FUSION

How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers

the World’s Greatest Companies

DENISE LEE YOHN

First published in 2018 by Nicholas Brealey Publishing
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION. Great Companies Are Powered by

Brand-Culture Fusion
The Unsung Drivers of Business
The Power of Fusion
Why Companies Fail to Build Great Brands and Cultivate
Great Cultures
A Blueprint for Brand-Culture Fusion
Every Organization Needs Fusion
Lead Your Fusion

PART 1: THE FOUNDATIONS OF BRAND-CULTURE

FUSION

Chapter 1. Set Your Sole Purpose and Core Values

Overarching Purpose: Your “Why”
Core Values: Your “How”
Unify Your Organization
The Cornerstones of Culture

Chapter 2. Assess Your Brand-Culture Fusion

Identify Your Brand Type
Determine the Values You Need
Assess the State of Your Brand-Culture Fusion
 Capture Your Company’s Uniqueness

Chapter 3. Lead the Change

Different Culture, Different Outcome
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Actions Speak Louder than Words
Engage Every Leader
Reinforce Your Culture with the Right People Decisions
Brand-Culture Fusion Starts with You

PART 2: FIVE STRATEGIES TO ACHIEVE FUSION

Chapter 4. Organize and Operate On-Brand

From Talking about Culture to Operationalizing It
Design Your Organization Deliberately
Align Your “What” with Your “Why” and “How”
Inspect Your Brand Touchpoints
Culture Is Not “Soft Stuff”

Chapter 5. Create Culture-Changing Employee

Experiences
What Is EX?
Make EX a Priority
Design Your EX in Four Steps
Craft an EX that Is Right for You
Get Employees Involved
Integrate Your EX with Your CX
Fuel Fusion with EX

Chapter 6. Sweat the Small Stuff

Give Your Culture Life through Rituals
 Make Your Culture Visible through Artifacts
Promote Your Culture through Policies and Procedures
Design Every Detail

Chapter 7. Ignite Your Transformation

Employee Brand Engagement Creates Culture Change
Stage Great Employee Brand Engagement Experiences
Carefully Craft Communications Campaigns
Develop Toolkits for Ongoing Engagement
A Worthy Investment

Chapter 8. Build Your Brand from the Inside Out

Put Your Purpose into Action
Leverage Your Values to Re-Define Your Brand
Showcase Your Culture to Differentiate Your Brand
Transform Your Brand and Culture Together

CONCLUSION. The Journey to Brand-Culture Fusion

END NOTES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INDEX
 Praise for FUSION

“Leaders everywhere are trying to build great brands, but

few realize how powerfully brands are shaped by the
cultures of their organizations. This compelling book shows
how to connect the image you present to the outside world
with the values and norms that operate inside your world of
work.”
—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling
author of Originals and Give and Take

“Denise Lee Yohn hit a home run with her first book, What
Great Brands Do. Now she’s written FUSION and it is just as
provocative. Denise proves beyond a shadow of a doubt
that great companies are powered by brand-culture fusion. I
highly recommend this book!”
—Ken Blanchard, Coauthor, The New One Minute Manager,®
Coeditor, Servant Leadership in Action

“Denise Lee Yohn’s FUSION should be on every business

leader’s reading list. It provides the much-needed antidote
to the culture and leadership crisis corporate America is
experiencing.”
—Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers50
#1 Leadership Thinker in the World

“Denise Lee Yohn’s extensive research, insightful analysis,

and gift of storytelling make FUSION a practical and
inspiring guide to building a great brand and a great
culture.”
 —Philip Kotler, S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished
Professor of International Marketing,
Kellogg School of Management

“Denise Lee Yohn is back with another breakthrough!

FUSION cracks the code on culture-building and reveals how
outstanding companies use their corporate cultures as a
competitive advantage. It’s a must-read!”
—Verne Harnish, Founder, Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO),
Author, Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)

“Few really know how to create an outstanding corporate

culture. Denise Lee Yohn takes you behind the scenes at
some of the world’s greatest organizations and pulls the
curtain back on the strategies that enable them to attract
and motivate the best talent.”
—Tiffani Bova, Growth and Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce

“I have spent a lifetime creating and building brands based

on ideas-based leadership cultures. FUSION explains it all.
Bravo Denise.”
—Kevin Roberts, Author, Lovemarks

“The relationship between internal and external brands and

culture is a relevant topic which Denise Lee Yohn has
thoroughly explored. FUSION presents great ideas and
examples that can provide any leader or company an
opportunity to rethink the way they go to market.”
—Mark Levy, former global head of
Employee Experience, Airbnb

“Denise Lee Yohn has an uncanny knack for pulling the

curtain back on the strategies that enable today’s most-
successful companies to consistently produce market-
leading results. If you’re an executive or leader who wants
to take your organization to the very top, then you owe it to
yourself to read this book and then share the lessons you
learn with your team.”
—Peter Economy, Inc.com’s The Leadership Guy

“FUSION tackles one of the most important and surprising

aspects of a strong brand: company culture. Yohn builds a
compelling case that will make leaders everywhere want to
achieve brand-culture fusion. Highly-recommended!”
—Skip Prichard, Author, The Book of Mistakes,
and Leadership Insights blogger

“Denise is the first brand expert to bridge two powerful, yet

apparently disconnected areas of business and
management: Culture & Brand . . . FUSION is a history-
making book, an essential read for every businessperson
driving change.”
—Eduardo P. Braun, leadership expert, Author,
People First Leadership
For Chris
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Expressing gratitude is always difficult for me because

words never seem sufficient to convey my deeply felt
thanks, but I would like to try to acknowledge some of the
people who have helped me in my journey of writing this
book. And if I fail to mention you, please know that your
importance to me is greater than my forgetfulness.
I’m particularly grateful to Steve Morris as well as Ross
Blankenship, Eduardo Braun, Lucy Gill-Simmen, Darci Poole,
Mark Tomaszewicz, and Marnie Wilson for your instrumental
help in reviewing my manuscript, assessment tool, and/or
contributing to the content of this book substantively. I’m
blown away by your generosity and insight.
Thank you to Martin Bishop, Barbara Cave Henricks, Peter
Economy, Peter Fader, Annette Franz-Gleinicki, Kate
Goodison, Verne Harnish, Juliana Smith Holterhaus, Zach
Johnson, Sarah Marrs, Karen Murphy, Yvonne Nomizu,
Christina Stahler, Jackie Waldorph, Curt Swindoll, and Nick
Wiik for helping me with content, connections, and counsel.
The people who graciously allowed me to interview them
for this book deserve my sincere appreciation: Stephan
Aarstol, Alejandro Asrin, Vivienne Bechtold, Tina Chong, Jana
De Anda, Rachelle Diamond, Arndt Ellinghorst, Jennifer
Forman, Eric Jackson, MG Kristian, Kenzie Leas, Nicole
Leverich, Mark Levy, Jeff Lindeman, Bryan Miles, Monique
Mulbry, Garry Ridge, Scott Sabin, Gillian Smith, Rachelle
Snook, Patricio Supervielle, Brian Takumi, Lilian Tomovich,
Ari Weinzweig, Ardine Williams, and Darin Yates.
 Genoveva Llosa, aka editor extraordinaire, thank you for
making my manuscript exponentially better. And to Josh
Bernoff, thank you for getting me started on the right track.
Thanks to the team at Nicholas Brealey: Alison Hankey,
Melissa Carl, Giuliana Caranante, and Michelle Morgan. And
to Giles Anderson for your representation.
Richard Boren, thank you for all your work on the
assessment tool.
Several folks have gone the extra mile in supporting me
with their friendship and advice during my journey: Tiffani
Bova, Jim Canfield, Sally Hogshead, Mitch Joel, Danny Kim,
Sondra Kissinger, Tamara Romeo, John Sarkisian, and Ed
Wallace.
I’d like to acknowledge the members of the Great Brand
Society who helped me launch my previous books and will
most likely be the people I lean on again for this one—I’m so
grateful for each one of you. Also thank you to those folks in
my brand-as-business brief community who gave me
feedback when I was developing the assessment tool—it
was so helpful to get all of your comments. And thanks to
the Write and Rant Facebook group for your inspiration,
ideas, and answers.
Finally, my family: Dad, Viv, and Jim, thank you for being
God’s vessels of love to me. And Chris, I couldn’t have done
this book—nor anything else in my life—without you.
 INTRODUCTION

GREAT COMPANIES ARE POWERED BY BRAND-CULTURE

FUSION

“Bruising.”
“Relentless.”
“Painful.”
“Frequent combat.”
“Burn and churn.”

No one would fault you for thinking a company with a

workplace culture described in these harsh terms is
destined for failure. Yet, one such company recently nearly
doubled its operating income, increased its annual revenue
by 27 percent, and turned in its eighth straight quarter of
profitability.1 What’s more, the company tops the lists of
many customer service awards, holds the No. 2 spot on
LinkedIn’s Top Companies list to work for,2 and added more
than 85,000 employees in 2016.3
That company is Amazon—and the scathing comments I
quote above were part of a 2015 New York Times article
examining its workplace. The piece reported on the
“sometimes-punishing aspects” of Amazon’s culture and its
“purposeful Darwinism” approach to managing staff. It
shared stories of employees crying at their desks, suffering
from incredible stress, struggling to keep up with the
intense pace at Amazon—or being fired for failing to meet
the exacting standards and metrics set by management.4
 Not surprisingly, the article stirred up an emotional
response. Some readers and former employees called the
retailer a workplace bully. But others came to Amazon’s
defense, notably some existing employees. Many
commented on the thrill of working in such a fast-paced
environment, on how much they learned in a short time, on
how grateful they were to be pushed to excel, and on the
pride they felt achieving innovations once thought
impossible.5
Amazon’s workplace culture is not for everyone—that
much was exposed by the article. But its own employees’
response revealed something else: a company’s culture
does not need to be “warm and fuzzy” to be effective. If you
look beyond the attention-grabbing elements of the New
York Times article, you see that the company’s constant
drive for innovation, rooted in a competitive, demanding,
exacting organizational culture, has a lot to do with its
success. What some describe as a “gladiator culture”6 is the
very way CEO Jeff Bezos and other company leaders ensure
Amazon managers clearly define their goals and meet them.
Standards that seem unreasonably high are the tools by
which Amazon managers drive their teams to deliver ever-
increasing levels of service to customers.
But Amazon doesn’t succeed simply because of its
supposedly “brutal” or high-demanding culture any more
than a company would succeed by promoting a culture that
coddles employees. The company succeeds because it has a
single, unifying drive behind its internal culture and its
external brand. Amazon’s distinctive organizational culture
fosters a performance-driven environment that fires up
employees to innovate in pursuit of an outstanding,
continuously-improving customer experience. Its brand
identity is based on delivering that same disruptively
innovative customer experience.
 It is the fusion of Amazon’s culture and brand that powers
this amazing company. Everyone is singularly focused on
one thing: excellence on behalf of the customer. No one
needs to expend extra energy figuring out what to do or
how to behave to achieve what Amazon wants its brand to
stand for in the world. Customers have rewarded the
organization’s single determination with their esteem,
loyalty, and more importantly, dollars. And employees have
recognized Amazon’s distinct culture by making it one of the
most desired companies to work for.
Amazon is a perfect example of what I call brand-culture
fusion—the full integration and alignment of external brand
identity and internal organizational culture that explains the
success of the world’s greatest companies. Instead of
treating brand and culture as separate entities, savvy
business leaders like Amazon’s Bezos power their
companies’ performance by fusing together their brand and
culture. You can too.

THE UNSUNG DRIVERS OF BUSINESS

In nuclear physics, fusion is the reaction that happens when

two atomic nuclei come together. Nuclear fusion releases
large amounts of energy—it’s what powers the sun. When
fused, the two nuclei create something entirely new.
In the same way, you can unleash great power when you
fuse together your organization’s two nuclei: your culture—
the way the people in your organization behave and the
attitudes and beliefs that inform them (i.e., “the way we do
things around here”)—and your brand or brand identity, how
your organization is understood by customers and other
stakeholders. Culture involves so much more than perks and
parties, and brands are built by so much more than ads and
public relations. But until recently, culture and brand were
often seen as the “soft stuff” in business, often relegated to
human resources and marketing efforts, respectively. Today,
many leaders are starting to recognize what astute ones
have known all along: culture and brand are the nuclei of
their organizations, the biggest drivers of the hard results
they must produce every day.
Culture is not incidental or incremental to business
performance—it is instrumental. In People First Leadership:
How the Best Leaders Use Culture and Emotion to Drive
Unprecedented Results, Eduardo Braun, former director of
the World Business Forum, shares his experience
interviewing business leaders from around the world. He
was struck as he heard leader after leader—from Jack
Welch, GE’s former CEO, to Virgin Group founder Richard
Branson—point to culture as their primary competitive
advantage. Their common refrain, he writes, was, “Culture
multiplies results.”7 Braun goes on to recount the words of
Jim Collins, the best-selling author on leadership. In the
prologue of Dream Big by Cristiane Correa, Collins explains
that “culture is not part of the strategy. Culture is the
strategy.”8
When Herb Kelleher, founder and former CEO of
Southwest Airlines, was asked what differentiated his airline
—which had posted forty-four consecutive years of profits
while never executing a layoff—from other companies, he
pointed to Southwest’s culture as its key competitive
advantage. “Our competitors can get all the hardware,” he
said. “I mean, Boeing will sell them the planes. But it’s the
software, so to speak—the people—that’s hard to imitate.”9
Data from the Great Place to Work organization supports all
these leaders’ beliefs in the power of a strong culture. The
data shows great workplaces benefit from stronger financial
performance, reduced turnover, and better customer
satisfaction than their peers.10
Culture is a powerful antidote to the unprecedented
threats most organizations face today. A large body of
research has shown that a lack of employee engagement
plagues today’s business world. Most notably, in 2017, the
Gallup organization found that 70 percent of workers are
unengaged. A healthy culture helps increase employee
engagement and productivity—and the likelihood
employees will stay at a company.11 Many businesses also
operate in sectors where a war for talent rages, and ratings
on websites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor greatly influence
prospective employees’ perceptions of companies. An
attractive culture can be a powerful magnet to compel the
best candidates to join a company.
As they have with culture, savvy business leaders are
learning to see their brands as value creation tools.
Companies with strong brands operate more profitably and
are valued at levels much higher than their estimated future
cash flows and assets alone would suggest. Having worked
on some of the world’s greatest brands, including Sony,
Frito-Lay, and Oakley, I’ve witnessed firsthand how a strong
brand can become the key weapon in a company’s
competitive arsenal. As market saturation has made it
increasingly difficult for any one company to sustain product
leadership over time and to differentiate its brand on
product features or performance alone, a definitive brand
identity expressed through superior customer experiences
can help build long-term customer relationships and
maintain higher profit margins.
Independently, culture and brand are powerful, often
unsung, business drivers. But when you fuse the two—when
you create an interdependent and mutually reinforcing
relationship between how your organization thinks and acts
on the inside and how it is perceived and experienced on
the outside—you create new growth that isn’t possible by
simply cultivating one or the other alone.
 THE POWER OF FUSION

