The world really doesn’t need another kind of statement. Or does it? Hijacked by the “do good” police, purpose today is wielded like a weapon. Coupled with the tepid consensus-driven visions and missions of corporates, these statements breed cynicism and lead me to think it’s time for a different kind of...
The idea that you can change a brand by changing a name and logo returned to the headlines last week (did it ever really go away?), with the ‘Big Australian’, BHP, the latest company to peddle the myth, dropping the Billiton and updating its logo. The new veneer makes for a...
The experience employees have becomes the experience customers have, which circles back around to employees in a loop. It can be a doom loop or a boon loop, and the identity of the organisation provides the energy.If the employees of your organisation feel caught in a mire of draconian decisions, disconnected...
Reading the May edition of Gourmet Traveller magazine provided an unexpected example of the discipline of putting your identity to work for a brand result people care about. It was an excerpt from the book Brae about the famed Victorian restaurant of chef Dan Hunter, who writes dos and don’ts for his kitchen. The list...
“Where does the individual end and the organisation start?” A version of this question was asked last week by a group working on a new business, and there’s nothing like a good question to get my thoughts churning. I’ll start with the individual. Everyone has a brand, even if you’ve never thought...
In general, I don’t participate in the good values, bad values judgment game. I’m not here to tell you what they should or shouldn’t be. But I do believe it is essential you know what they are. There’s a chapter in the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F#@k in which the author...
At every point in the recent United Airlines debacle, people were following policies. Policies that had no flexibility, treated people like cargo to be displaced and sent later, and made physically dragging a passenger off the plane seem like a reasonable response to him refusing to give up his seat. And while...
Alignment is a central part of how you build a brand, and I always expound the value of making sure this and that work together to achieve the same end. But it only does so much and needs another element to push the kind of deep work that is present in great...
A likely candidate for the holy grail of business is customer loyalty. But in another you-can’t-get-there-from-here moment, something critical to achieving that loyalty gets short shift in the minds and wallets of too many organisations. Team loyalty. Simply put you can’t build a great (or even good) brand if you have...
Earlier this year I was following links from one article to another and found myself on a blog by James Clear where he talks about an idea he calls deliberate practice. In the blog he says: “Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice...