By Lynn Manternach / Guest Editorial
How would you describe your company’s culture?
It’s not an easy question for most company leaders to answer, but it’s an incredibly important one.
Your company has a culture even if you don’t work to cultivate one. Your culture is tightly interwoven with your company’s brand. In fact, it’s essentially the same thing. And that’s why it’s so important.
Your company culture is your only truly sustainable competitive advantage. Competitors can duplicate almost everything about your product or service – but they can’t easily duplicate your culture.
Your culture is made up of behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values and environment. When you find the right mix, it’s magic.
High-performing companies tend to have a well-cultivated and purposeful culture. The environment has a unique personality with a passion for performance. Expectations are clearly articulated, but employees have the freedom to make the right decisions and do the right thing, regardless of their position in the organization. They think like owners.
A successful company culture is aligned to make it easy to deliver on the brand promise. A company culture that is working well has employees who understand what they need to do, how to do it, and most importantly, why.
That’s because you can’t really focus on your company’s customers unless you invest in focusing on your employees. You can’t be special, distinctive and compelling in the marketplace unless you create something special, distinctive and compelling inside your company. Your culture is internal, but has a significant impact on the customer experience.
Your corporate culture should be the foundation of your brand promise. If your employees don’t believe in your brand, why should consumers? Companies that understand how to connect their brand promise with their corporate culture have a significant strategic advantage over competitors.
Employees in successful company cultures tend to be focused on a bigger purpose. It’s not about making money for the company owners or bringing home a paycheck.
At Zappos, the entire organization is aligned around a single, clearly-stated mission: to provide the best customer service possible. Tony Hsieh, Zappos founder, said, “Our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff – like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers – will happen naturally on its own. Your culture is your brand.”
It all starts with internal buy-in. How do employees describe the corporate culture? Do they understand the brand promise and their role in delivering that promise to customers? They need to live and breathe the corporate culture, so their thoughts, perceptions and concerns are essential to not only defining the corporate culture, but implementing it.
Don’t assume you know what your employees think. Ask them. Conduct research to see the corporate culture through the eyes of employees. Focus questions on what employees like about the current culture, what they don’t like and what they think is missing.
You also need to understand what your current customers think about your brand and corporate culture. What does it feel like to do business with your company? Do your customers understand your brand promise? Do they think you deliver on that promise? Customer research is the best way to gain the understanding you need.
Your corporate culture and brand are based on perceptions, not facts. Start with understanding internal perceptions and work on building a strong culture. Think about how that culture connects with your brand promise and what your customers want from you. Make your brand promise a competitive differentiator and a strategic advantage. Create a culture of success.
Lynn Manternach is brand arsonist and president at MindFire Communications Inc. (MindFireComm.com) in Cedar Rapids and Le Claire. Contact Lynn at lmanternach@mindfirecomm.com.