Fully integrating and aligning your brand and culture

produces meaningful, powerful results that affect your
whole business. First, brand-culture fusion aligns your
workforce, increasing the efficiency of your entire
organization and the quality of your outcomes. Your people
are less likely to function at cross-purposes or to use
conflicting standards when working toward a clear, common
goal.
Second, fusing together your brand and culture improves
your organization’s competitive advantage because it
enables you to produce intangible value that is difficult to
copy. Competitors may be able to match what you offer to
customers and employees, but it’s much harder for them to
embody the unique why and how of what you do. As people
increasingly make decisions about which companies to work
for or to buy from based on meaning and shared values,
deliberately linking your brand to your culture can increase
your organization’s perceived relevance, differentiation, and
appeal.
Brand-culture fusion also ensures the authenticity of your
brand. Customers are more savvy today. They see
advertising rhetoric for what it is, and they no longer accept
brands at face value. They are skeptical about the claims
companies make. They want authenticity—brands that live
up to their promises and stated ideals. But most companies
simply slap “authenticity” on their list of brand attributes
and try to engage customers superficially via social media
to appear more humane or relatable. These efforts to create
a more authentic brand image rarely convince customers.
People don’t want brands to appear authentic, they want
brands to demonstrate that they actually are authentic in
the way they operate and the customer experiences they
deliver. By aligning and integrating your culture and brand,
you truly are on the inside what you say you are on the
outside—and you pass the customer test of brand
authenticity.
Finally, and perhaps most important, brand-culture fusion
allows you to move your organization toward its vision more
successfully, since it provides a common motivation and
focus for everyone in your organization. When you align the
values and behaviors of your employees with what is
expected and experienced by your customers, you attract
and retain employees who feel an emotional commitment to
your company and brand. They understand the meaning
behind their work, so they work hard to fulfill the company’s
purpose. They feel more connected to other employees
because everyone is united by common goals. And they feel
more connected to your customers because they
understand and believe in the ultimate value your
organization wants to create for those customers.
As powerful as brand-culture fusion is to a company, its
absence can affect an organization more strongly—even if
that impact is less immediate and obvious.
When your brand and culture are not aligned and
integrated, your culture-building efforts are likely to go to
waste. Many leaders are led to think that they must pamper
and pander to their staff because conventional wisdom says
that employees are your greatest asset. But as Gregg
Lederman, CEO of the employee engagement firm Brand
Integrity, observes, they’re not: “The right employees who
have the passion and knowledge to do the right things at
work are.”12
Start-ups, for example, are notorious for taking
extraordinary measures to create a “fun” workplace
environment and to give “cool” benefits to employees—like
providing free lunches, stocking their break rooms with beer
kegs and foosball tables, or offering free gym memberships.
There is nothing wrong with providing great perks for your
employees and being generous with your benefits.* But
while these perks might do a great job of making people feel
good, they alone do not necessarily build a culture that
cultivates the specific behaviors and skills that a company
needs to succeed. Social media software start-up Buffer, for
example, struggled to achieve profitability because its
openhanded cultural practices, including offering extra
vacation days and paying for yoga classes, ate away at cash
flow instead of producing employees who were prepared to
deliver great customer experiences.13
If your culture and brand are mismatched, you can also
end up with happy, productive employees who produce the
wrong results. Many well-known brands have engaged me to
improve their brand position and increase their competitive
advantage. I’ve helped many well-known brands build their
brands and realize strong gains. But they’re often held back
from sustained success by a culture that’s out of step with
their desired brand identity.
At a large grocery store chain I worked with, for example,
employees were steeped in a culture that valued efficiency
and productivity. As the industry shifted toward customer
service and merchandising, the company needed to make
its brand known more for the service and experience it
offered. But its employees were so focused on increasing
inventory turns and sales per square foot that the company
fell behind. The culture of this organization, though vibrant
and vital, was holding it back from serving its customers
well, evolving its brand image, and therefore thriving in the
long run.
Ultimately, a disconnect between what your organization
values on the inside and how it is perceived on the outside
can damage customer relationships. This is precisely what
happened when a former employee wrote a blog post
exposing a culture of sexism and sexual harassment at
Uber. Beyond being offensive in general, the revelations
about Uber’s organizational culture offended customers to
such a great degree in part because they uncovered the
disconnect between what they loved about Uber’s brand
identity—its populist ethos, progressive character, and
heroic role—and the discriminatory, primitive, and predatory
behavior that characterized Uber’s internal operations. The
lack of alignment and integrity between Uber’s culture and
brand eroded its customers’ trust and esteem of the
company. In comparison, the highly competitive culture that
the New York Times exposed at Amazon ultimately made
sense to customers who, whether they approved of it or not,
could see how the company’s culture produced the benefits
they enjoyed.*

WHY COMPANIES FAIL TO BUILD GREAT BRANDS AND

CULTIVATE GREAT CULTURES

I’ve been helping companies of all sizes and types

accelerate their growth by building strong brands for more
than twenty-five years. In that time, I’ve discovered that,
despite the incredible value of an integrated and aligned
brand and culture, most organizations not only separate
them as if the two have nothing to do with each other, but
also go about building and cultivating them the wrong way.
When it comes to building brands, leaders typically
expect their marketing departments to promote awareness,
create images, and send messages. The high visibility of
advertising and promotions—and the pervasiveness of
social media channels in recent years—gives them the
impression that they should, indeed, elevate the brand
communication function. But growth in brand equity and
influence comes from an entirely different way of thinking
about and using brands: it comes from leaders driving
everything their organization does with a clear, focused,
distinctive brand identity—what they want the brand to be
known for.
In other words, great brands are built from the inside out.
The power of a business to create value in the world is
unleashed from inside the organization, not by promoting an
image on the outside. You build a great brand by
operationalizing it—by using your brand purpose, values,
and positioning to develop strategy and guide operations,
so that your brand isn’t just what you say, it’s what you do.
My first book, What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-
Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest,
unpacked this powerful “brand-as-business” management
approach to brand-building. I explained that when you start
brand-building inside your organization, you unleash your
brand’s full potential. After the book was published, I heard
from so many leaders who had discovered that closing the
gap between building their brands and managing their
businesses was the secret to brand success they had been
searching for.
With FUSION, I hope to crack the code to culture-building
for you in a similar way. Culture-building is all too often
misunderstood. As I’ve spoken to executives around the
world over the past decade, I’ve met leaders who incorrectly
assume that there is a “right” kind of culture—a warm and
benevolent one—that works in all companies to produce
happy, productive employees. I’ve met leaders who
champion culture-building tactics that don’t align with or
even seem relevant to their business goals. Leaders who
think culture-building is exclusively the purview of the
human resources department to work on through recruiting,
training and development, compensation, and benefits.
Leaders who try to improve their culture by giving
employees perks and throwing parties, which these days are
mere table stakes for most employees. Leaders who believe
culture is out of their control—that it grows organically—so
they shrug off any responsibility for cultivating it at all.
 It is true that culture can’t be imposed. As a leader, you
can’t force people to think or behave a certain way. And the
role of culture is changing. Paul Michelman, editor in chief of
MIT Sloan Management Review, argues in a piece titled “The
End of Corporate Culture as We Know It” that “when we look
ahead to life in the digital matrix, there is reason to question
culture’s role. Our relationships to institutions will become
increasingly defined by the activity in which we are engaged
at any given time. . . . We will weave in and out of
relationships, working interchangeably with those who
belong to the same organization and those who do not.” He
concludes that such an environment has less need for
conformity and that the tools meant to reinforce consistency
of behavior can transform culture “from a motor to an
anchor.”14
His point raises an important distinction: Your culture
should produce unity, not uniformity, within your workforce.
You want to set up your organization to operate in a
particular, but not necessarily predictable, fashion. Your
approach should be to lay down guardrails that prescribe
boundaries, not tracks that dictate behavior. But you
absolutely can and should set the conditions to cultivate an
organizational culture that deeply influences the way your
employees perform daily.
If you have responsibility and oversight for the core
operations of your business and set the tone and direction
for your company—either as a leader or C-level executive of
your organization—then this book is for you. I hope FUSION
will change the attitudes about building brand and culture of
managers at all levels of an organization, but as with all
corporate priorities, leadership is required from the top.
While human resources and marketing executives, who see
an opportunity to make a bigger impact on their companies
can use the insights and tools in this book to integrate their
efforts, they alone cannot drive the change of the scope
that’s required to achieve brand-culture fusion. Only you at
the top of your organization can make brand-culture fusion a
priority by setting top strategies to support it, directing
resources and attention to it, and holding your people
accountable for achieving it.
You must accept the challenge to lead your organization
to greatness. That doesn’t mean, though, that you need to
cultivate a “nice” culture or the one “right” culture that
helps every company succeed—there’s no such thing. Every
organization is different and so is its culture. A culture that
fuels one company’s brand-culture fusion might backfire
completely at yours. Amazon’s Bezos explained it best in his
2015 letter to shareholders. He wrote, “If it’s a distinctive
culture, it will fit certain people like a custom-made glove. . .
. We never claim that our approach is the right one—just
that it’s ours—and over the last two decades, we’ve
collected a large group of like-minded people. Folks who find
our approach energizing and meaningful.”15
You must cultivate a distinct culture that is fully aligned
with your brand identity—that is so well integrated with it
that it is hard to distinguish what you do internally from who
you say you are externally. Cultivating such culture will
allow you to achieve the kind of brand-culture fusion that
has propelled companies like Amazon to greatness.
I wrote this book to show you how.

A BLUEPRINT FOR BRAND-CULTURE FUSION

FUSION examines some of the world’s greatest

organizations and reverse engineers their greatness. By
unpacking case studies, sharing insights from interviews
with industry leaders, reporting on findings from respected
academic research, and drawing on my experience working
with extraordinary brands across a broad range of sectors,
including retail, healthcare, packaged goods, and
technology, I explain how great companies achieve the
brand-culture fusion that creates extraordinary results and
growth so that you can, too.
In Part 1, I show you how to lay the groundwork for brand-
culture fusion, starting with identifying and clearly
articulating a single overarching purpose and one set of
core values of your organization, the focus of Chapter 1, Set
Your Sole Purpose and Core Values. In Chapter 2,
Assess Your Brand-Culture Fusion, I then explain how to
determine your “desired culture”—the culture you ought to
cultivate to support and advance your brand identity—or the
brand identity you’d like to evolve to. You’ll also have an
opportunity to assess how far off you are from your desired
culture and to pinpoint where you need to make changes in
your brand or culture (or both) to fuse them together.
The final step in laying the foundation for brand-culture
fusion—taking ownership of the process—is laid out in
Chapter 3, Lead the Change. As a leader of your
organization, you must take responsibility for achieving
fusion. Even if implementing specific changes to produce
fusion falls to the leaders of functional areas, you must
initiate and champion them across the board. And you must
ensure all other leaders and managers are actively engaged
in and accountable for cultivating the desired culture and
making on-brand decisions.
In Part 2, I provide five strategies for aligning brand and
culture. If your company is like most, your culture is
probably less developed or defined than your brand. That’s
why the first four strategies focus on cultivating your
desired culture by aligning it with your existing brand
identity as the main path to achieve brand-culture fusion.
The final strategy—designed with companies that have a
well-entrenched or powerful culture in mind—focuses on
leveraging your existing culture to change your brand and
thus align both. The five strategies are:
 1. Organize and Operate On-Brand: Implement an
organizational design and run your operations to
give your organization the structure and processes
necessary to operationalize your culture.
2. Create Culture-Changing Employee
Experiences: Deliberately design and manage your
company’s employee experience—just as you would
customer experiences—so that every facet of an
employee’s journey throughout his or her connection
to your organization encourages and enables your
desired culture.
3. Sweat the Small Stuff: Ensure even the most
mundane or minute aspect of your organization—
from its “rituals” and “artifacts” (things your
organization regularly does and creates to
commemorate or symbolize important achievements
or events) to its policies and procedures—advances
and supports your desired culture.
4. Ignite Your Transformation: Use employee brand
engagement tactics—stage employee brand
engagement experiences, launch creative
communications campaigns, and develop and deploy
employee brand engagement toolkits—to kick-start
the fusion process and then to regain focus and
momentum when necessary.
5. Build Your Brand from the Inside Out: If your
culture is so powerful or established that it doesn’t
make sense to try to change it to achieve brand-
culture fusion, leverage your existing culture to
define or re-define your brand identity.

For each of these strategies, I’ll provide analyses and tools

and share the stories of great organizations—including
Airbnb, Adobe, Nike, MGM Resorts, Salesforce, and many
more—that have successfully integrated their brands and
cultures, so you can be inspired and equipped to achieve
brand-culture fusion at your company. Leading companies
like Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, and Virgin Group have
been implementing these strategies for years, but no one
has examined their successes through the lens of brand and
culture alignment and integration, nor has anyone
deconstructed the process for achieving it . . . until now.
After reading FUSION, you will know how to cultivate a
unique, flourishing culture that:

• Creates continuity and consistency by perpetuating

key norms across your people and over time
• Reduces uncertainty and confusion by establishing a
guide to action for your people
• Creates social meaning and order within your
organization by making clear what is expected of
your staff and why
• Builds a collective identity and commitment by
binding your employees together
• Produces the capability for customer experience
excellence by fostering the necessary mindset,
decisions, and behaviors
• Makes possible your vision of the future by energizing
your organization and moving it toward your goals

I’m excited to lay out the complete blueprint for brand-

culture fusion that I’ve discovered.

EVERY ORGANIZATION NEEDS FUSION

Certain circumstances present a clear call for brand-culture

fusion:

• You’re being outperformed in your category.

 • Your brand value seems to be declining.
• You’re experiencing high turnover or low recruitment
success.
• Your employee or customer surveys show lots of
room for improvement.
• Your financial performance is shaky or unpredictable.

Perhaps you are experiencing some—or all—of these

issues right now. They usually result from a weak culture,
weak brand, or both—and you can fix the problem by
building strong brand-culture alignment and integration. To
get started, you need little more than an awareness of your
situation and the conviction to remedy it. But organizational
readiness for change and resources that can be redirected
to the cause will accelerate your ability to produce results.
Virtually every type of organization can benefit from
fusion. Although larger, B2C (business-to-consumer)
companies have been more likely to engage in brand- and
culture-building in the past, the importance of brand and
culture as vital components of any organization has been
gaining wider ground. If you don’t think integrating brand
and culture is important to your company, think again.
Brand-culture fusion has the potential to improve the
competitiveness and accelerate the growth of almost any
organization, regardless of its size or type, including:

B2B (business-to-business) companies: The

integration and alignment of brand and culture is critical in
B2B organizations because employees are highly involved
with customers during the sales process and throughout the
product service and support cycle. In the case of consulting
and other professional services firms, employees often are
the product themselves. In fact, Laurie Young, author of
Marketing the Professional Services Firm, has concluded that
the day-to-day client-facing activities of employees are
“probably the most influential aspects of building a
professional services brand.”16 So in many B2B companies,
culture is on display to customers much more clearly
through people’s attitudes and behaviors. That’s why B2B
organizations may need brand-culture fusion more than
most. You’ll learn how B2B businesses including Salesforce,
GE, and others have recognized their need to integrate their
brand and culture and pursued it.

Start-ups: Culture-building isn’t something that only

large, established companies need to attend to. David
Cummings, cofounder of marketing automation company
Pardot, believes “culture is insanely important for startups.”
He should know: Pardot was on Inc. magazine’s fastest-
growing-company list in 2012 and was acquired for just
under $100 million only five years after its founding.
“[Culture] is the cohesion that holds you together. For a lot
of startups, culture is haphazard, and then all of a sudden
they have 20 employees. The employees start grating on
each other and they don’t work well together. To be
sustainable, culture has to be intentional.”17 As I share the
stories of companies such as Airbnb and Nike, you’ll see
that their leaders made brand-culture fusion a priority from
their earliest days.

Small businesses: If you own or a lead a small business,

there are two primary reasons why brand-culture fusion can
benefit your organization. First, the limited resources that
constrain most small businesses require that everything you
do be more productive. When your organization’s culture
and brand are aligned and integrated, a single effort—a
piece of communication such as a newsletter or a special
event like a community-service activity—can produce
results inside and out. And second, brand-culture fusion can
help you get greater clarity on your priorities and navigate
the countless new ideas and ventures that present
themselves to small-businesspeople. By using your brand
and culture as decision-making filters, instead of simply
reacting to challenges or opportunities that rise
unexpectedly, you can drive more sustainable growth. You’ll
learn from small businesses such as BELAY, a virtual staffing
firm based in Atlanta; Traction, an interactive agency in San
Francisco; and Tower, a beach lifestyle company in San
Diego.

Nonprofit organizations: Brand-culture fusion is

particularly important for nonprofit organizations that must
align the needs of beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, and
sometimes governments or regulatory groups in addition to
employees. Brand-culture fusion transcends and unites all of
these groups and can be further leveraged if you design and
manage explicit experiences for each of them. By
introducing you to City Year, an organization that helps
students stay in school and on track to graduate, and Plant
With Purpose, which helps reverse deforestation and
poverty around the world, I will demonstrate the power of
integrating brand and culture in the nonprofit sector.

Brand-culture fusion even accelerates the success of

organizations in which the traditional notion of “brand”
doesn’t seem to apply. Brands are not the sole purview of
commercial enterprises—they can be used by all sorts of
organizations to engage the people involved with them
inside and out. Whether yours is a highly technical company
or a scientific institution, a public-sector agency, or even an
academic or faith-based organization, your culture should
still be integrated with your external identity—your brand—
to help you achieve your goals.

