The following is a guest piece by Chris Dyer.
Which comes first: a distinctive business identity or its underlying culture? That’s a trick question. The culture that drives recognition has no beginning or end point, but is instead a continuum. Every company that’s serious about branding defines its unique selling points. And every business that emphasizes healthy workplace culture lives the uniqueness that defines its identity.
Both of those actions put companies in control—they command how they are perceived by employees, who then internalize and project this image. And this lets businesses control how they are perceived in the marketplace, which is a big driver of performance.
Given the choice, wouldn’t you want to be the one who calls these shots? Of course. Then you should strive to define your company’s unique culture, today and every day.
It’s important to understand the cyclical nature of culture and identity. No business is stagnant. It changes and grows, as do its people. Think of your workplace culture as evolutionary, just as your business is. Commit to an ongoing effort to celebrate the unique aspects of your employees, your teams, and your brand.
Why Differentiate?
Businesses adopt brands in order to draw clients and customers through trust. Goods and services may, indeed, be unique, but they have finite appeal. Trust seals relationships. Offering clients information about your company’s mission, vision, and values—expressed in a brand—gives them a better understanding of how and why you operate. And this builds confidence in you.
So, how to get that information out there? By allowing your company culture to project it. This means choosing employees who can reflect your mission and vision. It means forming teams that act on those values. And it means walking the fine line between being consistent and being fluid in a changing marketplace.
Unique at the Individual Level
Celebrating uniqueness at the employee level not only serves to strengthen your brand but to increase staff engagement with their work. Engagement helps you retain your best people as it furthers a distinct cultural awareness, perpetuating the cycle. Engagement also indicates a company’s respect and appreciation for the individual, increasing the motivation to perform well.
In my research into what fosters great culture, I found worker engagement to be fundamental. A 2017 Gallup survey of 31 million businesses pegged overall employee engagement at just 33 percent, compared with 71 percent of self-described engaged employees among the “world’s best organizations.” Those who fell into the last group felt that:
• their input was valued
• their personal integrity mattered
• their talents were put to good use
These results come from listening to the stories that individuals tell. Every employee brings life experience as well as skill to a task. Accommodating the different ways in which people think, work, and learn enriches the company’s larger skill set.
Does a direct report coach a youth sport? Encouragement and leadership will be strong suits. Is another employee a gifted illustrator? Tap that talent to add life to written reports or whiteboard sessions.
To leverage the unique abilities of your staff, set out to identify what sets individuals apart, and then seek to augment or complement those qualities in new hires.
Unique as a Group
Assembling a cast of talented individuals automatically confers uniqueness on your business. Invest in their passions. Offer to match fundraising efforts for their Little League team. Showcase their art or their volunteer organizations at informal events.
Joining your staff’s pursuits raises your visibility as a community-minded business, or simply as an employer who cares about its people, at or away from work. This brings you all closer as a team.
In fact, your shared experience offers a good opportunity to speak the same language, which can also define your culture and business identity. Take Walmart, for example. As part of my review of top cultures, I visited the corporation’s Walmart Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, and learned that a proprietary language creates a sense of teamwork among the retailer’s 2.5 million employees in more than 10,000 stores.
This is a way to highlight cultural uniqueness that doesn’t cost a dime. It can be using acronyms as shorthand for common phrases, as Walmart does for “every day low prices” (EDLP). Or it could be classifying meeting priorities with memorable animal names, as my company does. Through consistent use, my whole staff instantly knows the level of urgency—from low to high—when a “cockroach,” “tiger team,” or “ostrich” meeting is called.
A common shorthand brings workers of all designations together and adds to group identity, which, in turn, helps define the brand it promotes.
Unique as a Brand
Culture, these days, has moved beyond workplace trappings, like Amazon’s famous pet-friendly offices or Google’s well-publicized bean bag chairs. The best companies take what is unique at the individual and team levels and pour it into their brand identities. Their cultures have moved from the literal to the figurative. That’s a plus.
After all, uniqueness is not cut-and-dried. Sometimes you can’t put your finger on it. It may even be stronger as an attitude, a feeling.
To arrive at this existential state, return to your company’s building blocks, its mission, vision, and value statements. You will know that yours are alive—not just posters on the wall—when all of your employees can identify the concepts they contain and demonstrate how these are expressed in their work. It is up to team leaders to keep them at top of mind, refer to them in meetings and conversations, and ask employees to find ways to incorporate them daily.
The trickle-down effect will become a tidal wave. People will bring up unique phrases and company philosophies in the break room and during off-hours. Vendors will be brought into the loop. Customers will notice subtle differences in their relations with your company, versus competitors.
This brings us back to the unique selling points of your products or services. Those are concrete—you can list them. Maybe they are convenience, good value for the price, or superior quality. In today’s crowded marketplace, lots of companies might claim those features. Add to them the unique story threads of your employees and organization, however, and you have got a brand that will always be a fresh and new as your culture.
Chris Dyer, author of “The Power of Company Culture: How Any Business Can Build A Culture That Improves Productivity, Performance And Profits” is the Founder and CEO of PeopleG2, a background check and intelligence firm based in California. To learn more about Chris, visit his website: www.ChrisDyer.com.