by Ian Duncan
Winning with PEOPLE and CULTURE
Aligning and mobilizing the enterprise to execute your vision and strategy will probably be the single most important factor in your success. It’s one where brand has a big role to play. Get it right and your job will not only be a lot easier, it might even be enjoyable! Get it wrong and it’s miserable, for everyone.
Earning alignment
Changing the way your people think and act en masse is not easy. Gone are the days (mostly) where leaders could make change happen by edict and fear. Today it’s more about inspiring people and bringing them along with you on the journey.
“Alignment is the single most underrated success factor of leadership, and you don’t get, you can’t fake alignment, you’ve got to earn it, and I think many CEOs and leaders don’t fully appreciate that”
(CEO identified as James in the academic study “Grace Under Pressure: How CEOs Use Serious Leisure to Cope with the Demands of Their Job” by Elena Bunea (2020))
Creating energy brings a sense of direction, momentum, and pride. The challenge is how to sustain it.
Business transformation as psychological transformation
What culture-change means depends on circumstances. Where transformation is akin to a business turnaround, CEOs need to lead a psychological turnaround to revitalize a demoralized organization. This means replacing a culture of denial with dialogue, blame with respect, isolation with collaboration, helplessness with opportunities for initiative and creating a winner’s attitude.
CEOs must win back the hearts and minds of staff, and restore people’s confidence in themselves and each other, before restoring investor and public confidence. The psychological turnaround needs to inspire and empower the organization to take new actions to renew profitability, sparking collaboration and new ways of working.
Phew! If you’re in turnaround territory, there’s a lot of culture resetting to be done. And brand can play a major part in this.
Making the experience of change better for your people
Change can make people uncomfortable to the point where they start to disengage from the organization. Current levels of engagement globally are estimated to be at a 10-year low (at 21% engaged and 17% actively disengaged). That’s an alarming prospect when you’re trying to bring people along with you.
Using your Brand to bring your compelling vision and ambition for the business to life can bring people together, reenergize and reinvigorate the organization and spark the change you need. I’ve seen it happen, and how quickly momentum can build within an organization.
Taking an outside-in, customer and brand-led approach can make the experience of change tangibly different for your people – more positive and inclusive (see below). You’re also less likely to get bogged down in the everyday turf wars and griping that can knock you off-track. After all, it’s hard to argue with making the organization stand for something positive and distinctive in the world and creating something better for customers!
Illustrative example – mobilizing and aligning the world of ball-bearings
A new ball-bearing CEO shared her vision and plans for the business with employees – departing from the usual finance and numbers-driven presentation focused on corporate performance targets. As well as generating excitement about the new direction, she acknowledged the level of change required, and how difficult this would be. Her picture of a more compelling and sustainable future gave the organization a boost and created eagerness to embark on the journey to get there.
The CEO then set about resetting the culture, building on what was already there and adding new elements aligned to her ambition and aimed at deepening employee engagement.
She then continued to flesh out the corporate brand, identifying a set of specific elements to underpin culture change (see below)
Making Brand your transformational Trojan horse
The people side of change needs to happen at scale and at pace. There’s a lot to do, the stakes are high, and you can easily be knocked off course by internal barriers to change.
Your corporate brand can function as a transformational Trojan horse:
- Brand connects with your people on a deeper emotional level, instilling a sense of pride and ownership that can be very powerful. Infusing your brand with your vision brings it to life for everyone in a way that your finest PowerPoint strategy presentation just can’t.
- Brand is neutral – it represents everyone, not just management or any other internal group. If your employees are also shareholders, this takes on an added significance.
- Brand represents the customer – it’s hard to have a discussion about brand without customer in there somewhere, and let’s include potential hires as customers here. Instead of brow-beating your people about the need to become more customer-centric, weave it into a compelling brand idea and ambition.
- Brand can be disruptive, but in a good way – you want to dismantle internal silos and shake up the thinking. Brand can change the conversation, inject creative energy and bring people together, so you get collaboration without having to resort to continually re-organizing.
- Brand is expansive and unifying, touching everything and everyone. Want to reset your organization? Then reset your brand. Want to harness the power of bringing everyone and everything together behind your vision and purpose? Then embed this in your brand idea.
Key takeaways
- Doing a good job of the people side of change is a deal-breaker for your success
- The people side of change must work from the inside-out, meaning
- Happen through genuine buy-in rather than being forced on your people
- With alignment that’s earned not imposed
- By inspiring people with your vision for the business
- Getting employees to look at the business, and themselves, differently
- And giving them a desire to be part of it and the success that follows
- If you’re in a turnaround situation you will likely have to lead a psychological turnaround that requires a lot of skill and careful handling – make sure you’re up for it and equipped to do what’s needed culture-wise. If not seek some specialist advice!
- All of this boils down to people and emotions – so use your brand as a vehicle to connect with people on this deeper level and unify and inspire them.
- Investing your brand with your vision for the business and the customer-centricity that goes along with it, will make your change agenda harder to argue against
- So, make sure that your corporate brand is front and center when conceiving your plans to transform the organization