The Forgotten Half of Brand Management

Source: TIME magazine

No one takes organizational alignment as seriously as the Army.

When the going gets tough and lives are at stake, you want to be sure that everyone's focused on the same objective, pushing as hard as you are, and that your buddy's got your back.

Achieving this state of operational nirvana doesn't come easy.

Earning the right to become an officer in the Singapore Armed Forces cost me 9 months of intense physical and mental effort in a previous life.  Even basic military training today takes up to 4 months of (arguably inhuman) drills designed to deconstruct individualism and resistance to authority, then reconstruct thinking soldiers to form a cohesive unit that acts as One.

Now the commercial world is not so cut and dried. You may not get your head blown apart by a 'frenemy' in the jungle out there.  But the consequences of a lack of internal alignment can be just as crippling: Low morale, fuzzy roles and responsibilities, squabbling factions, measly pockets of excellence, lackadaisical purpose, petering productivity, poor time-to-market.

Which is why I'm amazed when companies on a rebranding run think the heavy lifting is done when their corporate vision, mission and core values are articulated and the brand strategy is defined. That's all well and good; but in fact, it's only half the job done.

You need to activate the whole shebang. Induct employees in the game plan.  Cascade all that good stuff down the ranks 'til it seeps into the frontline troops -- your brand ambassadors at the coalface, who are consciously or unconsciously building or breaking your brand at each and every customer touchpoint.

Organizational alignment doesn't just happen on its own. It needs the visible endorsement of senior management, and their demonstrated commitment of funding and resourcing appropriate programs to give employees a clear line of sight between their on-the-job actions and the resultant impact on company performance.

That's the only way we'll bring down the damning statistic that says 4 out of 5 workers are not engaged in doing the things that drive business results.

What causes this misalignment?  Cumulative missteps, large and small, that include:
- senior executive behaviours that don't match the message;
- complicated and lengthy approval processes that prevent timely
  distribution of  information;
- employees who don't get to hear things before the outside world
  does -- resulting in a loss of faith; and conversely,
- too much communication, such that more important messages are
  lost in the clutter.

But is it really worth the effort to pursue organizational alignment?  It's too idealistic, I hear you say.  It takes too much effort.  So what if a few people are off doing their own thing?

Well, consider this:  A recent Towers Watson study found that companies with highly effective internal communication practices have a 47% higher shareholder return than companies without such disciplines in place.  An informed, equipped and inspired workforce can truly achieve great things.
 
As for a team that's not? Well, like the recruits struggling to lift their log in the photo above, you ain't gonna get anywhere fast.

Brands Should Go Back to School

Earlier this week, I sat at the back of my daughter's school hall while her principal extolled the performance of the 2009 cohort of the Singapore Chinese Girls' School's secondary 4 students in the GCE 'O' level examinations.

It was a remarkable performance by the girls (the best 'O' level results in the school's storied history) ... and a memorable experience for the proud parents in attendance.

But what struck me -- apart from the collective standout achievement of this batch of confident young ladies -- was the palpable support and team spirit demonstrated by the entire school. They cheered when slides flashed the names of the girls who'd scored six A1s or more. They screamed even louder when 20 students who had faced significant challenges through the school year were named and commended. And they brought the house down when the top two girls who scored nine A1s were named. Teachers were beaming as they were mobbed and hugged by appreciative students for their year-long gifts of insight and inspiration. The whole school celebrated as one.

It got me thinking: What is it about girls that makes them work and play together better than boys? Why didn't I feel that same sense of camaraderie, that esprit de corps, when I collected my 'O' level results? (Well, besides the fact that my results were decidedly mediocre.) And -- more to the point of this blog post -- how can companies nurture this same kind of culture?

Now, why is that important? Because organizations don't act; individuals do. What organizations do, is create cultures. Culture is the organizational equivalent of a person's character. Ingrain a character, and you'll establish a pattern of action. The behaviour that is modelled becomes the behaviour that is followed.

If we accept that the primary vehicle for delivering brand identity -- especially for a service brand -- is a company's employee workforce, then the company's culture provides the framework and the propulsion for its brand image to be kept consistent and visible in the jungle out there.

Imagine the benefits: No more 'off-the-reservation' forays into dodgy sponsorships. No misinterpretation of core brand values by employees at various customer touchpoints. No more 'silo thinking'; no more secret budgets siphoning funds away from global brand initiatives. Just a single, integrated go-to-market strategy executed by teams across the region or around the world with the Power of One.

Brands go further when brand champions work together.