know this, but there is a distinct possibility that the manager was just following policy. Granted he didn’t have to be so inflexible or try to send a customer to the emergency room of a hospital, creating an unneeded expense and wasting a woman’s time, but what if he was just following policy? In his mind the rules say that he HAS to give a gift card no matter what. He has not been given “permission” to help solve customers’ problems the way that HE sees most appropriate, not the way that the corporate policy dictates it should be done. This resulted in two things. One, Target lost the opportunity to live out their brand in this customer interaction. Target tied their manager’s hands by insisting that the manager use a hard, cold corporate policy as a framework to manage a very human relationship. Two, this employee will now have to live with the fact that he lost a customer, possibly alienated some other employees’ friends and neighbors and changed the public perception of both himself and his Target store. His personal brand took a hit and the brand of Target ended up with a ding. All because the big bosses at the top didn’t think he could be trusted to make his own customer service decisions. 

Corporate policies set the tone for the brand on the inside and trust me, any insensitivity will find its way to a customer!