LEAD YOUR FUSION

Integrating brand and culture can help your organization
thrive and grow over time—but only if you actively nurture
and continually reinforce it. Often leaders turn to culture-
and brand-building only after their organization has
experienced a crucible or crisis. But the time to integrate
your brand and culture is now, while you have the
bandwidth, resources, and employee goodwill necessary to
do so. Brand-culture fusion acts like glue, binding your
organization together; it may be the only thing that can get
it through hard times.
Brand-culture fusion is a never-ending responsibility—a
leader’s responsibility. My sincere hope is that this book will
fundamentally shift how you think of brand- and culture-
building—from side tasks to be delegated as marketing and
human resources functions to fundamental business
priorities that deserve your attention and care.
Achieving brand-culture fusion is a journey. Start today.
 PART 1

THE FOUNDATIONS OF
BRAND-CULTURE FUSION

Just as you can’t build a great building on a weak

foundation, you can’t build a great organization without a
strong foundation that’s established by setting your purpose
and values, understanding the current state of brand-culture
fusion in your company, and taking charge.
 CHAPTER 1

SET YOUR SOLE PURPOSE AND CORE VALUES

Read this chapter to learn:

• Why your organization needs an overarching
purpose and how to develop a powerful one
• Why your organization needs one set of core
values for its internal culture and external brand
identity
• How to evaluate and activate your core values

Why do we exist? This is the most important question an

organization must ask itself—and the question that got Phil
Knight through some of his darkest days when he started
the company that would become Nike. Faced with
mortgaging his house, making a “deal with a devil” (a
hostile supplier), and begging for yet another loan from his
bank, Knight kept coming back to why he was willing to
sacrifice so much. “I believed in running,” he writes in his
memoir, Shoe Dog. “I believed that if people got out and ran
a few miles every day, the world would be a better place,
and I believed these shoes were better to run in.”1
Even as a young, scrappy entrepreneur selling shoes out
of his parents’ basement, Knight understood the importance
of having a compelling purpose that would not only sustain
him through Nike’s early days but eventually inspire millions
of Nike’s customers and employees. Today that purpose
continues to inform what Nike calls its “mission,” the driving
force behind its brand and corporate culture: “Bring
inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If
you have a body, you are an athlete.”*2
Nike’s renowned advertising tagline, “Just Do It,”
translated that mission into a brand message that has
bonded customers to the Nike brand for years. Just as
important, the mission—and the company’s “11 Maxims,”
which include guiding principles such as “simplify and go”
and “evolve immediately”3—have served as the core of the
organization’s internal culture through the years as well.
Today Nike executives use its mission and maxims to set
the tone within the organization. When issues of race,
violence, and policing rocked the U.S. in 2016, for instance,
CEO Mark Parker referenced the company’s mission in a
letter he penned to employees to explain Nike’s response to
the events. He wrote, “To serve every [emphasis mine]
athlete individually and completely, across hundreds of
countries where we do business, we need teams that reflect
the diversity of our consumers and a culture of inclusivity
that respects the communities in which we live and work.”4
Nike’s mission and maxims also pervade its designers’
thinking. Tinker Hatfield, one of Nike’s most influential and
esteemed shoe designers, explains, “Our future really
revolves around how we can improve the lives of athletes
and just people running around in the streets. So we’re
asking ourselves all the time: What can we do to improve
what we’ve done in the past?”5 And Nike’s innovating and
inspiring spirit isn’t only embraced by people working on its
products. “We’ve consciously tried to be innovative in all
areas of the business,” Knight once said, “and right now
that means advertising. We need a way of making sure
people hear our message through all the clutter . . . that
means innovative advertising—but innovative in a way that
captures the athletes’ true nature.”6
 Just as Nike’s mission is to bring inspiration and
innovation to every athlete, Andre Martin, the company’s
chief learning officer, says his mission is to bring inspiration
and innovation to every employee. He wants “to unleash
human potential and help employees own their own career
and get them ready for key transitions so everyone in the
organization can do more work that matters.” To achieve
this goal, training at the company is designed around Nike’s
mission and maxims, not only to reaffirm them to every
employee but also to ensure the training develops
employees who keep them—and therefore the culture—
alive.7
Nike has used its unifying purpose (its mission) and its
motivating core values (its maxims) to grow from Phil
Knight’s fledgling business on the brink of bankruptcy into a
$100 billion global enterprise8 and the world’s most
valuable sports brand.9 They are the foundation of both
Nike’s brand identity and its organizational culture—the crux
of Nike’s brand-culture fusion—and the key to its success.
While Nike’s example shows the power of having one
overarching purpose and one set of values that inform both
the organization’s culture and its brand identity, few
organizations have achieved this level of alignment and
integration. In fact, most business leaders often separate
their business and organization’s purpose and values from
those of their brand. The result is a disconnect between how
the organization behaves on the inside and how it is
perceived on the outside.
To make brand-culture fusion happen, you must articulate
a single overarching purpose and one set of core values to
drive, align, and guide everything your company does
internally and externally. In this chapter, I’ll show you how to
develop them the right way.
 OVERARCHING PURPOSE: YOUR “WHY”

A company’s purpose is its why—why it does what it does,

why it exists. Having a meaningful purpose or being a
“purpose-driven” company has become a popular notion in
business today, and with good reason. In today’s cluttered,
ultracompetitive, choice-overloaded world, each company
must have a clear reason for being. You need to play an
invaluable, irreplaceable role in people’s lives, and you must
live out that purpose convincingly or your customers can
easily be lured away by any one of your more deliberate
competitors.
Likewise, many employees—especially millennials, who
comprise the largest group of workers today—want to work
for companies that have a strong sense of purpose beyond
making money.10 When explaining why her company has
been included on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For
list, Autodesk’s human resources chief Jan Becker, says
people usually praise her company for the employee
benefits it offers, such as six-week paid sabbaticals and its
extraordinary office designs. But when she meets with
Autodesk employees, she says, “I commonly hear that
they’re most excited about having meaningful impact on the
world around us, the innovation occurring every day in our
offices around the world, and how they are developing
technology that is helping everybody imagine, design, and
create a better world.”11
When articulated and implemented well, a compelling
purpose shapes culture by engaging employees, even those
prone to be skeptical or apathetic, and making their work
more meaningful. And purpose can unite even the most
diverse and distributed workforce by serving as a driving
force that transcends the silos and divisions that inevitably
form in organizations. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson
believes purpose is essential to engaging employees who
are expected to work longer hours and with greater
commitment. “Purpose is no longer a buzzword. It’s a must-
have,” he says. “Passion and purpose will keep people
focused on the job at hand, and ultimately separate the
successful from the unsuccessful.”12
Most business leaders know they should promote a
purpose for their organization, but most also go about it the
wrong way. The typical mission statement outlines the scope
of the business—what the organization does, produces, or
sells—and sets a goal to achieve certain financial targets or
create value for shareholders. For example, a typical
mission statement might read, “To build shareholder value
by delivering pharmaceutical and healthcare products,
services, and solutions in innovative and cost-effective
ways.” Often these same organizations will express a
separate purpose or essence for their brand that describes
what they want it to be known for. For example, that same
company might want their brand identity to stand for safety
and trustworthiness. Both purposes describe worthy
aspirations but they don’t seem to have anything to do with
each other.
Another example: A bookstore chain claims, “Our mission
is to operate the best specialty retail business in America,
regardless of the product we sell,” but its brand purpose “to
promote a love for books and reading” reveals a narrower
interest. Or consider a company that aspires to industry-
leading profitability as a business and yet promises
generous service to all customers as a brand. These
disconnects between business and brand purpose often
cause confusion for people in the organization, especially
when they seem at odds.
Setting financial targets and clarifying your business
footprint are necessary to set the expectations of investors,
business partners, and other stakeholders, but you
shouldn’t separate them from the way you engage and
motivate your primary ones: customers and employees. The
purpose of your business and the purpose of your brand
should be seamlessly integrated, tightly aligned, and
articulated as a single overarching purpose.
Traditional management theory differentiates between an
organization’s purpose (its reason for being), vision (its
desired future), and mission (how it achieves its vision or
fulfills its purpose). But it’s not necessary to articulate all
three of them in separate statements, which can be quite
confusing to your employees. A single statement that
articulates a single purpose for your business and brand
works best. It’s clear, simple, and easy to remember.*
One way to arrive at a sole overarching purpose is by
examining your company’s higher purpose—its purpose
beyond making money. Sometimes this might lead you to
articulate a socially- or environmentally-conscious purpose,
as has been the case with the new generation of leaders
who have taken the helm of some of today’s leading
companies. For example, in a 2016 Fast Company article
about the role of business in society, Facebook founder and
CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains, for example, that his
company “was built to accomplish a social mission—to make
the world more open and connected.”13
But a higher purpose doesn’t necessarily have to be a
socially-responsible one. Nike’s purpose to “bring innovation
and inspiration to every athlete” and Amazon’s purpose to
become “Earth’s most customer-centric company”14
transcend their profit-making goals without claiming to
create a benefit for society in general.
Note that embracing a higher purpose doesn’t dull your
organization’s ability to create a high-performing, profitable
business. In fact, several companies with a higher purpose
prove just the opposite: Amazon’s market value increased
1,934 percent between 2006 and 2016, while every other
major retailer’s value declined.15 Starbucks, whose purpose
reads “to inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person,
one cup, and one neighborhood at a time,”16 is one of the
most profitable companies in its industry. “Caring for the
world, one person at a time”17 has guided Johnson &
Johnson’s business and brand through the years—and
helped it consistently outperform the U.S. stock market
since its IPO in 1944.18
It’s not enough to simply state an overarching purpose by
identifying the mark you want to make in the world; you
must operate your company so that it becomes known—
internally and externally—for it. Zuckerberg has achieved
this coherence with his company purpose—”to make the
world more open and connected.” It’s one of the
cornerstones of the company’s culture as well as how he
runs the business. “We believe that a more open world is a
better world because people with more information can
make better decisions and have a greater impact,”
Zuckerberg explains. “That goes for running our company as
well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has
access to as much information as possible about every part
of the company so they can make the best decisions and
have the greatest impact.”19
With a single overarching purpose, Zuckerberg creates
enduring inspiration and motivation for people inside
Facebook and out. Similarly, Henry Ford started his
company to “build a car for the great multitude,” and the
company continues to thrive over 100 years later because
the ethos of democratizing transportation resonates with
employees and customers. The purpose of the New York
Times—to be the news authority—has also fueled that
company’s culture and brand for over 160 years.
An overarching purpose can power your company to
sustained success too.
 Pinpoint Your Purpose

To identify your overarching purpose, go deep and think big.

Steve Jobs wanted to put a dent in the universe.20 What
difference in the world are you being called to make? What
do you want your organization’s legacy to be? Sometimes
it’s helpful to go back to your company’s founder and revisit
why he or she started it in the first place. And consider what
would be missing—or how the world would be worse off—if
your organization no longer existed.
You can use several established exercises and approaches
to formulate your overarching purpose:

Five Whys exercise. Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras,

authors of the seminal book Built to Last, recommend
getting at your purpose by starting with a descriptive
statement such as “We make X products” or “We deliver X
services,” and then asking, “Why is that important?” five
times, each time asking the question in response to the
previous answer. In a Harvard Business Review article,
Collins and Porras describe using this technique to help a
market research company uncover its deeper, richer
purpose. In a working session with company executives,
they started the process by describing what the company’s
most basic purpose was: “To provide the best market-
research data available.” Then they asked them why
providing the best market-research data available is
important. After continuing to ask “Why?” in response to
their answers, the executives concluded that their
company’s ultimate purpose was “to contribute to our
customers’ success by helping them understand their
markets.” Porras and Collins observe, “The five whys can
help companies in any industry frame their work in a more
meaningful way.”21
 Random Corporate Serial Killer game. In this
exercise, also designed by Porras and Collins, you are
challenged to think about what would be lost if your
company ceased to exist—and why it’s important that it
endures. Gather colleagues and ask them to imagine that
you could sell your company to someone for a fair price
while guaranteeing stable employment for your employees
after the sale. Ask them also to imagine that the buyer
plans to completely kill the company after purchasing it—its
products and services would be discontinued, operations
would be shut down, brand names would be dropped, etc.
Then ask them if they would still be willing to sell the
company, and why or why not. This exercise, Porras and
Collins write, is a particularly powerful technique to help you
uncover your company’s purpose beyond that of merely
maximizing shareholder wealth.22

Think. Feel. Do. exercise. Think. Feel. Do. is a Thematic

Apperception “Test” (TAT) borrowed from the world of
psychology that helps to reveal underlying motives,
appeals, and concerns. Most TATs use ambiguous pictures of
people and ask participants to make up narratives about the
images. To use a TAT to help you uncover your company’s
purpose, convene a working session of your key executives
and other stakeholders. Give each person two pictures of a
stick figure, one representing a customer before your brand
existed and another representing the customer after the
brand launched (or before and after the customer becomes
aware of your brand and tries it). Ask participants to come
up with narratives about what the customer is thinking,
feeling, and doing before and after. Ask participants to
consider how the brand might have changed the customer’s
life—how he might relate to himself, other people, and his
environments differently; what decisions he might make
differently; and how he might spend his time or money
differently. Review everyone’s narratives, discussing the
similarities between them and the reasons why they differ.
The discussion will help you extract key themes that lead to
an articulation of your purpose.

Whatever method you use, once you pinpoint your

purpose, codify it. Collins and Porras argue that a company’s
purpose ought to be a way for you to put a stake in the
ground about who you are, what you stand for, and what
you’re all about.23 Don’t assume that your people know it—
write it down and share it.

Craft a Meaningful Purpose Statement

To codify your company’s newfound purpose, craft a

purpose statement that describes the impact you want to
make on others—inside and outside your company. Your
overarching purpose statement should be clear, pithy, and
externally oriented. The purpose statements that drive
some of the world’s most admired brands reveal how a
short, powerful phrase can aptly convey a company’s
reason for existing:

Zappos: To deliver happiness to the world.24

Sony: To create technologies that inspire people to
dream and find joy.25
Apple: To make a contribution to the world by making
tools for the mind that advance humankind.26

These companies’ aspirations are bold and inspiring yet

definitive. They are not about changing the company by
making better products or improving its service; these
companies aim to make a bigger impact. But you don’t have
to be a large corporation or operate in emotionally-resonant
sectors to have a compelling purpose. Consider examples
from companies whose products or services may seem more
mundane:

Squarespace, a software-as-a-service-based content

management system: Giving voice to ideas.27
Xradia, provider of microscopy products for life
sciences and materials research: To advance
innovation, science, and industry by providing unique
insight through superior X-ray imaging solutions.28
Hagerty, an automotive insurance company: To
protect the physical connections to the best moments
in your life.29

Finally, ensure your purpose is relevant to your

employees and resonates with them emotionally. Collins and
Porras say, “A good purpose should serve to guide and
inspire the organization.”30 To gauge how well your purpose
would guide your people, consider whether or not you can
explain how discrete business goals and strategies would
help you achieve it. Evaluate its focus—how well does it
direct everyone’s efforts in a specific direction—and its
flexibility—how much does it allow people to explore new
opportunities and evolve your business as circumstances
require. For example, the focus in Sony’s purpose,
“technologies that inspire people to dream and find joy,” is
to tap people’s imagination and hopes and to lead them to
enjoyment. Its purpose is also flexible because
“technologies” doesn’t connote any specific product,
service, or solution. It suggests the company will take
certain directions with its product development and
marketing but it doesn’t hem itself in.
Toronto-based marketing consultant Hilton Barbour
captures the precise prescriptive nature of a powerful
purpose: “The real opportunity doesn’t lie in articulating
what is allowed . . . but what is possible.”31
 YOUR OVERARCHING PURPOSE STATEMENT SHOULD
BE:
Clear
Pithy
Externally oriented
Relevant
Emotionally resonant
Focused and flexible
Guiding
Inspiring
Enduring

To gauge how inspirational your company’s purpose is,

Aston Business School professor Leslie de Chernatony
suggests asking yourself what your employees would do if
they won the lottery—would they quit their jobs or would
they continue working to fulfill your company’s purpose?32
Mark di Somma, founder of change management firm the
Audacity Group, recommends running the “tell me again”
test. He advises imagining a time in the future when your
grandchildren come to you and ask you to explain why you
spent so much of your life working. Think about what
answer they will most want to hear; what story will they
want to hear again and again? “Will their interest match
your purpose?” he challenges you to consider. He
concludes, “A purpose that is not worth sharing is not worth
having.”33
One final note: Your company’s purpose should be
enduring—you shouldn’t plan to change it. Porras and
Collins studied companies such as Disney, Boeing, and Sony
and observed that they have been pursuing their same
purposes for decades, even as the companies’ product
offerings, markets of operation, and business models have
changed dramatically from their inceptions. This is another
reason why your purpose shouldn’t be tied to a specific
product or service.
Steve Morris, founder and CEO of brand strategy firm Mth
Degree, recommends paying special attention to your
purpose during times of change and transition, since that’s
when you need it to keep you focused and on track.
“Change creates chaos,” he says. “Chaos breeds fear. Fear
can get you off course from your purpose.”34
Sometimes, however, a deliberate change in your
purpose is called for, as Facebook’s founder Zuckerberg
discovered in early 2017. In a speech, he explained that the
scale at which his company grew and the global
opportunities and challenges it faced required it to expand
its purpose. “I used to think that if we just give people a
voice and help some people connect that that would make
the world a whole lot better by itself,” he said. “[But] look
around and our society is still so divided. We have a
responsibility to do more, not just to connect the world but
to bring the world closer together.”35
So, set your purpose with the intent of using it as a North
Star to orient your organization over time. But unlike an
internally-focused, finance- or operations-driven purpose, an
overarching purpose that aligns and integrates your
business and your brand may eventually and naturally need
to be reconsidered when the context in which you operate
changes.

