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Reputation And The Internal Brand

Being valued is a value too!

I was once commissioned to help a large business providing computer components to resellers across the UK. They had a well known brand with a declining reputation for reliability resulting from rapid growth, inadequate systems and most significantly, poor empathy and co-operation between departments.

The situation was complex and required a number of initiatives to resolve matters, but one particular incident remains embedded in my mind as an example of an unhealthy internal brand culture. There was a ‘war’ going on between sales (upstairs) and logistics (downstairs), each blaming the other for poor performance that hindered their respective ability to deliver.

Every Friday evening at 4.30 p.m., if the sales team hit their targets, they received a crate of beer to celebrate. 70% of sales came from regular clients, who would not re-order if the correct goods were not reliably dispatched to them on time. In other words, logistics played a significant role in brand reputation and customer retention. Unfortunately, being somewhat out of sight ‘downstairs’, they received little recognition, except when something went wrong.

Guess who unloaded the crate of beer off the lorry and took it upstairs so that ‘sales’ could celebrate their success for the week? You’ve guessed it, the logistics guys!

What sits behind this particularly unpleasant story is a lack of clarity and empathy surrounding ‘purpose’. Unless every department’s purpose is clearly understood across the organisation and valued for its contribution to customer satisfaction, silo cultures will consistently dilute the business’ ability to protect its reputation.

Of course the ‘beer’ incident is extreme, and to most of us, obvious in its impact. However, organisational life is littered with more subtle examples that can easily be turned from poison to medicine, once the business has addressed the specific role of each department.

How many times do we talk about the elevator pitch? The need to communicate brand purpose and benefits quickly, succinctly and relevantly to any audience is ingrained in business thinking. How many departments or teams in your organisation could not only do the same thing, but expect other departments to agree with their interpretation?

If we can develop a clear sense of purpose for a brand, that is communicable and motivating to others, we can do the same for the departments that make up the internal brand, and so manage reputation.

Let us explore the relationship between brand and departmental purpose.

The brand contract

I like to define a brand in a very practical way when it comes to looking at how internal purpose and performance contributes to external reputation and commercial success.

I see the brand as a ‘contract’ between the organisation and its customers, which defines what is being promised, how it will be delivered and agreed value. As with any contract, it should have well-defined terms of operation and measures of success along with a clear understanding of the penalties for failure - i.e. loss of valued customers and future opportunities. In other words, a brand is not just about look, feel and style (all of which are important), it is also about obligation and absolute delivery of agreed quality.

Agreeing the brand contract on this basis demands consultation, negotiation and most importantly a ‘spirit’ of goodwill between parties in order to ensure everyone is looking in the same direction, agreed on purpose and with the same interpretation of quality and value.

If we take this same brand-led approach to addressing departmental and team performance, particularly given today’s familiarity with ‘brand’ as both consumers and workers, we can achieve powerful results I don’t pretend this is easy, nor can I cover all aspects of the process required in this piece, but it does work very effectively.

Popular opinions!

A very common situation that arises within the workplace is when it becomes fashionable to dislike a particular department and as with any well known brand, once the ‘bad news’ starts rolling, the momentum soon becomes dangerous.

Departments are condemned before they even take any action and stories about errors and behaviours fertilise the grapevine to such an extent that individuals become competitive in the telling. These departments make wonderful scapegoats for everyone else’s issues and once sullied – like any high street brand - soon lose ‘market’ credibility. It is a self fulfilling monster where the pace of blame and ridicule can easily seem irredeemable to the victims, forcing them to effectively give up.

Dramatic though this description is, I have seen it time and time again, and what causes this kind of silo propaganda in the first place is rarely a pure performance issue. In my experience it is more often the result of one thing – difference!

Managing silos?

We invest significant resource into team building to increase effectiveness within the workplace, yet therein lies a paradox. Teams by nature require their own sense of identity and belonging, making them different from other teams, and difference promotes misunderstanding and conflict.

In order to improve, teams require something to improve and measure against. To be competitive defines them and supports silo thinking. We encourage them to perform as a unit and yet get frustrated when they defend themselves as a unit.

We cannot have team individuality, with a high performing ethic, as well as an inter-departmental love fest. Eliminating silos goes against nature, they must be skilfully managed taught the value of co-operation whilst being encouraged to have their own identity and take responsibility for its impact on others – just like a brand. Not a visual identity, logo or specific departmental name, but a personal identity where people in accounts dress and behave in way which is different from those in the design or R&D department, and where that is okay.

