Let’s Examine Authenticity
The preponderance of opinion insists that authenticity is the central requirement for achieving and maintaining brand trust. In other words, our brand stands on the shoulders of our authentic culture.
In this view, our authentic culture should inspire the decisions and actions our organizations make and take, as well as the way we manage, express, and represent principles and promises of the brand. That sounds proper and good, as long as we know what we mean by our organization’s “authentic culture.” That’s often harder to fathom than we might appreciate.
There are better ways to approach the notion of an authentic culture. One is similar to what the field of psychology refers to as congruence — the alignment between one’s self-image and their ideal self.
The practice of branding is essentially the pursuit of congruence: translating what we believe about our brand values and value (our brand self-image) in ways that express our brand values and value (ideal brand experiences).
Unfortunately, similar to the challenges related to authenticity, organizations typically overestimate the alignment between their self-image (their brand) and their ideal self (brand experiences). Still, asking whether our organizational culture enables congruence between our self-image and actual brand experiences advances a worthy examination.
On the other hand, a “cognizant” culture recognizes that one’s organizational self-image is unlikely to fully or consistently align with actual brand experiences. That reflects a self-awareness (and social awareness) that authenticity doesn’t leave room for.
Certainly, authenticity is a useful catch-all for empathy, relatability, affinity, connection, and similar politesse, all of which are genuinely meritorious for brand reputation. However, the notion that any organization universally operates and interacts according to its authentic self, especially when considering its self-interests, is the stuff of “wouldn’t-that-be-nice” idealism.
More to the point, there is no such thing as a monoculture within a relatively large organization. So how, in fact, do we arrive at the “authentic” culture of the organization?
If there is a prevailing culture, i.e., an articulated “corporate” culture, is it truly the most authentic one? Or is the true authentic culture evident, for better or worse, among field personnel, counter staff, and other customer-facing employees distributed throughout the organizational network?
Like it or not, the cognizant culture gains the advantage over whatever might be proclaimed as the authentic culture when factoring the intertwined dimensions of Enterprise, Workplace, Team and Operating cultures.
Being predicated on self-awareness, a cognizant culture understands that from time-to-time hard decisions must be made, which frequently affect people to the detriment of any trust bond that may have existed.
A cognizant culture also understands the limits of ideological alignments even as employees may clamor to support a social, political, or other emergent cause du jour. That’s a hard truth to absorb for an authentic culture, especially one that believes its manifold virtues spring from some benevolent true nature as opposed to something manufactured by the brand team, ginned up by the marketing team, or gaveled into existence by the leadership team.
The cognizant culture is honest with its stakeholders, and especially with its employees. Its characteristic self-awareness addresses flaws and faults forthrightly and transparently. It communicates decisions and actions with simple, to-the-point messaging that respects the intelligence, dignity, and maturity of its people. It encourages feedback to calibrate the interests of the organization with the stakeholder expectations.
All this can be true of an authentic culture, but authenticity does not always correspond to self-awareness, self-correction, nor even the absolute virtuousness implied by the word.