CORE VALUES: YOUR “HOW”

Once you have an overarching purpose in place to express

the why of your company, you need core values to express
the how. Core values are the essential and enduring
principles and priorities that prescribe the desired mindset
and behavior of everyone who works at your company.
Just as most business leaders understand the usefulness
of having a well-articulated purpose for their organization,
they also understand the importance of setting values for it.
But all too often leaders develop a list of internal workplace
values that are intended to guide employees’ behaviors and
decisions, and separately they come up with a list of desired
brand attributes and values that describe the way they want
their brand to be perceived by customers. The former is
usually filled with generic platitudes, such as “we operate
with integrity” or “we value respect and teamwork.” The
latter tends to be either so abstract (e.g., attributes such as
authentic, fresh, cool) that most employees don’t
understand what it has to do with them or it is so
aspirational that employees don’t believe it.
It simply doesn’t make sense to specify the values
through which you engage your employees if those aren’t
linked to the way you want your employees to engage
customers. Instead, you should bridge the gulf between
organizational and brand values by using one set of core
values to describe the unique way you do things on the
inside and the outside.
Your values should function as the “operating
instructions” of your organization—that is, they should
inform, inspire, and instruct the day-to-day mindset and
behaviors of your people. Your values should describe the
collective attitudes and beliefs that you desire all employees
to hold, translate those into specific actions and decisions
that they should make, and then in turn show how those
behaviors produce customer experiences that define and
differentiate your brand.
Having a single set of core values results in tangible
benefits. As researchers from Booz Allen Hamilton and
Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program found,
companies usually think of values as tools to improve
employee retention and recruitment and to bolster
corporate reputation. But their research also found that
values can directly affect earnings and revenue growth if
they’re linked to the way the company actually operates.
Companies they qualified as financial leaders tend to ensure
their values are “prescriptive and explicit,” are aligned with
their strategies, and foster specific attitudes and behaviors
that influence the company’s growth and performance.36
The benefit of a single set of core values that is aligned
with your external identity goes well beyond profits: it offers
organizations clear guidance in the midst of a crisis or a
crucible moment, as it did for Cincinnati, Ohio–based
megachurch Crossroads Church. In 2008, during the opening
night of its elaborate annual Christmas show, which attracts
nearly 100,000 people, a young woman performing an aerial
stunt fell to her death. The tragic incident stunned everyone
at the scene, including the church’s senior leadership team,
who had been working backstage and throughout the
auditorium. They didn’t know what to do. “You’re never
prepared for those moments,” recalls Darin Yates, chief
operating officer.
After clearing the auditorium and notifying the woman’s
family, the team gathered in a conference room and spent
the night praying and asking themselves “What is the right
thing to do?”37 They eventually decided to cancel the
remaining performances and hold a “worship and
celebration of life” ceremony the following night, inviting
anyone who wanted to attend. Senior pastor Brian Tome led
the event, which was attended by hundreds of people. Yates
described how Tome, with tears falling, admitted to the
attendees that the incident had shaken his faith. Tome
recalled to local newspaper WCPO, “It had me questioning
God.”38 His comments were a visceral display of one of the
church’s core values—authenticity—which Crossroads’
“Culture Guide” defines this way: “Whether it’s what
happens on stage, within our serving teams or in our
homes, we need to be able to share our faults and
weaknesses.”39
Tome told WCPO that “his public expression of how [the
person’s] death rocked his sense of faith drove some people
away from Crossroads.”40 It was not the kind of response
the church needed, especially after such a tragic event. But
his decision to share his doubts and stay true to his
organization’s core value reinforced Crossroads’ authentic
identity to people inside and outside the organization. The
church could not claim to be authentic if its people weren’t
willing to live that value and suffer the consequences.
Hopefully the alignment of your values and brand identity
won’t be tested in a situation like this, but it should
nonetheless be as resolute.

Identify Unique Values that Work Inside and Out

Setting your core values is a process of both identification

and aspiration. Although values serve as general standards
that your people should apply to specific situations while
using their best judgment, you cannot dictate how
employees should think or act. They’re people, not robots.
Trying to impose values on employees—especially millennial
workers and those even younger who expect to participate
in shaping their workplaces—is not particularly effective.
Instead, your goal should be to illuminate the beneficial
attitudes and behaviors that currently exist in your
organization and to envision new ones that will help you
align your internal culture with your external brand.
For example, when Sam Palmisano took the reins at IBM,
he led a cultural renewal by first asking employees to
identify IBM’s enduring values, and then he activated newly-
inspired values by conducting tests and collecting feedback
from employees on how well they served the company. With
the similar goal of capturing the values that operate within
its walls, Zappos publishes an annual “Culture Book,” a
collection of unedited submissions from employees about
what the culture at the company is really like and what it
means to them. By sharing this Culture Book, everyone can
learn which of its core values are strong and being lived out
—as well as those that are not and need to be revisited or
reinforced.
In Chapter 2, I will show you how to determine the core
values that are right for you—including new values that do
not currently exist in your organization—and introduce you
to the Brand-Culture Fusion Assessment, an online tool to
help you get started in doing so. But here, we’ll go over how
to evaluate the values that exist in your organization or
those you eventually develop.
Effective values share a few common characteristics,
starting with uniqueness. There isn’t one right set of values
for every organization. Instead, each organization should
operate by unique values that contribute to its desired
culture. What do I mean by unique?
First, core values should differ from category values,
which all brands in any given category must adopt to be
viable competitors. For example, all fast-food restaurants
must embody the values of speed and convenience; all
software makers must value reliability and ease of use. A
fast-food restaurant that says it values speed . . . well, it’s
not saying anything different from any other fast-food
restaurant. Differentiation is the key driver of brand power.
Your company’s core values must embody what makes your
company uniquely “you”—what makes you stand out from
others.
Second, for your company’s values to be unique, the
words or manner in which you choose to describe them
must be distinctive. According to the Booz Allen Hamilton
and Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program
researchers, most corporate values incorporate similar
words and ideas. Ninety percent of them reference ethical
behavior or use the word “integrity,” 88 percent mention
commitment to customers, and 76 percent cite teamwork
and trust.41 Don’t default to these overused terms. You can
also differentiate your core values by expressing them
differently from other companies who might hold somewhat
similar beliefs. Use a style or voice that uniquely represents
your organization. Doing so provides more than a veneer of
differentiation; it makes your values more distinct because
they embody the spirit and personality of your organization.
If your core values are not expressed with distinct words and
in a unique style, how likely are your employees to pay
attention to, much less care about, values that seem
commonplace and conventional?
Finally, your core values should also incorporate words
that are active and actionable. Ann Rhoades, former chief
people officer of Southwest Airlines, recommends spelling
out behaviors that start with an action word and are
“observable, assessable, trainable, hireable, and
42
rewardable.” If your values are this explicit, they will most
certainly impact employees’ and ultimately customers’
experiences.
Consider the way the following companies, large and
small, B2B and B2C, articulate their core values distinctively
to guide their employees and describe how they want
customers to experience their brands:

• The WD-40 Company declares, “We value creating

positive lasting memories in all of our relationships,”
and “We value making it better than it is today.” 43
These statements are far more motivating and
directive than the more commonplace values of
“commitment” and “continuous improvement” that
most companies default to.
 • Google calls its values “Ten Things We Know to Be
True.” Even in the way it describes values as “things
we know to be true,” Google distinguishes itself.
Instead of stating its commitment to customers in a
generic way such as being “customer-focused,”
Google’s values proclaim “focus on the user and all
else will follow.” In place of “have fun,” Google’s
values statement declares “you can be serious
without a suit.” And instead of stating it values
“quality,” Google declares, “Great just isn’t good
enough.” These differences are more than semantics.
They reflect the spirit and personality with which the
values were conceived—and are intended to be lived
out.44
• Instead of simply listing “teamwork” as one of its
values, Illumina, a life science technologies company,
describes its commitment to it this way: “Deep
collaboration allows us to compete in ways others
cannot.” In place of listing “transparency” as a value,
Illumina’s values statement explains, “We are open—
physically and philosophically.”45
• The values at Gazelles, a strategic planning
consulting and coaching firm, include “practice what
we preach” and “first class for less.”46 With such
clear and cleverly-articulated values, Gazelle conveys
its priorities and its unique personality.

As a litmus test of whether a core value represents the

unique principles that shape your internal culture and
external brand, ask yourself the following question: Could
another company claim this value as its own and live it out
in the same way we do? Many companies list “passion,”
“innovation,” and “caring” as their values—and embody
those values every day in expected ways such as
developing new products and serving their customers with
care. But if one of your values is to “deliver WOW Through
Service,” as is Zappos’, you’re claiming unique territory.
“WOW” conveys the organization’s personality and spirit.
Your people know to deliver—and your customers expect to
receive—service that is above and beyond what’s called for
and that triggers a visceral, emotional response.
Alternatively, ask yourself: Would any company select the
opposite of your company’s value as its own? Some
companies might take the position that “done is better than
perfect,” while Google believes “great just isn’t good
enough.” Both points of view are valid—and valued by
different companies. If the opposite of your value is one that
an organization would find inspiring or instructive, then that
value you’ve identified can distinguish you in a powerful
way.
Your company’s core values must also work well as a
collection; they must complement and support each other.
“It’s important to remember that values work in
combination,” advises Jörgen Andersson, former marketing
director of international retailer H&M, in the book Living the
Brand by Nicholas Ind. H&M’s values—which include
common sense, initiative, faith in individuals, cost
awareness, and constant innovation—are highly correlated.
For example, Jörgen explains, “There’s no point in being
very cost conscious if you don’t apply common sense.”47
Think of your core values as pieces of a puzzle. Two values
might contrast with each other like concave and convex
puzzle pieces (e.g., humility and confidence, inspiration and
pragmatism) but actually serve to balance each other and
ultimately contribute to a cohesive culture.
Finally, like an overarching purpose, your values must
inform both your culture as well as your brand. Consider
how the companies mentioned above have embraced
values that apply internally and externally: they don’t
expect their employees to adopt one set of attitudes and
behaviors when they work with each other and another set
of standards for the experiences they create for customers.
The employees at the WD-40 Company value “creating
positive lasting memories” when they run meetings and
develop their teams, as well as when they create and
deliver products to customers—even if those products are
simply cans of lubricants that fix common problems so
people are no longer bothered by them. As a core value,
“creating positive lasting memories” aligns and connects
what the company does on the inside to what it does on the
outside.

YOUR CORE VALUES SHOULD BE:

Unique
Active
Actionable
Complementary
. . . and above all,
Correlate with the customer experience you want to
deliver

Once you’ve drafted your set of core values, here are

some simple questions to ask yourself:

• Do these core values capture the essence of our

culture and brand?
• Do they set us apart from companies like us?
• Do they help our employees understand how they are
expected to think and act?
• Do they inspire behaviors that will differentiate our
brand?
 • Are they credible and can they be consistently
applied?
• Do our employees want to be true to them? Will they
want to stay true to them as our organization grows
and markets change?

However well you set and define your unique core values,
you shouldn’t assume that your employees will understand
what they mean or that everyone will interpret the same
value into the same behavior. It’s critical that you establish
the desired behaviors or behavioral norms associated with
your values so employees know what your values look like
in action.
At Argentinian bank Banco Supervielle, Patricio
Supervielle, chairman, CEO, and president, knew it was not
enough to state his company’s core values as “agile,”
“simple,” and “friendly”—especially if he wanted to turn
such common notions in the banking industry into a
differentiating competitive advantage. So he and his
colleagues engaged in a year-and-a-half road show to meet
with all their managers and executives and flesh out what
the core values meant. They defined the behaviors they
expected employees to demonstrate for each value. For
“simple,” they specified “make decisions as close as
possible to the customer” and for “friendly,” they spelled
out “respect the agreements reached.” They also defined
those behaviors they would not accept. For “agile,” they
spelled out that “setting unchallenging goals” and “ignoring
mistakes and not learning from them” is unacceptable.48
Supervielle acknowledges that “it is very hard to be
consistent, to really walk the talk in every circumstance,”
but by so explicitly defining and describing the company’s
core values, he has made it a little easier.49
 Live Out Your Values

Writing in a Harvard Business Review post, renowned

business book author Patrick Lencioni explains the impact
that values should have. “When properly practiced, values
inflict pain,” he says of the difficult decisions that values
should lead companies to make, e.g., to exit a profitable
business because it conflicts with the company’s values or
to let a top-performing sales representative go because she
doesn’t conform to them. “They make some employees feel
like outcasts,” he continues. “They limit an organization’s
strategic and operational freedom and constrain the
behavior of its people. They leave executives open to heavy
criticism for even minor violations. And they demand
constant vigilance.”50
Lencioni purposefully describes the seemingly negative
consequences of living by your values because he’s found—
as have I—that far too many leaders take them lightly. They
don’t consider what it would require for their organizations
to actually take their values to heart. But once you’ve set
your core values, its not enough to simply espouse them—
that is, claim or speak about them. You must also enact
them.
Psychologists use the term “value congruence” to refer to
the extent to which an individual can behave at work
consistent with their own values and self-image. Applying
this concept to an organization, “core values congruence” is
the extent to which a company practices its values and
behaves consistently with its external image. As such, it is
one of the keys to aligning and integrating your culture with
your brand—that is, to achieving brand-culture fusion.
To determine if your organization has core values
congruence—that is, if it behaves internally in ways that are
true to its external image—Professor de Chernatony
recommends examining it for three types of inconsistencies:
 1. Action inconsistency. Your company says it values
one thing but doesn’t support it with actions.
Example: Your company’s leaders constantly talk
about the importance of customers, but they reject
an opportunity to reduce customer complaints
because of the cost involved.
2. Symbolic inconsistency. Your company promotes
a value externally but doesn’t appear to
authentically live it internally. Example: Your
company runs a healthy grocery store chain, but the
vending machines in the employee break room are
stocked with junk food.
3. Ideological inconsistency. Your company claims to
take an ideological stand on an issue but then
behaves contrary to that stand. Example: Your
company is an investment firm that claims a policy
of ethical investments but accepts an invitation to
consult with a company with human rights
violations.51

Netflix, the video streaming giant, offers a cautionary

example of the importance of values congruence—and the
danger of “action inconsistency.” In 2010, the company was
enjoying tremendous growth and success, with its shares
more than tripling in a single year.52 Only a year later,
however, the company was in crisis, losing 800,000
subscribers and watching its stock price plummet 77
percent in four months.53 What happened to precipitate this
fall?
At the time, the company had published a much-talked-
about 124-page manifesto called “Netflix Culture: Freedom
& Responsibility,” which described the company’s unique
cultural philosophies and practices. Communications—and
particularly listening—was listed among the company’s core
values. The manifesto claimed: “You listen well, instead of
reacting fast, so you can better understand.”54 But while
that value statement might have described how Netflix
leaders expected their employees to work with each other,
their actions revealed an inconsistency in how they actually
behaved.
When Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced a plan to do
away with a popular subscription plan that combined access
to DVD rentals and on-demand streaming video and replace
it with two separate services, each at a higher cost,
customers were outraged. CNET’s coverage of the incident
started with a clear diagnosis: “Reed Hastings stopped
listening, and that’s when the trouble started.”55 The article
revealed Hastings hadn’t listened to customers before he
decided to make the change and he also failed to listen to
his colleagues who had expressed concern about it.
In the end, Netflix listened to its customers and dropped
its plan to separate the DVD and on-demand streaming
video subscriptions—but by then the brand had taken a
huge blow and the company had lost one-third of its value.
Netflix has since turned around, but the debacle shows how
even a popular brand like Netflix can quickly lose customer
dollars and goodwill if doesn’t practice its core values and
behave consistently with its external image.
When you are in the process of identifying your core
values, keep this lesson from Netflix in mind. While you’ll be
able to identify some values that already exist in your
organization, even if they were not recognized as such,
you’ll likely have to set values that aren’t currently lived out
in your organization but must be for your company to
transform into the brand that you desire. This is when core
values congruence is most at stake. Setting aspirational
values is okay, but you must be careful to set values that
are believable and achievable. If you don’t, your company,
like Netflix, can easily fall into one of the three types of
inconsistencies.
 For example, I once had to push back on a CEO who
wanted to include “we respect and serve one another” as
one of his company’s values. His people were notorious for
yelling at each other, so I was concerned the company
would only pay lip service to this value, while employees
would continue behaving disrespectfully with each other—a
clear action inconsistency (and, not to mention, just wrong).
I explained to the CEO that he could articulate aspirational
values but he must also show how the organization is going
to achieve them. In the end, he personally committed to
championing the change to a more respectful and service-
oriented culture. The company included respect and service
in its list of core values as well as implemented an action
plan, including communication training and leadership
coaching, to move its culture more in line with the CEO’s
vision.
Achieving and sustaining core values congruence requires
discipline and diligence. But by adopting a single, central
set of core values that you consistently live out, you
increase the likelihood of operating in a way that is
consistent with the image you want to project and,
ultimately, be esteemed in today’s business context which
rewards authenticity and transparency.

