Organizational culture is not the same thing as brand culture. While the former reminds and reinforces the attitudes, attributes, and behaviors of the organizational society, the latter actively engages employees to embrace the collective ambition of the brand they represent. In its most elemental form, brand culture can be summed up in two words: contribution and connection.

When talking about contribution, we first have to acknowledge that while not every employee is equal in skills and experience, every employee is expected to contribute to the organization’s mission. Furthermore, everyone should be enabled to contribute; recognized for their contributions; and given opportunities to grow and advance because of their contributions.

In nurturing contribution, the organization’s purpose — and ideally, the brand promise — should be clearly and directly connected to productive work through line-of-sight objectives and goals.

As a main cog of brand culture, the organization’s employee selection, retention, and — when necessary — deselection philosophy assumes paramount importance. While performance is an inherent aspect of “contribution,” the philosophy is more about opportunity for those who reflect the values, mission, vision, and purpose of the organization and its brand, in addition to performing well.

Those who do contribute earn greater responsibilities, manage key initiatives, ascend to leadership, and are recognized and rewarded commensurately. Employees who perform well but habitually act in divergence of the organization’s ethos are the dry rot of organizational culture. While their contributions may put points on the board, they concurrently levy a severe tax on the organization. In these cases, the aphorism, “slow to hire, quick to fire,” is a sound tenet of the brand culture.

The health of the brand culture corresponds to the strength of the organization’s connective BRIDGE (Belonging, Respect, Integrity, Dignity, Growth and Engagement) initiatives. A dedicated commitment to advancing these key aspects of employee support is essentially the intent of DEI programs, only without the politicization and hectoring that attaches to these otherwise salutary efforts.

In terms of the connection aspect of brand culture, if we accept the existence of distinct Enterprise, Workplace, Team, and Operating cultures within the organization, not to mention subgroups and factions throughout, something needs to tie these various threads together if we hope to achieve a harmony of collective effort toward organizational goals. That fiber is strongest when brand is a main filament for organizational cohesion and coalescence.

Because brand is the one thing that virtually every employee can at least acknowledge, if not proudly identify with, brand becomes an almost communal bond for all who populate the organizational society. This predisposition should be the starting point for leadership messaging, employee engagement, and performance management. In other words, brand becomes a centerpiece of organizational ideology and an extension of roles and responsibilities.

Leadership messaging is less about cajoling people and more about leaders emphasizing the “why” of their asks. Foremost, they should religiously explain the brand rationale within the context of directives, initiatives, decisions, and change. As such, brand becomes a prevailing doctrine that guides organizational strategies.

Of course, connection also manifests through formal and informal line-of-sight strategy dialogues and periodic check-ins. There’s nothing exotic about these processes; however, brand doesn’t always rise to the top of any of these discussions or plans.

On the other hand, building awareness about brand expectations and establishing plans and performance targets to meet those expectations seems to be a leadership layup. Usually, those plans and performance targets already align with strategic objectives and operational priorities. The additional brand seasoning reinforces the universal connection all team members share. That said, to meet the intended purpose these dialogues should reflect the core notion of brand as a vessel of values and value, which ultimately reveal in the form of brand experiences.

As subsets of leadership messaging, programs and practices inherent to employee engagement and performance management offer prime opportunities to introduce brand-reinforcing materials and conversations. However, there’s a fine line between authentic brand-related encouragement and corporate indoctrination. Each employee has their individual tolerance threshold for programming of any sort and most enterprise-wide brand messaging will hit permafrost within the first few layers of the organization. Only people managers can thaw that otherwise impenetrable soil. Equip them accordingly:

• Provide periodic (ideally in a regular cadence) examples of team members who exhibited ideal brand behaviors.

• Incorporate brand attributes in formal performance-related materials (references to values, purpose, brand promise, etc.)

• Provide guidance to personalize the value proposition (see “The Values Struggle”) for each team member or role.

• Include brand-related outcomes in individual performance goals (even if only as a multiplier opportunity). I’ll note my observation that for support roles, where quantifiable, SMART goals can’t always apply to the type of work performed, the difference between “meets expectations" and "exceeds expectations” should be based on observable brand behaviors and reasonably evident brand outcomes.

• Create an effective suggestion program for continuous-improvement ideas, especially those designed to improve brand experiences. The “effective” adjective does a lot of work here as absent clear and specific criteria for the process involved and the follow-up communications required the program risks adverse consequences. Nevertheless, continuous operational improvement is the heartbeat of sustainable brand value and better brand experiences.

The Brand Culture Check

As a closing note, employee surveys provide useful feedback across various aspects of workplace culture and operational matters. However, in my experience, most sidestep brand as an assessment component. It’s a missed opportunity when we realize that brand flows through every dimension of culture and the contribution and connection dynamics that characterize brand culture. Wouldn’t we want to know what our team members think about our brand, given that we ask or expect them to represent our brand’s values and value?   

Even a simple survey using Likert scale questions can generate good data on employee attitudes and opinions about the brand. For example:

Our brand values are (insert values or summary of same). Please indicate how likely you would agree with each of the following statements:

• Our brand values align with my own values.

• Our brand values are unique and distinguish us from the competition.

• Our brand values are appropriate for the work we do and the people we work with and for.

• We consistently reflect our brand values in our day-to-day work.

• Our brand values influence the way I work with colleagues and customers.

Our brand promise states (insert brand promise, positioning statement, or summary of same). Please indicate how likely you would agree with each of the following statements:

• Our brand promise is unique and distinguishes us from the competition.

• Our brand promise reflects our organization’s values, purpose, and mission

• Our brand promise indicates what people can expect from us.

• We create and provide value that matches our brand promise.

• My role and responsibilities directly contribute to our brand promise.

Note that the inquiry related to brand values correlate to the formal values that organizations articulate and promulgate throughout their network. These are the values employees are likely to be familiar with, rather than any unmentioned but important “demonstrable” brand values. That said, in the ideal condition there shouldn’t be much daylight between articulated organizational values and demonstrable brand values.