Once again, the answer lies in the brand approach, where a tangible sense of identity and distinctive personality underpins a promise of delivery.

Departmental ‘purpose’?

Try asking a particular department what they believe their purpose is within the business. They will most likely reel off a list of tasks and a clichéd definition of their role. Ask about the difficulties they have in fulfilling their purpose, and they will usually state that the culprits are too many tasks, poor management and/or communications and the failure of other departments to do their bit. Put all departments together with this same reservoir of issues to draw upon, and it is easy to appreciate why managing departmental performance is so complex.

However, define ‘purpose’ in its simplest form, along with the benefits intended, and it becomes so much easier to separate excuse from reality and rumour from fact. The best way to achieve this is to think of departmental purpose in a brand context, as the delivery of a customer facing proposition, with ‘customers’ being other departments.

The ‘sales’ example

Let’s examine a typical sales department in a medium sized organisation, where it is not uncommon to encounter reputation issues. Invariably, when asked to define their purpose the answer will revolve around ‘to sell’ with a host of supporting tasks from research and marketing materials to networking, cold calling, presenting, negotiating, account management, briefing and database responsibilities.

When times are lean they will feel that everyone is on their case and blaming them for low revenue streams, and when times are good they will feel that other departments are claiming the credit.

Their work involves long periods of invisibility from the office in their ‘nice cars’ with the inevitable accountability stories this generates. They struggle with accounts because of the administration demands, wrestle with IT because the database doesn’t do what they need it to do and regularly clash with operations, because there is either too much work coming in or not enough. With any or all of these scenarios the issues are inevitably two-way and driven by a lack of understanding and subjective interpretation of what each department should be ‘doing’ for the other.

In other words, it all boils down to a disagreement about purpose, priorities and relevant actions.

I recently managed this kind of situation for a client. Working with the sales team and other departments with whom they regularly interacted, we addressed the situation using a departmental brand process. This meant being succinct in terms of aspirations, purpose, rational and emotional benefits, internal ‘customer’ prioritisation and needs, values, behaviours and measures of success.

In the definition of purpose we rejected conventional sales-type words such as ‘delivering revenue opportunities’ and instead used the words ‘generating fuel’. This was primarily because, from a benefit perspective, strong sales pipelines should create ‘confidence’ across the whole organisation: confidence that there will still be jobs, bonuses and opportunities to expand and develop. This was a very powerful emotional point that not only gave the sales team a stronger sense of responsibility and respect, but also brought both marketing and HR into the picture to address communications and morale. In other words, rather than positioning the sales team as the outsiders that they felt they had become, we created the basis for weaving them into the fabric of the culture.

It then became simpler to reconcile where and how the sales department were dependent upon the co-operation of others and visa versa. This in turn made ownership clearer to measure fairly, and created a stronger basis from which to manage internal reputation.

Undertaking this kind of purpose-led exercise inevitably throws up hot potatoes. These can range from disillusioned individuals, the permanently disengaged, poor quality information on which to make decisions and departments prioritising (or hiding behind) inappropriate tasks.

Addressing these issues is critical.

Tasks – if purpose is clear and simple, with benefits that are easy to define and measure, then tasks can be reviewed to ensure that those focused on core purpose are prioritised. This ensures that excuses for poor performance because of inappropriate activities are diluted and accountability increased. Of course there is then the problem of what to do with tasks that are detrimental to success. Inevitably there is a ‘bag’ of tasks to be addressed, usually at senior manager / board level where the options are fairly simple: ignore them, redistribute them, create an unwanted task department or more realistically, ask just how necessary most of them really are and act accordingly.

Yes it can be daunting, a bit like tackling the garage when moving house, but it is incredibly rewarding when it is resolved.

Information and communications - as with tasks, if the department’s remit is clear, it becomes significantly easier to hone information and communication responsibilities both into and out of the department. Less becomes more!

Brand focused culture

A brand focused culture is one that not only recognises customer needs, but also relishes delivering them. It doesn’t see customers as barriers but as essential individuals, each defined by their own situation and purpose. It ensures all departments feel connected to the customer, because their contribution is understood and it is not shy in addressing the practical and emotional issues that block ability to deliver. Most of all, a strong brand culture recognises the vulnerability of internal and external reputation and the value in protecting it.