UNIFY YOUR ORGANIZATION

While individually a sole overarching purpose and a set of

core values can help you realize some gains at your
company, together they help create a high-functioning
organization that is poised to produce significantly better
business outcomes.
Your employees will understand that they and their
contributions matter at a higher level than their job
descriptions might suggest. Your organization won’t just be
a great place to work; its work becomes great. An integrated
purpose and values instills in employees a sense of pride in
the brand and makes them want to enhance their skills and
capabilities to make the brand even stronger. They will be
more attuned to each other, customers, the competition,
and the market as a whole. They will work together more
efficiently and require less oversight, not only lowering costs
but also making the organization more attractive to younger
employees who prefer to be empowered instead of
managed.
But most important, a properly developed and
implemented overarching purpose and set of core values
unifies your employees, counteracting the divisions that
naturally occur in work environments that are increasingly
diverse, divided, and distributed. In fact, these days, it’s
rare to find an organization that isn’t composed of newly
combined or loosely connected groups—and people who
have little in common with each other and rarely interact in
person.
De Chernatony cites research by Andrew Brown, a
Nottingham University professor, that identifies three types
of organizational subcultures—groups of people within an
organization who share a common experience—that arise
today:

• Enhancing subcultures usually adhere to and

advance the broader organization’s culture.
• Orthogonal subcultures align with the larger
organization but also accept separate yet
nonconflicting values. They usually arise in
companies spread across different regions or
countries or in those made up of units that operate
somewhat independently such as a remote call
center or restaurant and retail stores that are part of
chains.
 • Countercultures embrace values that contrast with
the desired culture of the entire organization. They
usually form after a merger or acquisition or when a
new senior leader is appointed and different factions
exhibit different allegiances.56

Both orthogonal subcultures and countercultures can

create friction and confusion that take a toll on employee
productivity and, ultimately, company performance. A clear
and compelling overarching purpose and values can be used
as powerful antidotes to these subcultures. A definitive
overarching purpose unifies people with a higher calling that
transcends functions, geographies, and even histories. Core
values convey expectations that are universally relevant
and applicable. When a merger or acquisition or significant
reorganization is involved, an overarching purpose and core
values set clear expectations for the transition and create
greater alignment on the end goal. In every instance, they
establish non-negotiables—the standards to which everyone
will be held.
FedEx discovered the unifying power of core values in the
mid-2000s after acquiring several businesses, including
freight transportation company RPS and Kinko’s office
services centers. Eric Jackson, who served as vice president
of worldwide corporate communications for the company,
known then as FedEx Express, during that critical time,
described to me how the culture had been so deep, rich,
and unique, its leaders had assumed that it would be
adopted across the board. But the company struggled to
align all its existing and new employees and operations
across such disparate business models and working
environments.57 Eventually it rolled out a new set of values
under the banner “Operate independently. Compete
collectively. Manage collaboratively.” The cultural change
initiative specified how the organization would work
together moving forward and stand “as one brand
worldwide” while allowing each business unit to focus on
meeting the distinct needs of their customers. It also helped
FedEx retain its industry leadership.58
At LinkedIn, Nicole Leverich, senior director of corporate
communications, credits her company’s vital values for
making it possible to acquire numerous businesses
(between 2010 and 2017, LinkedIn made nineteen
acquisitions including lynda.com for $1.5 billion in cash and
stock59). “If values are not accepted, understood, and
embraced,” she told me, “it’s easy in an acquisition for
them to disappear.” But through all of the transactions,
LinkedIn demonstrated the same commitment to its values,
including transparency, and its vision never changed.
“When you keep all those things the same, it’s easier for
acquisitions to be successful,” she observes.60
Ardine Williams, Amazon’s vice president of people
operations, explained to me how “leadership principles” that
serve as the core values for her organization make it easier
for employees to take on new roles in different business
units. Although operations in Amazon’s e-commerce
business couldn’t be more different from operations in its
on-demand cloud computing business, Amazon Web
Services, the company’s values are embraced and applied
across both and all other businesses. “Every business is
very different, but how we measure, innovate, evaluate, and
interact is consistent,” she said. As the company continues
to expand its footprint, thereby producing more
opportunities for employees to move between business
units, a cohesive purpose and set of values will become
increasingly important.61
It’s not just large enterprises like FedEx and Amazon that
need an overarching purpose and single set of core values
to unify employees. Organizations of any size must align
and unite their workforces if they include employees who
work from home or a remote location. Bryan Miles, CEO and
cofounder of BELAY, a virtual staffing company, believes all
leaders must be “maniacal” about communicating their
organization’s purpose, but particularly those who have
remotely located employees. “We’ve been intentional about
our purpose from day one. It’s not an afterthought, it’s
always top of mind,”62 he told me. Miles employs seventy
people who all work remotely and are hired by clients as
virtual assistants doing remote work. “‘Why’ is the best
thing to leave somebody with when you’re not around. If
your people know why they’re doing something, they can fill
in the blanks on what and how to do it.”

THE CORNERSTONES OF CULTURE

Your organizational culture is largely shaped by its purpose

and values. After all, culture, or “the way we do things
around here,” is made up of people’s attitudes (beliefs and
ideas) and actions (behaviors and decisions)—and purpose
and values influence both. In fact, your purpose and values
are so foundational to your culture that renowned
management guru Peter Drucker framed his consulting
advice around them. Figuring them out was the essence of
some of the questions he outlined in his influential book The
Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your
Organization.63
This chapter has started you on the journey to brand and
culture integration and alignment at your organization by
taking you through the what, why, and how of setting an
overarching purpose and a single set of core values. These
are the foundations upon which you build your desired
culture—the culture you need to support and advance your
brand identity and ultimately unleash the growth-inducing
power of brand-culture fusion. The next chapter points you
toward your desired culture and helps you assess how far off
you are from achieving brand-culture fusion.
 Key Takeaways from This Chapter:
• The purpose of your business and the purpose of
your brand should be seamlessly integrated and
tightly aligned.
• Your overarching purpose statement should be
clear, pithy, and externally oriented.
• Use one set of core values to describe the unique
way you do things both as an organization and as
a brand.
• To achieve core values congruence, your
company must behave consistently with its
external image.
• An overarching purpose and core values
counteract the divisions that naturally occur in
increasingly diverse, divided, and distributed
work environments.
 CHAPTER 2

ASSESS YOUR BRAND-CULTURE FUSION

Read this chapter to learn:

• How to identify the optimal brand-culture fusion for your
organization
• How well-fused your brand and culture are today and what are
specific areas for improvement
• How engaged your employees are on three critical dimensions

Leaders of great organizations have tremendous clarity about their brand

identity and about how to cultivate an organizational culture that enables
them to achieve it. Jeff Bezos has made the Amazon brand synonymous with
innovations that delight customers by cultivating a culture that doggedly
pursues those innovations. Richard Branson has created a disruptive brand by
running his Virgin enterprise to “screw business as usual.”1 And Starbucks has
always been about more than the coffee it serves because Howard Schultz
conceived the brand as an experience, not a product, and enrolled his staff in
that vision.
To build your own great organization, you must have that same clarity
about your brand aspiration and how to align your organizational culture to it.
But if you’re like most leaders I come across, you lack that certainty. And
because you don’t know your destination, you don’t know how far away it is
nor how to get there.
In this chapter, I’ll help you get the clarity you need. First, I’ll help you
determine the kind of core values and culture—your desired culture—you
should be cultivating to successfully support your brand identity. Then I’ll help
you understand how far your desired culture is from your current culture—that
is, how well-aligned, or not, your culture and brand identity are today. Finally,
I’ll show you how to diagnose the existing state of brand-culture fusion at your
organization so you can pinpoint the areas that need the most improvement.
To help you in your journey, I’ve designed an online tool that makes this
process easy. To get the most out of this chapter, I encourage you to read it
first, then go to http://deniseleeyohn.com/fusion-assessment/ to take the
Brand-Culture Fusion Assessment. When you’re finished with both, you’ll have
a clear picture of your brand-culture fusion destination and what kinds of
cultural transformations you need to get there.
 IDENTIFY YOUR BRAND TYPE

In the previous chapter, I explained that every company should have, at the
heart of its culture, a distinct and overarching purpose and a set of core
values that guide how it operates inside and how it is perceived outside. I also
showed you how to develop your overarching purpose. If you’re as thoughtful
as most of the leaders I encounter, I’m confident you’ll be able to set your
purpose without too much difficulty.
I’m guessing, though, that you might find identifying a suitable, single set
of core values more elusive. Your company certainly has values it follows
already—every organization operates with values either explicitly or implicitly.
These values might be proudly listed on your company’s website or they
might lurk undefined, influencing under the radar your employees’ behaviors
and how customers experience your brand.
But are these values—implicit or explicit—serving your company well? Are
they helping you create an organizational culture that is strategically aligned
and integrated with your brand identity? If they’re not, what values should
you be encouraging in your organization to achieve brand-culture fusion?
To arrive at the core values that successfully link your culture and brand, I
recommend starting with identifying the brand type that your brand falls into.
If you know the general type of your brand, you’ll then be able to isolate the
kinds of organizational values needed to support it.
Brand types are categories of brands that share the same strategic
approach or take similar stances to shape their positioning. They differ from
brand archetypes, which are concepts that classify brands according to
storytelling character types like the Hero, the Joker, and the Innocent. While
brand archetypes can be helpful particularly in creating a narrative and tone
of voice to use in advertising campaigns and other communications, the brand
types I’m referring to identify the various ways that brands compete and are
positioned relative to each other. For example, while the Apple and Nike
brands target different customers, offer different benefits, and express
different personalities, both fall into the “innovative brand” type because they
are characterized by their relentless pursuit and introduction of new products.
Likewise, Ritz-Carlton and USAA are both “service brands” because they
consistently deliver superior service, but their identities and competitive
brand strategies couldn’t be more different.
Having worked on a broad range of brands for more than twenty-five years
—large and small, local and international, B2C and B2B, start-ups and well-
established enterprises—I’ve concluded that there is a finite number of brand
types, or ways that brands compete and position themselves. Although no two
brands share the exact same brand identity, there are only nine general brand
types:

1. Disruptive brands challenge the current ways of doing things and

introduce new concepts that substantively change the market.
 2. Conscious brands are on a mission to make a positive social or
environmental impact or enhance people’s quality of life.
3. Service brands routinely deliver high-quality customer care and
service.
4. Innovative brands consistently introduce advanced and
breakthrough products and technologies.
5. Value brands offer lower prices for basic quality products or services.
6. Performance brands produce products or services that deliver
superior performance and dependability.
7. Luxury brands offer higher quality at higher price.
8. Style brands are differentiated by the way their products or services
look and feel, as much as or more than by what they do.
9. Experience brands are differentiated by the experiences they
provide, as much as or more than by their products or services.

Some of these brand types overlap, and some characteristics are—or

should be—embraced by all brands. All brands should offer good service, for
example. But a brand that falls into the service brand type always makes
delivering high-quality customer care and service its top priority. Its
strategies, operations, and ultimately customer value propositions are all
centered around delivering great service first.
Although your brand might seem to fall into two or three brand types, it’s
critical that you identify a primary one. All too often companies are unable to
make a choice about what their brands stand for. They vacillate between
brand types with widely different strategic approaches. The result is a brand
that is unfocused and generic. Establishing a single, focused, differentiated
brand identity starts with picking a primary brand type—and that brand type
should be the one that aligns best with your overarching purpose, resonates
most with your organization, and gives you the most impact with your
customers. (When you take the online Brand-Culture Fusion Assessment,
you’ll get an even clearer picture of your brand type.)
A company’s brand might evolve from one type to another as its customers,
competitors, and other outside influences like technology change. But usually
a brand builds equity by sticking to a single brand type over time. The nine
brand types are broad enough to allow for that. Even if a company’s products
or services change in scope; or the company targets new customers; or it
grows its footprint into new markets, channels, and organizational
configurations; the brand type it falls under will likely remain the same. For
example, Disney is now an enterprise that extends well beyond its original
video cartoon production house, but it has remained an experience brand.
The nine brand types are also broad enough that they don’t confine any
one brand’s unique identity or precise positioning in a market. Consider the
differences in purpose, scope, target customer, and personality between three
different performance brands: BMW, FedEx, and American Express. All three
brands are characterized by superior performance and dependability, but
that’s where the similarity between them ends. BMW’s brand is about a
superior driving experience, FedEx’s is about dependable delivery, and
American Express is rooted in a world-class reliable service brand identity. The
brazen personality expressed in BMW’s advertising contrasts with FedEx’s
unceremonious tone and American Express’ sophistication. And while BMW
and American Express might both target higher-end customers, FedEx’s target
audience is mainstream consumers and businesses.
Each of the nine brands types is distinguished by two main characteristics.
The first one is its point of reference, that is, the standard the brand is
positioned relative to. The second one is its tone and manner—how the brand
usually behaves or expresses itself. Take a look at the description of each of
the brand types, their point of reference, and their tone and manner—and
then consider what type your own brand falls under. I’ve also included some
examples of each brand type, although I recognize that there’s an element of
subjectivity when determining the brand type of brands that are not your own.
Here are the nine brand types:

Brand Description: Point of Tone and Examples:

Character: Reference: Manner:
what what the how the brand
characterizes brand is usually behaves
the brand positioned and
relative to communicates
Disruptive Challenges Category Rebellious, Virgin,
Brand the current leader confident, Airbnb, Dr.
ways of doing daring Pepper
things and
introduces
new concepts
that
substantively
change the
market

Conscious Is on a Higher Inspiring, Seventh

Brand mission to purpose thoughtful, Generation,
make a transparent SoulCycle,
positive social Patagonia
or
environmental
impact or
enhance
people’s
quality of life
Service Routinely Customer Humble, Nordstrom,
Brand delivers high- need predictable, USAA, Ritz-
quality friendly Carlton
customer care
and service

Innovative Consistently Possibility Risk-taking, Apple,

Brand introduces imaginative, Nike,
advanced and progressive Amazon
breakthrough
products and
technologies

Value Brand Offers lower Higher- Down-to-earth, Walmart,

prices for priced practical, IKEA,
basic-quality brands straightforward Subway
products or
services

Performance Produces Performance Precise, BMW,

Brand products or standard competent, FedEx,
services that reliable American
deliver Express
superior
performance
and
dependability

Luxury Offers higher Populist Discriminating, Tiffany,

Brand quality at brand refined, Mercedes-
higher price glamorous Benz,
Hermes

Style Brand Is Functional Creative, Target,

differentiated brand stylish, JetBlue,
by the way its contemporary Mini
products or Cooper
services look
and feel, as
much as or
more than by
what they do

Experience Is Customer Exciting, Disney,

Brand differentiated emotion energetic, American
by the imaginative
 experience it Girl,
offers, as Wegmans
much as or
more than by
the product or
service

BRAND TYPES DIFFER ON TWO DIMENSIONS

If you are having a difficult time identifying the primary brand type
that your brand falls under, thinking about your brand on the
following two dimensions might help you narrow your choices.

Brand types vary in the degree to which they are oriented to change:
Some brand types embrace it. Disruptive, experience, and innovative
brands tend to emphasize novelty and are oriented to what’s next.
Other brand types eschew change and are built through consistency.
Style, service, and value brands tend to establish themselves by
being reliable and unchanging. Some brands types like conscious,
luxury, and performance fall somewhere in between.

