Culture Change and Inside-Out Branding

While every company by default has a culture, the tricky part is developing one that proactively supports its brand objectives. This culture imperative goes to the heart of one of the most difficult and ongoing management challenges: How does management take developed brand strategies and effectively execute them through staff at all levels in such a way that on-brand behaviors become instinctive?

Organizational development consultants normally begin the process of culture change by defining and identifying desired behaviors. Operational processes such as performance management, remuneration and recognition, and recruitment are then aligned with these values.

Inside-Out Branding, as outlined in chapter 4, has a different starting point for expressing business strategy, the brand proposition. It defines a set of carefully chosen values that a customer must experience to conclude that the brand promise was delivered. The values can then be used to harmonize internal processes from recruitment through customer service and everything in between.

While the terminology is relatively new, culture change is also very dependent on a high level of organizational emotional intelligence (EI). ^[10] When a company is emotionally intelligent, it communicates effectively, treats people appropriately, and is able to get through rough spots without serious fallout. EI includes abilities such as self-management and self-motivation. It deals with how employees relate to each other through teamwork and interpersonal communication.

Under conditions of high emotional sensitivity, internal service improves, which, in turn, bubbles up to the surface of the company and ripples out to customers in the form of improved customer service. However, if organizational functions are changed and shaped without consideration of the profound values of the brand, by the time customer experiences are impacted by these changes, they are often generic, perhaps even off-brand and not unique compared to other companies.

^[10]Much has been written about emotional intelligence in recent years. We recommend the range of books by Daniel Goleman.