Every strategy lives or dies on its ability to be delivered effectively by motivated people. What defines a brand culture are the principles and ideas needed for the people working within that brand to make their brand strategy work.
Culture is the enabler of strategy
That may strike some as counterintuitive. Culture is often described as a force in its own right: something that happens when people come together and sort out how they want to co-ordinate and co-operate. In effect, culture is the sum effect of human nature. The implication is that it is, and should be, beyond control. Something you need to work with. Or at best, do your best to influence in the right direction.
Perhaps – but, frankly, if that’s not the culture you need to perform strongly as a business, then your culture is not a positive contributor. And if your people have got to a point where they are inhibiting delivery, that’s not something that is going to sort itself out. Attitude is not something you can restructure. Policies and systems provide layers of structure and rules, but they don’t provide the emotional direction needed to get people not just on the same page, but on the right page.
Brand strategy makes sense as a cultural guidance system because it should be driving where the brand is heading. And as we often say, you can’t separate strategy and people. A strategy is literally nothing without people to being it to life, and an audience looking for just that sort of brand. The culture must work with and for the strategy. And vice versa. That’s what defines a brand culture.
A principled approach
The role of a brand culture is to give the people a principled way of working together to deliver the brand strategy – cleverly, profitably and cohesively. A Principled Culture, as we call it, is about identifying and fortifying everything you need as a culture to become competitive as a brand.
Stepping up to that starts with choosing a brand culture archetype as the foundational definition, and then introducing the workplace, experiences, people, rewards and stories needed to make that compelling. The archetype matters because culture needs basis and guidance in order to be principled. The right strategy matched with the wrong sort of culture will not work. It’s unreasonable to assume that people who like to work in particular ways can interpret and deliver on a strategy that literally is at odds with their sense of identity.
That archetype may be close to the culture you have currently. Or there may be a sizeable gap. But simply pairing a strategic approach with a brand culture option is not enough. To develop a Principled Culture, it’s important to identify and resolve a range of influencing factors that will align strategic and cultural intentions, accentuate the people factor and make your brand feel distinctive, human, emotional and approachable.
The pursuit of cultural advantage
A brand strategy framework revolves around a single organising idea. Our view is that a brand culture should pivot on a single driving emotion – the most powerful sentiment that the culture should commit to in order to bring the brand to life. That emotion should be positive (obviously) but it should also complement the brand’s single organising idea and set the tone for all the cultural influencing factors.
Cultural shift also needs an agitation. An emotionally-based reason for change that is more pressing and more compelling than leaving things as they are. Finding that catalyst to develop a more competitive brand culture is not always easy. People won’t tell you they are unhappy to change – especially if it is not in their perceived interests to do so.
What an agitation does is to articulate what the brand intends to challenge from the inside-out. It enables the brand, for example, to establish a brand enemy and to define your mandate as a brand and a culture in order to take up your chosen market role. These ideas, combined with the brand’s purpose, vision, values and behaviours set out clear expectations for what people will do, why and how. They unite those who believe in them. And they also light a path to the exit for those who are not going to thrive, or contribute meaningfully, in this environment.
A true brand culture builds like a movement
For us, a brand culture involves more than just setting these goals and guidelines. It requires taking people on a journey to become the best exponents of the brand they can be. In that regard, it has all the characteristics and energy of a social movement. Such movements typically develop across four stages:
- People become aware of why change is necessary. Leaders assert themselves;
- The shared sense of commitment gathers pace and people join together in support;
- Ideas institutionalise and become established;
- The energy starts to decline – and a new agitation, or re-interpretation of the original agitation, is needed to reinvigorate the culture.
This dynamic of course closely mirrors a market development bell curve. It also reinforces our belief that organisational cultures are inclined to lose innovation and courage over time, in much the same way as brands will decline in perceived value over time, unless that value is consistently endorsed and communicated.
Tapping involvement in pursuit of performance
This points to another important characteristic of what defines a brand culture: it takes its cues from both how the brand is performing and how the culture is performing, connecting and sync’ing them rather than treating them as separate functions. In a brand culture, involvement and performance are equally important and directly related metrics, and are monitored that way. Energised people deliver energised brands.
A Principled Culture encourages actions that so often get stifled in strait-jacketed cultures that insist on consensus, alignment and “fit”. Instead, a Principled Culture looks to leverage tribalism and debate as contributors to an open way of moving brands forward.
In a brand culture, the goal is for people to feel involved, recognised and heard as they work alongside others to propel the brand, and its strategy, forward.
Progressing participation
A successful brand culture does not exist in a vacuum. Some elements of traditional organisational culture must remain. (In fact, they provide a vitally important counter-balance to the brand-specific focus of the brand culture, particularly in organisations hosting multiple brands.)
But the goal, to borrow a phrase from Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, is to move everyone who works for a brand, “up the participation scale”. In a successful brand culture, people feel invested, included and emotionally engaged with where the brand is heading, and the principles that guide how it does so, rather than just passively monitoring the data and waiting for instructions from the leadership team.
Brand success strategically becomes cultural success for all involved. Because each energises the other.
Interested to find out more about how a Principled Culture could work to lift your brand’s overall performance? We’re happy to answer questions. Need help aligning your brand strategy and what defines your brand culture? Contact us to talk through our approach with a strategist.
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Photo by Joel Peel on Unsplash