Figure 2.1 The Change & Value Dimensions of Brands

The brand types also vary by the type of value they offer to
customers. The value of conscious brands tends to transcend a
specific product or service while performance brands usually create
value that is very tangible and material, and most luxury brands
create value that is somewhere in between.
 Look at Figure 2.1 and identify where your brand might fit best.

As you consider which brand type your brand best fits under, try to be as
objective as you can. When it comes to building your brand identity,
perception is as important, if not more than, reality. For example, your
organization may develop what you think are innovative products, but if your
customers don’t perceive you or your products as innovative, then your
existing brand probably doesn’t fall in the innovative brand category.
Whenever possible, involve other leaders in the process of identifying your
brand type, and if you have conducted customer research recently, consult
their findings to get the full picture on how your brand is currently perceived.
After going through this exercise, you might find that, while your brand
currently fits under one brand type, you aspire for your brand to be another
type. If that’s the case, your aspirations for brand transformation should be
realistic. It’s unlikely that a value brand that offers low prices for basic quality
will become a luxury brand that delivers higher quality at higher prices, for
example. But if you choose to make a sensible shift from one brand type to
another, success is entirely possible if you make changes to your values and
culture. The next step in this assessment process helps you identify the kinds
of values that most support your current or desired brand type.

DETERMINE THE VALUES YOU NEED

Each brand type requires a specific organizational culture to thrive. If you

want to be an innovative brand, for example, then your culture must
encourage a test-and-learn mentality among your employees. If you’ve set
your sights on being a style brand, then you need to infuse your culture with
design and creativity.
Once you know the type of brand you have or desire to build, the next step
is to identify the kind of culture required to deliver on it. Organizational
cultures are not as easily classified as brand types, though. Many researchers
and consulting firms, including OCAI, Denison, Human Synergistics, and
Organizational Culture Profile, have developed tools and constructs that
classify organizational cultures. Each offers insights into the common drivers
and indicators of cultures. But I’ve found that too many variables distinguish
an organization’s culture, so any attempt to classify cultures ends up
producing categories too broad to be meaningful or actionable. Most of these
approaches are also limited because they are based on the internal dynamics
of an organization and do not take into account important external influences
on culture such as brand identity or customer needs.
Instead of culture types, I focus on organizational values. Distilling culture
down to core values is at once a more robust and a more streamlined
approach than classifying different types of culture. Along with an overarching
purpose, core values are the cornerstones of culture. They reflect what’s
important to your organization, shape your people’s attitudes and actions,
and drive how your organization shows up and operates in the world. If you
know the types of core values you need to deliver on your particular brand
type, you can design the other aspects of your culture to align with, build on,
and reinforce them. In short, you have a starting point for designing your
desired culture.
To identify the core values you should cultivate as the foundation of your
desired culture, look at the chart below and find your brand type. Next to your
brand type you’ll find a list of the three top values that are most likely to help
it thrive (for a definition of each value, see page 42):

Brand Type: Top Organizational Core

what characterizes the brand Values:
what shapes the way the
people in the company
think & behave

Disruptive Brand Competition, standing out,

Challenges the current ways of doing things risk-taking
and introduces new concepts that
substantively change the market

Conscious Brand Purposefulness, high

Is on a mission to make a positive social or commitment,
environmental impact or enhance people’s transparency
quality of life

Service Brand Caring, humility, empathy

Routinely delivers high-quality customer care
and service

Innovative Brand Inventiveness,

Consistently introduces advanced and experimentation,
breakthrough products and technologies continuous improvement

Value Brand Accessibility, fairness,

Offers lower prices for basic quality products or pragmatism
services

Performance Brand Achievement, excellence,

Produces products that deliver superior consistency
performance and dependability

Luxury Brand Sophistication, distinction,

Offers higher quality at higher price status
 Style Brand Design, discernment,
Is differentiated by the way its products and creativity
services look and feel as much as or more than
by what they do

Experience Brand Entertainment,

Is differentiated by the experience it offers as enjoyment, originality
much as or more than by the product or
service

Once you’ve identified the values you need to support your desired culture,
you then need to ascertain whether the values that currently exist in your
organization—explicitly or implicitly—align with those that correspond with
your brand type.
To do so, start by assessing your culture as it actually is and the core values
that are currently in play in your organization every day—not necessarily the
values that are stated in your company’s mission statement. When I work with
my clients on their culture, we start by performing a thorough culture audit to
fully understand the existing state of their organizational culture. We do an
anthropological study, walking around their offices and taking note of what we
see and hear. We observe how people interact with each other and their
environment. We collect materials from all areas of the business and analyze
them, applying semiotics—the study of signs and symbols—to uncover hidden
meanings. And then we discuss our findings with employees to get their take
on the culture.
A culture audit is best conducted by a cross-functional team working
together with outsiders who can offer fresh perspectives. Doing so ensures
the audit is objective and thorough. If that approach is out of reach for you, or
if you want to make progress while you shore up the resources for that kind of
effort, you can still do your own informal audit by taking stock of the
following:

Communications. What, when, where, why, and how your organization

communicates to employees, other stakeholders, and customers reveals a
great deal about your culture and values. For example, when a CEO sends a
handwritten thank-you note, it suggests a personal, perhaps even informal
culture, whereas a weekly all-hands web chat signals a tech-savvy,
democratic one. Founding stories, legends, and customer anecdotes that are
regularly shared around the office also contain clues about the values of your
organization. A story about someone going to great lengths to satisfy a
customer, for example, speaks volumes about the company’s service-oriented
culture.

Employee policies and procedures. Consider the policies and

procedures that dictate employee behaviors in every area. What are the
policies for:

• Your dress code (is the dress code more professional or casual?)
• The use of technology and social media (are they more restrictive or
open?)
• Taking vacation, sick, and personal leave (are they more flexible or
strict?)
• Safety (are they more proactive or free-handed?)

Compensation, benefits, and retirement packages. How you pay and

reward your employees illuminates whether your company values an
individual’s performance over team or company performance, outcomes vs.
effort, tenure vs. merit, and more.

Office location, architecture, design, and layout. Companies usually

identify with the region or area they’re based in—Silicon Valley for technology
companies, New York for financial firms, etc. Location says a lot about how a
company sees itself. An automotive company that selects a city other than
Detroit for its U.S. headquarters may be signaling a rebellious or disruptive
identity and culture. The architectural style and interior design of an
organization’s building often expresses its personality (e.g., modern vs. old-
fashioned, flashy vs. understated). Office layouts reflect how employees work
together. The open floor plans at many technology start-ups suggests their
organizational cultures are open and collaborative.

Rituals. Organizational rituals are ceremonies, rites, and other regularly

occurring events and activities such as annual awards or weekly meetings. If,
when, and how your organization gives out awards, celebrates milestones,
and carries out traditions indicates what it values. For example, an
organization that prides itself on its family-oriented culture probably
celebrates employees’ work anniversaries with a party of some sort, or invites
employees’ families to company picnics and holiday gatherings. An
organization that thrives on healthy competition might stage an annual sales
contest in which reps are encouraged to one-up each other.

Artifacts. The objects that your organization creates, keeps, and

distributes, such as awards, tchotchkes, pictures, and devices, also symbolize
what is important in your culture.

Informed by insights from your audit, you should be able to identify from
the following list the top values that exist at your organization. The list is, I
admit, a generic collection of broad values. As explained in the previous
chapter, every company has—or should have—values that are distinct to it or
at least expressed in a unique way. But offering a more comprehensive or
nuanced list of values would be impossible, given that the possibilities for
unique values are endless. My hope is that you’ll use the list as a springboard,
and that you’ll see your unique values represented here by some of these
general ones. Also, as is the case with brand types, you might find many of
these values in your organization, but you should focus on the degree to
which your organization embraces a value to determine the three most salient
and influential ones.
For some of you, the culture at your organization is either nondescript or so
negative that it might be difficult to see any values from the list at work in
your organization today. That’s okay. If you find yourself in this situation, skip
this exercise. You’ve already laid the most important groundwork by clearly
identifying the type of brand you’re building and learning the core values
you’ll need to cultivate to deliver on it.

Here are the twenty-seven common organizational values:

Accessibility—people at your company make themselves easy to

understand and engage with, regardless of rank or role.

Achievement—people at your company focus on the successful

attainment of goals typically by effort, courage, or skill.

Caring—people at your company consistently display kindness and

concern for others.

Competition—people at your company strive to win or be more

successful than others.

Consistency—people at your company adhere steadfastly to the same

principles, course, or form.

Continuous improvement—people at your company engage in ongoing

efforts to improve products, services, or processes.

Creativity—people at your company rely on imagination or foster

original ideas.

Design—people at your company focus on the look, style, or fashion of

everything they do or produce.

Discernment—people at your company emphasize using acute

judgment and discretion.

Distinction—people at your company like to set its brand apart from the
competition clearly and deliberately.

Empathy—people at your company try to put themselves in other

people’s shoes—especially those of other employees and customers.
Enjoyment—people at your company go out of their way to have fun
and seek out delight.

Entertainment—people at your company emphasize amusement or

celebration.

Excellence—people at your company try to be outstanding or to meet

the highest standards.

Experimentation—people at your company experiment with new

methods and approaches, knowing some will fail.

Fairness—people at your company go out of their way to act without

bias or partiality.

High commitment—people at your company believe in acting with

intense and ironclad dedication to a purpose.

Humility—people at your company believe in adopting a modest or low

view of one’s own importance.

Inventiveness—people at your company like to create new things with

imagination.

Originality—people at your company champion independence,

creativity, and fresh perspectives.

Pragmatism—people at your company deal with things sensibly and

realistically and try to find the most practical way to do things.

Purposefulness—people at your company pursue its goals with

intention and determination.

Risk-taking—people at your company engage in activities that involve

danger or risk in order to achieve a goal.

Sophistication—people at your company rely on social or esthetic

standards to discriminate between options.

Standing out—people at your company attract attention to it by being

particularly noticeable or different.

Status—people at your company care about the relative social standing

of people and things.

Transparency—people at your company do things openly and in a

straightforward way.
 Once you’ve identified the top three core values that currently exist in your
company, use the chart on pages 38 and 39 to compare them with the top
three values associated with your brand type. For example, if you’ve identified
your values as excellence, design, and creativity, then you can see on the
chart that these values are associated with the performance brand type
(excellence) and with the style brand type (design and creativity).
The difference between your existing values and those of your current or
desired brand type provides a good indication of how far off your organization
is from your desired culture—the culture that will enable you to support and
advance your brand identity (or the brand identity you’d like to evolve to.) For
example, if you’ve determined that your brand type is a performance brand,
then the chart shows that the core values that typically support that brand
type are excellence, achievement, and consistency. In your culture audit,
you’ve determined that excellence is indeed one of your top three values—but
the other two top values in your organization align best with a style brand
type. Therefore, in your case, there’s a clear misalignment between the core
values at play in your culture and the ones needed to support your current
brand type. You’ll need to foster and cultivate the values of achievement and
consistency if you want your organizational culture to help your performance
brand truly thrive.
Now that you know the top values that you need as the foundation of your
desired culture—and whether they currently exist in your organization or you
need to cultivate them from scratch—you must make them your own. The top
three values listed in the chart are only a starting point for drafting your
unique core values. As I noted previously, these values are expressed in the
most general terms. Apply them to your organization by fleshing them out
into a full set of core values, articulating them in unique ways, defining what
they mean in your organization, and tying them to specific behaviors, as
described in Chapter 1.

ASSESS THE STATE OF YOUR BRAND-CULTURE FUSION

Once you know the types of core values you’re aiming for, it’s time to
examine how well your culture and brand are aligned and integrated today.
You need to know how much work you have to do and diagnose where the
biggest disconnects are so you know which areas of culture-building you
should focus on.
To understand the current state of brand-culture fusion at your organization,
it’s important to “begin with the end in mind,” as business guru Dr. Stephen R.
Covey advised.2 Understanding what it looks like when an organization
successfully achieves brand-culture fusion will help you see if and how fusion
is lacking in your organization.
When culture and brand are completely in sync, their alignment is
manifested visibly in four primary areas:
 • Purpose and values integration
• Employee experience–customer experience integration
• Internal brand alignment
• Employee brand engagement

As you read about each area, consider whether the indicators listed under
each are present in your organization. Whenever possible, invite other leaders
and employees—particularly from various parts of and at different levels in
your organization—to participate in this exercise and contribute their
perspectives.

Purpose and Values Integration

Purpose and values integration is the extent to which your overarching

purpose and your core values are woven into your business and organization.
Here are the ways in which purpose and values integration is most visible:

• Your company has an overarching purpose that unites its business

ambitions and brand aspirations.
• Your company uses a single set of core values to describe its internal
culture and desired brand image.
• Your company’s purpose and values have a real impact on how it
operates.
• Most employees clearly understand what your company stands for,
why it exists, and what it values.
• The gap between the values your company claims to hold and the
actual values lived out by your employees every day is very small.
• Your company leaders usually act, make decisions, and communicate in
ways that are consistent with your company’s overarching purpose and
core values.
• Your people use your overarching purpose and core values as filters
when recruiting, training, and evaluating employees.
• Your operations processes (e.g., supply chain, product development,
labor management, etc.) are designed and implemented in line with
your purpose and values.
• Your organizational design (i.e., the units, hierarchy, and roles in your
organization) supports and promotes work that is aligned with your
purpose and values.
• The perceptions among your customers about your company are
accurate—that is, your company’s brand image is pretty much what
your organization is really like.
• Your company has translated its purpose and values into differentiators
that distinguish your brand from competitors or create value for
 customers.

If you believe your company needs help achieving purpose and values
integration, you might revisit Chapter 1 to reflect on how to develop and
activate a strong overarching purpose and set of core values. Pay close
attention to Chapter 3, which explains the fundamental role of leaders in
integrating what you do and say internally with what you do and say
externally, and to Chapter 4, which explains how to design and run your
organization in line with your purpose and values. Chapter 8 shows how to
translate your culture—including your values and purpose—into brand
differentiators.

Employee Experience–Customer Experience Integration

The next area is the extent to which your employee experience and your
customer experience are aligned and integrated. When your culture and
brand are interdependent and mutually reinforcing, there is a strong
connection between how employees experience every aspect of work life
during their tenure in your organization—from being hired to going through
training, from working in a particular space to having tools for and information
about their jobs and the company—and how customers experience your
brand. You engage your employees in the way you expect them to engage
your customers. Indicators of this integration include:

• Your managers treat employees in ways that are consistent with how
they expect them to treat customers.
• You design the employee experience at your company with the same
principles used for your desired customer experience.
• You design and manage your organization to facilitate the collaboration
and shared accountability you need to excel in crafting and delivering
customer experience.
• Your company’s physical workplace environment—a key influence on
employee experience—embodies your brand attributes.
• Your company engages employees through rites, rituals, and symbols
that reflect and bring to life your overarching purpose and core values.

If you find that your current culture falls short of engaging your employees
in the way you expect them to engage customers, then turn to Chapter 5.
There, I’ll show you how leading companies are able to deliver superior
customer experiences because they weave them together with employee
experiences. I’ll also teach you how to achieve strong employee experience–
customer experience integration at your company. And in Chapter 6, I will
explain how to use small experiences in your organization such as rituals and
artifacts to reinforce your desired culture.
 Internal Brand Alignment

Internal brand alignment is the extent to which your people are aligned with
each other on brand matters. For your culture to be fully aligned with your
brand, everyone in your organization must share one common understanding
of your brand identity. There are two ways in which this alignment is
manifested in your culture:

• Your company’s brand identity and positioning have been clearly

articulated to everyone inside your organization.
• The key stakeholders at your organization consistently agree about
what’s “on brand” and what’s not.

If your organization fails at either of these, direct your attention to Chapter

7, where I provide a wide range of examples of experiences and tools that can
increase internal brand alignment and explain the best approaches to develop
them.

