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Tag: Purpose-led

The Role of Company Culture in Business Success

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Corporate World is Restructuring Company Culture

Your company culture matters more than ever. Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2016 survey, “The new organization: Different by design,” maps and draws connections between the talent, leadership, and competitiveness challenges organizations around the world face.

This year’s data indicates a shift: CEOs and HR leaders are more focused on culture as a source of competitive advantage than ever, and they are turning to restructuring their organizations to increase employee engagement and retention, improve leadership, and build the kind of meaningful culture that drives success.

To put this in perspective, the 2016 study found that for the first time, 90% of respondents are restructuring or are planning to do so.

What’s the thinking behind all this restructuring? These companies are fostering highly empowered teams that are driven by a new model of management and led by globally diverse leaders. They are striving to transform themselves to be better and “different by design.” They are making a shift away from hierarchical, functional business models toward cross-functional “networks of teams” in an effort to become more agile, more collaborative, and more attuned to customers. These companies are transforming the way they do business in order to foster a culture of enhanced performance.

And with these transformations, we’ve seen company culture play a greater role in a business’s strategy. Fully 82% of respondents view workplace culture as a potential source of competitive advantage. Over 50% of the companies surveyed say that they are actively attempting to change their company culture. Yet, there is evidence indicates that leaders are “awakening” to the importance of culture. Fewer than 12% of those surveyed say that they understand what their company culture is.

People ask us all the time how to create a stronger and more innovative culture. This type of change isn’t easy or fast, but when you get it right, it can drive innovation and competitive differentiation in a way that’s good for your business and creates a more committed, creative, and even happier workforce.

Brand strategy has a very direct connection to the issue of culture change, and investing in brand strategy is fast becoming the norm for smart companies who want to create strong cultures and build meaningful engagement with their teams to drive business. When employees know why the brand matters – what is driving the behavior of the company and its values – they can align in ways that outperform the competition.

Recommendations

As you reflect on brand strategy and cultural change, here are our top recommendations for meaningfully transforming your business:

  • Develop a purpose-led brand promise for your brand
  • Help employees understand how to live this promise
  • Take a good, objective look at your organizational design
  • Be transparent in your interactions with employees
  • Make sure leaders and managers are leading by example
  • Be clear with employees on why your brand matters
  • Create a physical working environment that fosters the culture you want
  • Recruit with the brand promise in mind to attract like-minded people

The data from Deloitte paints a compelling picture of executives getting serious about understanding and managing culture as a linchpin their business’s strategy and transformation. For company leaders who are committed to building a better “different by design” organization, the best step forward is to integrate your brand strategy with your transformation or restructuring plan.

Please follow this link to read Deloitte’s survey.

For further insights on company culture, please enjoy our white paper on Meaningful Workplaces.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

How Culture Brings Strategy to Life

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Culture and Strategy

Business, culture and strategy can work harder for companies but how?  For many businesses, company culture and strategy exist in two different worlds. They take on separate conversations and are designated as separate leadership and separate budgets. And although many executives today realize that both culture and strategy drive their business, they fail to link the relationship between the two. But not grasping how strategy and culture can work together means both become less impactful.

More Connected Than You Think

There are many misconceptions about what company culture really means and, as a result, what its true value is to a business. Some dismiss culture as an ‘HR-only issue’ or address it as the ‘fluff’ of what a business really is. What they don’t realize is that company culture is one of the most integral drivers of long-term success, sustained growth, and competitive advantage.

Because company culture is often undervalued, when we see companies struggling, HR departments are often the first to have their budgets cut. And even when smart companies allocate funds towards building a stronger strategy, many dismiss culture as part of this conversation – leaving HR leaders out of the conversation.

This is a mistake. Without focusing in on employees and building a cohesive, strong culture, even the strongest strategy can’t really come to life. In the end, your people are the ones who bring a strategy alive. And so no brand strategy is really strategic without making company culture part of the discussion.

Culture Can Bring a Strategy to Life

In order to get your brand strategy out of a presentation deck and living in your business, you need motivated, inspired, aligned, and vision-driven people. People who are strategically in-pace, clear about the brand, and directed towards a shared vision.

In the end, culture can make or break a strategy – giving it an environment to thrive in or die in. Here’s how a focus on culture can help bring a strategy to life.

Greater Focus and Alignment Around the Vision

Although the first step of a successful strategy is getting leaders aligned around a shared purpose, it doesn’t end there. Everyone within the business – from the higher-ups to the new hires — has to be driven towards the same vision. It starts with the leadership but needs to trickle down. Without everyone on board, business goals and objectives will float further and further out of reach.

When businesses get smart about sharing their strategy, giving new voices a place at the table, and finding exciting, innovative ways of getting their employees on board, the strategy thrives. It’s important that employees feel clear about what the strategy means for their business and their own personal work. What changes? What is there to get excited about? What is everyone driving towards? How does a new strategy change the culture? What are the specific behavior changes within the workplace that reflect this new strategy? These are all questions that require transparency and that need to be addressed.

When the whole company is united around a shared vision and clear about how to get closer and closer to that vision, the business becomes more focused, more efficient, more inspired, more productive, and in the end, more impactful. With culture and strategy – together — driving it forward.

