What Is The Best Way To Strengthen Your Brand?
Share viaWhen it comes to building a stellar brand, your marketing department can only do so much. The secret to strong brands actually lies somewhere else.
Brand is a lagging indicator of the quality of your culture.
Bobby Herrera is the cofounder and chief executive officer of the human resources service company Populus Group. With an annual revenue of $500 million and many Fortune 500 customers, Populus Group is one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States. Bobby has discovered that brand is a lagging indicator of the quality of your culture. This means that you can pour all you want into fancy marketing, branding, and image management, but if your culture stinks, so will your brand.
The obvious next question is, What is culture?
Culture is the sum of every interaction
Culture can be defined in many ways, but I prefer simple and elegant ones. The most elegant I’ve heard comes from Seth Godin, who has a gift for cutting through the clutter: “People like us do things like this.”
At its core, culture is the sum of every interaction between the people. This includes interactions between employees, between leaders, between leaders and followers, between employees and customers, and even between members of the organization and the general public.
Because of this, people have to be fluid in the small moments.
The action is in the interaction
Douglas Conant is the CEO who turned around Campbell Soup with the philosophy of being tough-minded on standards and tenderhearted with people. He recognized that life is too fragmented and dynamic to rely on traditional approaches to communication. Now more than ever, leaders need behavioral skills to make a difference in the smallest moments in the flow of work. When I interviewed Doug on my podcast, he emphasized that “the action is in the interaction.”
The best way to strengthen your brand
Your brand is a lagging indicator of the quality of your culture. Culture is the sum of all the interactions between your people. The action is in the interaction.
DDI’s 2023 Leadership Forecast identified interpersonal leadership communication skills as one or the top drivers of engagement and retention. Every interaction matters.
Where are you investing your marketing and branding resources? Maybe it’s time to train your people to make every interaction count.
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1 Comments
You put into words perfectly what I truly believe. Great article. “tough-minded on standards and tenderhearted with people”. Im sharing this with all my staff.
I’m so glad you found value, Christie. Thanks for posting your comment. I love it when leaders share my posts with their teams and organization.
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