More Consistency and More Collaboration

When culture becomes a part of the strategic conversation, recruiting and retaining employees who are going to have the most impact on your business becomes easier. And finding the right fit and keeping people motivated, happy, and inspired becomes more of a reality.

When you’re clear about the kind of people who are going to drive your business into the future, and help shape the culture you want to build, collaboration flourishes, innovation thrives, and creativity rockets. Employees feel empowered because they are clear and excited about living the brand every day. The strategy comes to life through employees who come together and instill the emotional impact in target audiences, bring the brand promise alive, and keep business moving forward every day.

Culture and Strategy Working Together

Brand strategy has a very direct connection to the issue of culture change. When culture becomes a part of the strategic conversation, and employees gain clarity around why the brand matters and why their business is different, they behave in ways that are aligned strategically with the values, vision, and aspirations of the company. Coming together with a shared focus is what puts that strategy into play, and allows businesses to outperform the competition and position themselves for success. 

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

Purpose-Led Brand Strategy Optimizes Business

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Purpose-led Brand Strategy that Masters the Intangibles, Masters Markets

A purpose-led brand strategy has the power to optimize the present and future value of your business. When your brand actively embodies all the true and meaningful aspects of your corporate decisions, policies, and actions, it not only brings new energy to your current competitive efforts, it also signals a brighter and more energizing future to the people vital to your company’s success.

Your brand houses your company’s intangible value

Everyone knows there’s a link between the perceived value of your “intangible assets” and the market value of your company. Your brand is one of the many intangible assets in your company, and it serves a very important role. In fact, your brand is the house in which virtually all of your other intangible assets tend to live.

This is because your brand is the place where customers, employees, and investors store all the information, data, experiences, and collective good and worth they attach to your company. This collective good and worth can be seen as a positive energy that propels your brand forward, based on the trust and confidence that energy builds.

Value builds as the energy grows

The opportunity is to bring all that energy together through a meaningful purpose that not only increases the value of the goodness your business does now, but also inspires your organization to pursue new avenues of meaning. A meaningful purpose helps rally and align your people so they create more meaning within and outside of the organization. These efforts, which make your organization a more rewarding and gratifying place in which to work, have a compound effect on the value that flows from your intangible assets.

Don’t leave your intangible assets to their own devices, proactively manage them for greater success.

Smart leaders strive to optimize the value of their intangible assets. The most credible way to do this is to make stronger and more pervasive contributions to the collective well-being through individual, social, and environmental initiatives. These efforts will signal both social responsibility and a long-term view for the brand. They will energize your organization, and empower it in new ways. They will help you forge stronger connections with customers, attract new prospects, make the work of your employees more meaningful and gratifying, bring in the new talent your organization needs, and give investors the confidence they need to stick by your brand over the long-term.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Img credit: Motherbird

Doing Good Feels Good – Is Your Brand on Board?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Action for Happiness is a movement for positive social change. We’re bringing together people from all walks of life who want to play a part in creating a happier society for everyone. This video from Action for Happiness spurred some thinking on brands and what people are looking for today.

Let’s start by defining “happy”.

It can be superficial – like what you feel as you watch a TV ad that makes you laugh or brings a tear to your eye.

It can be profound – as in what you feel when you know that what you’re doing is doing good for others.

We’ve written before about brands that push  short-lasting, superficial feelings through advertising, and then drop the ball when it comes to delivering their product or service (any banks or airlines come to mind?).

This “emotional” approach backfires because the negative feelings far outweigh – and last far longer – than the positive bump created by something that makes us laugh or come close to crying.

People tend to feel used and abused when their feelings are exploited this way.

On the other hand, an “emotive” approach to branding is built around working to make people feel good, positive, and happy because what they’re doing is good for others – and through that, good for themselves.

Emotive branding works to a simple formula: Why + Emotions = Meaning

Emotive branding focuses a brand on its purpose.

Purpose-led brands define, and then live by, their “why”.

It’s a “why” that propels the brand forward because it is personally relevant to the people vital to the brand’s success – employees, customer, prospect, partners, etc.

Purpose-led brands also consistently evoke specific positive feelings.

They work hard to make people feel “good” and “happy” about being associated with the brand.

They do this by injecting every brand interaction with actions and messages that “why” and reinforce the good feelings the brand seeks to own.

Emotive branding is a response to the change in values

People are moving on.

They are looking beyond the “me” to the “we”.

They are seeking more meaning in their personal lives, in the brand they choose to support, and the companies they work for.

This dramatically changes how they evaluate what they buy, whom they buy from, and where they choose to work.

Whether you manage a B2C or a B2B brand, these changes are important considerations as you think about how your brand will thrive over time.

Brands and businesses that seek to more meaningfully and emotionally connect with people must know the answer to the following two questions.

  1. Why does your brand matter?
  2. How does your brand want to make people feel?

For additional information on transforming your brand, please download our white paper.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm.

TOMS Shoes: When Being Meaningful Becomes the Business You Are In

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

TOMS Shoes has built a strong business and huge following based on its altruistic approach to selling shoes: buy a pair from TOMS and TOMS gives a second pair to someone who really needs them.

Continue reading “TOMS Shoes: When Being Meaningful Becomes the Business You Are In”