Employee Brand Engagement

Employee brand engagement is the extent to which your people are aligned
and engaged with your brand. This area of brand-culture fusion deserves a
lengthier explanation because people often conflate employee brand
engagement with employee engagement in general (employees’ commitment
to the company and their jobs). But you can’t afford to miss the particular
importance of employee brand engagement when your goal is brand-culture
fusion.
The lack of brand and culture alignment and integration is a key driver of
most organization’s engagement shortcomings. As with culture overall,
employee engagement can’t be pursued in a generic, unfocused way. If your
engagement efforts are intended simply to make employees feel valued and
satisfied, employees might be more inclined to perform their jobs better, but
they’re not necessarily going to help your organization go after its purpose,
live out your core values, or create customer experiences that express either.
Only when you engage your employees with your brand will they think and
act in the specific ways that produce the specific results you’re looking for.
General employee engagement is manifested in employees’ relationships with
their managers and co-workers, their view of their job responsibilities, and
their participation in work activities. Employee brand engagement,
meanwhile, shows up in these three brand-specific ways:

1. Personal and emotional engagement with the brand

• Employees’ personal values and your company’s core values are
well-aligned.
 • Employees act as brand ambassadors, sharing positive information
about your company with their friends, families, and communities
and recommending it to them.
• Employees believe that your company delivers on its brand promise.
• Employees feel an emotional connection to your company and your
brand.
• The company’s overarching purpose makes employees feel their job
is important.
• Employees exhibit a clear preference to work at your company
instead of its competitors.

2. Day-to-day engagement with the brand

• Your leaders expect everyone, not just the marketing department, to
do what they can to build your brand.
• Employees have appropriate access to tools and data about how
your brand is perceived in the marketplace relative to your
competitors.
• Employees tend to make decisions by thinking about what’s right for
your company’s brand in the long term instead of what’s likely to
produce short-term results.
• Employees believe they are responsible for nurturing and reinforcing
your brand on a daily basis, at every touchpoint.
• Employees clearly understand their roles within the company and the
impact they have on making the brand successful.

3. Engagement in your company’s brand strategy

• Employees understand what makes your brand different and special
from a customer perspective.
• Employees clearly understand who the company’s target audiences
are and their primary wants and needs.
• Employees have the skills and resources they need to ensure they
deliver on the brand promise.
• Employees would say they are empowered to deliver on the brand
promise to customers.
• All employees—even those who don’t have direct customer contact—
understand how they contribute to a great customer experience.
• Employees consistently demonstrate the behaviors that help create
loyal relationships with customers.

For this area of brand-culture alignment, more than any other, it’s critical
that you include in your assessment your employees’ perspectives so that you
gain an accurate understanding of the current state of your employee brand
engagement. (If you conduct an employee engagement survey, consider
incorporating these measures of brand-specific engagement in it. If you don’t,
Chapter 5 will introduce you to a complete toolkit of survey methods that you
can use to glean employee insights on these and other important topics.)
 Should your findings reveal that your employee brand engagement is not as
strong as you’d like, you’ll find relevant insights and action steps throughout
Part 2 of this book. Chapter 7 will be particularly helpful, as I show you how to
produce experiences, communications strategies, and brand toolkits that
develop employee brand engagement and cultivate your desired culture.

ASSESSMENT RESULTS REVEAL WIDESPREAD LACK OF BRAND-

CULTURE FUSION

If, as you read through the areas of integration, you realize your
culture and brand aren’t as well-integrated and aligned as you had
hoped, you are not alone. Prior to the publishing of FUSION, 250
business leaders pre-tested the online assessment tool, which asks
participants to assess their organizations on each of the four areas of
brand-culture integration. Their responses indicate that few
companies have strong brand-culture fusion across the board. While
a few bright spots exist—B2C organizations tend to enjoy stronger
employee brand engagement than do B2B companies, for example—
most indicators in each area received a favorable rating from around
half of the respondents or fewer. Take the online assessment to
receive a personalized report that will show you specifically how your
results compare to others’.

Now that you’ve assessed your organization on the four areas of brand-culture
alignment and integration, the remainder of this book provides the roadmap,
tools, and approaches for the rest of your journey to brand-culture fusion. Use
your findings to guide you as you read through Part 2 of this book, referring to
the chapters that correspond to the integration areas where you see the
biggest disconnects in your organization.

BRAND-CULTURE FUSION AREA ACCESS INSIGHTS AND

INSTRUCTIONS IN:

Purpose & Values Integration Chapter 1 Set Your Sole Purpose

and Core Values

Chapter 3 Lead the Change

Chapter 4 Organize and Operate On-
Brand
Chapter 8 Build Your Brand from the
Inside Out

Employee Experience–Customer Chapter 5 Create Culture-Changing

 Experience Integration Employee Experiences
Chapter 6 Sweat the Small Stuff

Internal Brand Alignment Chapter 7 Ignite Your

Transformation

Employee Brand Engagement Chapter 7 Ignite Your

Transformation

If you want to get the most value out of the findings from this chapter, then
take the online Brand-Culture Fusion Assessment
(http://deniseleeyohn.com/fusion-assessment/). Once you complete it,
you will receive a personalized report that shows your results and compares
them to the average of everyone who has taken the assessment as well as to
companies with similar characteristics. The report also totals your responses
into a Brand-Culture Fusion Score to represent the overall strength of brand-
culture fusion at your organization. After you’ve implemented some of the
strategies outlined in this book, take the assessment once more to see how
much progress you’ve made.

CAPTURE YOUR COMPANY’S UNIQUENESS

In this chapter, I’ve shown you how to start cultivating your desired culture by
identifying the core values that are most likely to support your brand
aspiration. But before you begin the task of transforming your current culture
to achieve your desired one, let me remind you one more time: there is no
single right or wrong culture. It might be tempting to grab on to the top values
recommended for the type of brand that best fits your company and to stop
there. But it is up to you to identify and flesh out all the specific core values
that create your company’s unique and powerful culture.
Amazon, for instance, might fall under the innovative brand type whose top
values encourage inventiveness, experimentation, and continuous
improvement—values that are shared by most brands that are innovative. But
Amazon has adapted these general values into distinctive, core ones that
capture the unique way it expects its people to embrace innovation, including
“invent and simplify” and “learn and be curious.” The other values that round
out its complete set of core values also define the distinct way Amazon
expects its people to achieve its innovations. For example, to ensure the
company delivers the highest level of customer experience, every employee
at Amazon is expected to embrace the value of “taking ownership of results.”
According to former Amazon executive John Rossman, this means everyone is
expected “to function as both owners and leaders. [CEO Jeff Bezos] wants you
to drive the business as if it were your own car, not some weekend rental.”3
This core value not only fuels Amazon’s unique innovative brand, it sets its
culture apart from others.
Like Amazon’s culture, your culture must be as distinct as your brand. It
doesn’t matter if your company culture is friendly or competitive, nurturing or
analytical. There is no single right type of culture, just as there isn’t one best
type of brand. Salesforce is known for being inspiring; Southwest Airlines, fun;
Starbucks, sincere. All three of these companies are leaders in their fields and
they got there in part by employing a unique overarching purpose and
distinctive core values that are woven together with a differentiated brand.
Following their lead, your goal should be to identify the specific cultural
elements that enable you to achieve your desired brand identity and then
deliberately cultivate them.
This chapter has laid the groundwork for you to do just that. The next
chapter is about the remaining foundational element of brand-culture fusion:
leadership.

Key Takeaways from This Chapter

• There are nine types of brands and each requires certain

organizational core values.
• You should determine your desired brand type and corresponding
values to identify your desired culture—one that is fully aligned and
integrated with your brand.
• Successful brand-culture fusion manifests itself in four areas:
purpose and values integration, employee experience–customer
experience integration, internal brand alignment, and employee
brand engagement.
• Employee brand engagement shows up in three brand- specific
ways: emotional and personal engagement with your brand,
engagement in the day-to-day, and engagement with your brand
strategy.
 CHAPTER 3

LEAD THE CHANGE

Read this chapter to learn:

• How leaders support and advance brand-culture
fusion in their communications and their actions
• How one group of employees might stall your
efforts to integrate brand and culture
• Why decisions about hiring and firing are among
the most important and visible ways you can live
out your core values

The story of how the venerable Ford Motor Company

managed to recover from the Great Recession of 2008 is
considered one of the greatest corporate turnarounds in U.S.
history. Not only did Ford recover, but it ended up thriving
and achieving heights once thought impossible for an
American carmaker.
With its sky-high gas prices and financial industry
meltdown, the Great Recession was the worst crisis to afflict
the American automobile industry in eight decades. Ford’s
stock dropped to $1 a share from its high of $57 in 20001,
and the company posted a $14.6 billion loss in 20082. Three
short years later, though, Ford posted annual profits of $6.6
billion, making it the most profitable automobile company in
the world at the time.3 Its stock price rebounded to $12–$14
per share,4 its U.S. market share increased for the third
consecutive year,5 and its sales surpassed Toyota, which
had previously knocked Ford down to the number three
automaker in the U.S.6 Most significantly, Ford achieved this
remarkable recovery without the U.S. government bailout
money that resuscitated General Motors and Chrysler.
Who was responsible for leading Ford’s recovery from its
near-death experience? Alan Mulally, the former Boeing
executive who was recruited to save the company. Mulally
led the automobile giant to develop industry-leading
products and partnerships with technology and consumer
electronics companies. He also revived the Taurus brand,
consolidated global operations into a single business unit,
and decided against the government bailout. But of all his
moves, the most instrumental to the turnaround was to lead
a brand-inspired cultural revolution inside the organization.
When Mulally arrived at the struggling company, he set
his sights on dismantling the toxic culture that had
metastasized within it. In American Icon: Alan Mulally and
the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company, Bryce Hoffman
writes about the lack of transparency, fractious business
units, and a preoccupation with self-preservation that had
come to define Ford’s culture. Meetings resembled mortal
combat, with executives regularly looking for vulnerabilities
among their peers to exploit.7
Given the state of internal affairs at the company, it’s no
wonder its brand was struggling on the outside. With its
leaders distracted by playing politics and defending turfs,
the Ford brand had become listless and unfocused. Ford’s
product lineup faltered, as it did not appeal to customers
who were looking for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
And different regions pursued different automobile
configurations, which further diluted the brand identity
around the world.8
Mulally challenged this dysfunction head on and made
championing “One Ford,” a single, clear vision for the
organization, his top priority. One Ford entailed reviving the
Ford brand by promoting, as a Fortune article explains, “the
critical ingredients that made a Ford a Ford” and then
working as one team “to create great products on a global
scale using those ingredients.”9
One Ford was grounded in the original purpose that
prompted Henry Ford to start the company—to “build a car
for the great multitude”—and inspired by a painting he had
commissioned eighty-eight years earlier. Mulally recalls
coming across the image, which was titled Opening the
Highways to All Mankind and featured in a Saturday Evening
Post advertisement. It depicted a Norman Rockwell–style
scene of a young family at the top of a grassy hill
overlooking a road filled with automobiles and the shadows
of a Ford factory in the distance. Mulally immediately
sensed its potential impact: Henry Ford’s original vision
could serve as the vision for Ford going forward. He believed
the vision would help everyone—employees, suppliers, even
stakeholders in the communities in which Ford did business
—understand “what Ford stood for, and everybody could
align themselves and their work to create an exciting,
viable, profitable, growing company . . . you can imagine the
innovation and the creativity that that compelling vision
enabled. It just unleashed everybody to deliver this plan,”
he said in a Fast Company interview. One Ford conveyed
that Ford was back in the business of “serving all around the
world a complete family of cars that are best-in-class,”
Mulally explained.10
With One Ford, Mulally was able to put the purpose and
values of the Ford brand at the center of the organization
and unify the company’s people, plans, operations, and
products to restore the brand to automotive leadership.11
He instituted weekly business performance review (BPR)
meetings that required a new level of rigor, scrutiny, and
detailed analysis from the company’s leaders. While his
executives initially bristled at Mulally’s demands and
resisted the changes, over time they began to see that the
transparency he enforced effectively united them to work
together on the company’s business and brand goals and
that the commitment he expected was not in service to
himself but to the “phenomenally powerful” Ford brand, as
he would describe it.12
He also drove them to define Ford’s “DNA,” as Derrick
Kuzak, Ford’s global product chief, called it—the “genome
that was designed to and engineered to convey quality,
innovation, and style.” Fortune reported that Ford
executives ended up identifying “300 different
characteristics—from the chirps on the electronic key fob to
the clunk of a closing door—that define the personality of its
vehicles.” These not only served as a common design
language that made it easier to create single products to
sell in all markets, but also it helped build the Ford brand.
Mulally wanted a Ford to be recognizable around the world
and to elicit a strong, visceral, emotional reaction.13
Mulally also continually hammered home adherence to
Ford’s core values of honesty and accountability, which had
been eroded in previous years. He knew that if his executive
team embraced and lived them out, the rest of the
organization would follow suit. Then they could all get back
to working together—rather than splitting into warring
territorial factions—to streamline operations, develop new
technologies, and design cars that embodied the broad
appeal the Ford brand had been built upon.14
It worked. Within a year, Ford’s top executives had
embraced the One Ford vision, and at every level of the
company managers began to emulate Mulally’s focused and
data-driven approach. Equally or more important, he
reinvigorated everyone’s energy toward the Ford brand.15 In
2010, Motor Trend named one of Ford’s newest cars, the
Ford Fusion, “Car of the Year.” Ford, the company, was
restored to profitability and Ford, the brand, to
preeminence.
Ford’s turnaround demonstrates the transformative power
of a culture steeped in an overarching purpose and
integrated with the brand. But more than that, it shows how
leadership sets the tone and pace of its adoption for the
entire organization.

DIFFERENT CULTURE, DIFFERENT OUTCOME

The leadership actions at Ford sharply contrast with how the

executives at Volkswagen tore apart their organization and
their brand. The scandal in which engineers programmed
engine systems to fool U.S. government emissions testers
ended with VW recalling hundreds of thousands of cars and
agreeing to a $14.7 billion government settlement. It also
revealed an organizational culture completely out of line
with its brand.
A former VW executive explained to me that, as the
cheating scheme came to light, American customers who
had previously banded together like “tribes” over a common
affection for the brand felt betrayed by the company’s
deceit. It was like “finding out your cousin is stealing from
you,” she noted. Diesel buyers, who consider themselves a
“unique breed” and had previously identified with VW’s
outsider brand ethos, especially felt deluded.16 The scandal
revealed that the values of honesty and humility that had
once distinguished the brand were just a facade. It turned
out the self-deprecating humor that Volkswagen’s ads
conveyed and the countercultural spirit that its car designs
embodied were not authentic representations of the
organization that produced them.
Instead the company’s leaders had fostered a culture that
was in complete opposition to the honest, transparent, and
straightforward brand image they had created. We can trace
the lack of integration of corporate culture and brand back
to Ferdinand Piëch, VW’s chief executive from 1993 until
2002, and to Martin Winterkorn, the chief executive from
2007 until his resignation after the scandal became public.
Critics charge Piëch and Winterkorn with cultivating a
culture of arrogance and superiority.
“There is a self-righteousness which led down this terrible
path,” said David Bach, a senior lecturer at the Yale School
of Management who followed the case.17 In a Financial
Times article, Arndt Ellinghorst, a former VW management
trainee, corroborated Bach’s assessment explaining, “VW
was an organization full of hubris, you know, dominate the
world and walk-on-water type of thinking.”18 When I
interviewed Ellinghorst recently, he shared that VW’s
German leaders were particularly condescending toward
American consumers. “They should be happy to get our
superior cars,” they thought.19 The disrespectful attitude
toward American consumers brewing among executives
inside the company was a contradiction to the relationship
the brand had built with them on the outside. American’s
affection for the VW brand and its role as an emblem of
freedom during the 1960s cultural revolution had helped VW
succeed as a company—if anything VW should have felt
lucky to have American customers’ brand loyalty.
Now an automotive industry analyst with Evercore ISI UK
Ltd., Ellinghorst believes that the emissions scandal was
particularly damaging to the company because it revealed
an organization-wide culture of cheating. It would have been
different, he explained, if the scandal had been contained
within the ranks of management. But because the deception
involved a multitude of people from low-level engineers to
the board of directors, it signaled something was
“fundamentally wrong” at the company.20
 VW’s leaders had set an arrogant tone throughout the
entire organization that was permissive of cutting corners
and deceiving customers—and it eventually came to a head.
That’s how leadership works. Leaders at VW shaped the
organization’s culture by the priorities they set, the
decisions they made, and the behaviors they modeled. And
in doing so, they sealed the company’s fate.
In the previous chapter, I pointed you toward your desired
culture—the culture that best aligns with and enhances your
brand identity and enables you to achieve brand-culture
fusion. The next step is to take leadership responsibility for
cultivating it. Brand-culture fusion starts with you. You
cannot delegate it to your HR or marketing leaders. They—
and everyone in your organization—need you to champion
it, so they can carry it out.
As I will show in this chapter, it’s imperative to align what
you and your top executives say and do with your desired
culture. The degree of alignment of those two factors
determines the viability of brand-culture fusion more
powerfully than any other factor. But that’s not enough:
leaders in the middle layers of your organizational hierarchy
also need to be thoroughly engaged in cultivating your
culture because of their tremendous influence on the rest of
your workforce. I’ll also shine a light on the importance of
leadership decisions about people—such as hiring, firing,
and promoting them—in laying the groundwork for brand-
culture fusion. It all starts with the example you set for
others with your words and your actions.

COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE

“Aharai!” is the motto Israeli military officers use when

leading their forces into combat. The battle cry means
“follow me” and it reflects a doctrine that all great leaders
embrace. Great leaders—the ones praised in history books,
admired by colleagues, and followed by many—know that
leadership is the practice of going first and setting an
example. I’ve seen great business leaders live out this
doctrine by casting a vision and then showing others what it
looks like to pursue it with drive and determination.
“Leadership is about changing reality in some way,”
explains Eduardo Braun, author of People First Leadership,
“so setting the vision is explicitly recognizing that you can
change reality, and clearly stating in which ways you want
to do so.”21 He outlines three levels in which leaders
communicate their vision. The first level involves
communicating ideas and information, the stuff of day-to-
day business operations. The second level involves
communicating emotions—empathizing with and inspiring
others. And the third level involves communicating with
concrete behaviors—“practicing what you preach, walking
the talk, and delivering on your promises.”22
Although strong communication is well-recognized as the
key to great leadership,* most business leaders don’t
communicate well. At least that’s what their employees say.
According to talent management firm Aon Hewitt, only 46
percent of employees feel management communicates
effectively.23 And human resources firm Towers Perrin has
found that just over half (51 percent) of employees believed
that their leaders generally tell them the truth.24 These
findings are not entirely surprising if you consider that most
leaders don’t receive formal training in communications, so
often they don’t know what to say or how to say it in a way
that effectively engages their people.
The keys to successful leadership communication—
especially as you are trying to cultivate a culture that aligns
and integrates with your brand identity—are consistency,
simplicity, storytelling, and relevance.
 Consistency. When it comes to cultivating your desired
culture and weaving it into the daily ethos at your company,
you must first consistently and relentlessly communicate
your company’s overarching purpose and core values and
why they’re important. It’s not enough to talk about these
foundational elements of your culture when they’re first
being set or on an annual basis. You must regularly weave
messages about your purpose and values into your
presentations, memos, and conversations with employees
and other stakeholders. You may tire of talking about the
same topics over and over again or think you’re being
repetitive, but studies have shown repetition and
consistency are critical to comprehension and traction.

Simplicity. Strive to make your communications simple

and accessible. Some leaders try to be charismatic or come
across as impressive whenever they speak or share
information, so they get caught up in conveying a message
that sounds exciting or that is full or jargon or complex
terms instead of one that has substance and can be easily
understood by everyone. A Morgan Stanley analyst once
noted, “One of Alan Mulally’s greatest skills was his
consistent communication of the goals and the progress
made in a strikingly simple way that inspired the entire
organization from board down to factory line worker.”25
Keep your communication as simple and straightforward as
possible—but that doesn’t mean you have to “dumb it
down” or make it boring. Mulally did neither.

Storytelling. Illustrate your message with engaging

stories. Giving examples and telling stories helps people
relate to abstract ideas like culture and values. For example,
stories about great successes achieved in the face of great
odds or of people who have pushed through challenges will
cultivate values like perseverance and performance.
Storytelling creates high levels of interest and feelings of
authenticity—and a compelling narrative gets people to see
themselves in the story so they become personally
engaged.

Relevance. Make your communications relevant to your

organization’s overarching purpose and core values.
Carefully choose what to talk about because it can speak
volumes about the kind of culture you’re trying to cultivate.
If your desired culture is one that is familial and casual,
you’ll want to talk about your employees in a personal way
and reference the things going on in their lives outside of
work. If you’re seeking to cultivate a culture of innovation
and creativity at your organization, you can infuse your
communications with references to cutting-edge ideas and
iconic geniuses. You should also align the methods you use
to communicate with the culture you want to promote. If
you want to cultivate a culture of experimentation, try new
communication channels and technology. If one of your core
values is “adding the personal touch,” send handwritten
notes to your people.

KEYS TO EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION:

Consistent
Simple
Accessible
Story-driven
Relevant

Leadership communication is as much about listening as

it is about talking. When Melissa Daimler headed the global
learning and organizational development team at Twitter,
she wrote a piece for the Harvard Business Review outlining
three levels of listening:
 1. Internal listening—pretending to listen to the other
person but only focusing on your own thoughts,
worries, and priorities
2. Focused listening—focusing on the other person but
still not fully connecting with him or her
3. 360 listening—listening not only to what the other
person is saying, but how they’re saying it and what
they’re not saying

Daimler believes 360 listening is “where the magic

happens. . . . There’s energy. There’s the reminder of what’s
possible if we focus on what the other person has to say.”26
By truly engaging with your employees with 360 listening,
you can enroll them in your desired culture as much as you
can by speaking with consistency, simplicity, storytelling,
and relevance.
“Communication is responsible for transmitting the DNA
of the company’s culture,” Braun sums up in People First
Leadership. “Communication connects each member of the
corporate body so they can trust each other and work
toward the same vision.”27 But however important
communication is to cultivating your desired culture, your
work can’t end there. As a leader, you must deliver on and
embody your desired culture in your actions and decisions.

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS

What you say matters, but just as important, what you do

provides models of action for your people and telegraphs
how committed you are to aligning your culture with your
brand. As a leader, you must be a paragon of your desired
culture. In a study by the American Management
Association and Institute for Corporate Productivity, 61
percent of managers said that actions by leaders were the
most likely to influence the behavior of others in the
organization. Ann Rhoades, former head of people for
Southwest Airlines, believes leaders should “leverage [this]
very persistent tendency of employees to follow the
leader.”28
Alan Mulally certainly did. American Icon author Hoffman
describes how he used his behaviors to promote a more
open, unified culture at Ford. At the weekly BPR meetings
with his executive team, for example, he introduced a color
coding system for their reports that used colors to indicate
the status of every program or project—green for those that
were on track or ahead of schedule, yellow for those at risk
with potential issues or concerns, and red for those that
were behind schedule or off-target. The idea was to make it
easy to track changes in status and pinpoint problems.
Consistent with Ford’s core values of honesty and
transparency, he assured his team that the meetings were a
safe environment where they could raise problems for the
group to work on together. Nonetheless, at the beginning,
his executives insisted on labeling all their charts green for
weeks.29
American Icon author Hoffman describes how Mark Fields,
president of Ford’s U.S. business at the time, finally decided
to test Mulally’s words of assurance. Hoffman says that
Fields thought “somebody has to figure out if this guy is for
real.” At the next meeting, Fields began his presentation
with some preliminary data and then moved on to a chart
that showed a new product launch was delayed; it was
marked with a red flag. He paused and waited in silence,
along with the rest of attendees, expecting to get chewed
out and possibly fired for admitting a problem. That’s what
would have happened under previous leadership. Instead,
Mulally started clapping and commended him for the “great
visibility” he shared. Turning to the rest of the group, Mulally
then asked who could help Fields address the problem and
facilitated a discussion among the group that identified
potential solutions. The meeting served as a turning point
for Mulally and his people. They learned he was true to his
word.30
Sometimes even a leader’s seemingly small actions speak
volumes. After Marvin Ellison took on the task of turning
around JCPenney in August 2015, he chose to wear clothes
bought at the company’s stores, signaling to employees,
customers, and the public at large a strong endorsement of
the brand’s quality and style.31 Moreover, to reinforce the
solidarity that the company would need to pull off such a
dramatic turnaround, he instituted a rule requiring all
executives to wear JCPenney–made clothes whenever they
visit the stores.32
While actions—big and small—speak louder than words
for everyone but especially for leaders, a lack of action can
be just as powerful. You can’t expect your employees to act
in ways that you don’t or won’t.
Once, while I was facilitating a brand engagement session
for a client, one of the employees pulled me aside during a
break. I had just taken the group through an exercise to
reinforce safety as the primary core value for the company.
The employee told me he appreciated the focus on safety
but he had a favor to ask: could I talk to the CEO about his
personal engagement in safety training sessions—or rather,
the lack of it. You see, over the years the CEO had never
once attended a safety session, and his absence was
noticed by employees, who took it to mean that the training
was unimportant. It didn’t matter that the CEO had declared
safety as a core value and made it part of the company’s
tagline, nor that he had hired a dedicated safety trainer or
built the very facility we were meeting at exclusively to be
used for onsite safety training. Without walking the talk and
making safety training sessions a priority on his calendar,
his credibility had been shot.
 ENGAGE EVERY LEADER

While it’s essential that top leaders talk and walk when it
comes to communicating and living out the core values of
the company, you won’t succeed unless every person in a
leadership role, no matter their level, is on board.
Organization-wide alignment is critical to integrating your
culture and brand. Executives at the top of an organization
must hold accountable their direct reports for cultivating the
desired culture, those managers in turn must do the same
for theirs, and so on. No managerial position is too small or
too remote to ignore the impact it has on the attitude and
behaviors of employees around it.
The adage “people leave managers, not companies”
speaks to the central relationship between direct manager
and employee—particularly for frontline employees who
rarely interact with their organization’s top executives.
Leaders in the middle layers of an organization’s hierarchy,
like department managers, store managers, and program
leaders, wield the most influence on an employee’s daily
experience and therefore are a critical group in any culture
transformation effort.
But middle managers in many organizations are not
engaged to the degree that higher-level leaders are. Aon
Hewitt found that in companies rated as “best employers,”
engagement steadily declined, as you’d expect, along with
the level of responsibility of the person surveyed—that is,
top leaders were the most engaged, team members were
the least, and in between there was a linear correlation
going down through the organization. But at all other
companies, there was sharp drop-off in engagement at the
middle management and team leader level.33 Why the drop-
off?
Most often middle managers are burdened with day-to-
day operations that make it challenging for them to focus on
tasks that may seem longer-term or less defined.
Sometimes top leaders view middle managers as employees
to influence rather than as the powerful influencers that
they are, so they don’t engage them properly. When it
comes to cultivating culture, these are missed opportunities
since mid- and lower-level managers are uniquely positioned
to show employees what the organization really values,
which attitudes and behaviors are on-brand, and why they
and their actions matter.
“Managers who buy into the vision of the company can
make daily decisions that guide the firm in the right
direction,” observe business school professors George
Serafeim and Claudine Gartenberg in an article for Harvard
Business Review. They conclude, “[Purpose] only matters if
it is implemented in conjunction with clear, concise direction
from top management and in such a way that the middle
layer within the firm is fully bought in.”34 If you don’t
engage, empower, and equip this management layer to
cultivate the desired culture as much as you do with their
higher-level counterparts, your efforts to align and integrate
brand and culture are likely to be stalled by what one of my
clients called the “frozen middle.”
This client’s company had hired me to help it achieve
more traction on its diversity and inclusion (D&I) efforts and
more tangible improvements in the results these efforts
produced. At the very top levels of the organization, support
for the D&I efforts was clearly evident: The CEO set it as a
top priority and, together with the executive team, actively
championed it in his communications. Grassroots support
was also strong, with employees across the company
participating in affinity groups, forums, and trainings
dedicated to advancing D&I in the company.
Despite all that forward movement, middle management
had been left behind. It was particularly hard for middle
managers at the company, who were predominantly white
males, to internalize the value of D&I. Even those who
understood it intellectually didn’t understand how to
operationalize those values on a daily basis. This “frozen
middle” was holding the company back from tapping into
the innovation and fresh thinking that greater D&I would
deliver—and that, in turn, was limiting the company’s ability
to address the changing landscape in which its brand
operated.
To thaw this frozen middle, we had to think about, and
then convey, the value of D&I from a middle manager’s
perspective. First, we broke down for them the business
case for D&I and other data that tied D&I to the results the
managers were accountable for. To win their hearts and
motivate them emotionally, we assembled inspiring,
relevant success stories from their peers. And to instruct
them on how to embed D&I into their daily operating
activities and reap its benefits, we offered them tools such
as diversity action plans. By increasing adoption of D&I in
this middle tier of management, we were able to shift
attitudes and generate increased momentum for D&I among
all levels at the company. Lower-level employees were
informed and affirmed by the role modeling they
experienced from their managers, and higher-level
executives became even more engaged when they started
to see improved results in their units. Every leader at every
level is a link in the leadership chain that connects culture
to results.

REINFORCE YOUR CULTURE WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE

DECISIONS

One reason it’s critical to empower leaders at all levels to

cultivate your desired culture is that leaders are responsible
for the most important tasks in any organization: hiring,
firing, and promoting employees. People decisions are
perhaps the most visible way leaders can build their culture
and align it with the company’s brand identity.
When it comes to hiring employees, companies that are
committed to cultivating and maintaining their desired
culture don’t simply use their core values to screen potential
employees—they prioritize them. QuikTrip, a $9 billion
regional chain of convenience stores in the U.S., relies
heavily on the company’s core values such as “work with
teams to constantly improve” and “encourage continuous
self-improvement” in its recruiting efforts.35 But since, as a
Harvard Business Review article observes, it’s difficult to
accurately and fairly assess a person on these intangible
dimensions, the company puts applicants through “a
rigorous, structured screening process” that includes
administering a personality assessment and asking each
interview question in several different ways. They’ve found
that candidates can’t game the system, and the test reveals
their true fit with QuikTrip’s values.36
To make core values a critical element of every hiring
decision, you must first make it a leadership responsibility.
Former Southwest Airlines executive Ann Rhoades explains,
“Everyone in leadership must understand that this step,
perhaps more than any other, is a strategic business
responsibility, not an HR function. This sense of
responsibility needs to permeate everyone’s consciousness
and be constantly reinforced by leaders.” In her book Built
on Values, she shares how one organization went so far as
to make hiring and retaining “A players” part of the
calculation for leaders’ bonuses. Doing so produced clear
and significant benefits—employee turnover fell
dramatically while customer satisfaction rose just as
considerably.37
When you rely on your core values to make choices about
not only whom to hire, but also whom to fire and promote,
you make sure the right people are on your bus—and you
send a powerful message to your organization about the
importance of its values.
Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, is known for having
executed “public hangings,” the term he uses to explicitly
call out executives who do not align with the company’s
values. In a Fortune article, Welch and his wife and business
partner, Suzy Welch, explain, “If your company’s culture is
to mean anything, you have to hang—publicly—those in
your midst who would destroy it.” They go on to explain that
leaders should classify their people into one of four
categories and decide their fates based on the classification:

• Employees who produce good results and behave in

ways that align with your company’s values should
be promoted.
• Employees who are not a fit with your company’s
values and perform poorly should be fired.
• Employees whose behavior aligns with your
company’s values, but whose performance is
mediocre deserve a second chance and coaching.
• Employees whose actions don’t align with your
company’s values but who produce great results
should be let go.38

The Welches believe that the employees who most threaten

their organizations—who most undermine the culture of the
company—are those in the fourth category. And yet
managers typically give employees in this category a pass
because of their great performance. Keeping these
employees, they argue, sends “a big fat message to every
other employee: Our company’s values are a joke.” The
Welches’ language may be harsh, but it describes spot-on
why a leader’s decisions about people are critical. “‘Values
drift’ is pervasive in companies of every ilk,” they write.
“Employees either don’t know their organization’s values, or
they know that practicing them is optional. Either way the
result is vulnerability to attack from inside and out.”39
The hiring and firing decisions you and your fellow leaders
make may be the ultimate litmus tests for the strength of
leadership commitment to cultivating your desired culture.

BRAND-CULTURE FUSION STARTS WITH YOU

“In order to be a successful leader in the twenty-first

century,” writes Braun, summing up his findings from
hundreds of interviews with some of the world’s most
respected leaders, “one must lead through emotion, which
means fostering a strong culture. That is the lesson I have
learned.”40
Leadership is critical to a thriving culture. But leadership
is even more important if you want to transform that culture
either because your current one is not serving the company
well or because it has never been shaped or guided in a
deliberate way in the first place. Building an internal culture
that is aligned and integrated with your external brand,
therefore, starts with you. You must prioritize brand-culture
fusion and take responsibility for achieving it. You can’t take
it for granted, you can’t delegate it, and you can’t take a
day off from it.
A leader functions like a rocket booster for the rest of the
company. You provide the main thrust to lift the organization
up and propel it toward brand-culture fusion. Without that
initial boost, the company would have no chance of reaching
its goal. Eventually, though, the organization develops its
own power and takes off to even greater heights—but you
must equip and empower it to soar. Part 2 shows you how to
do so by laying out the five key strategies for achieving
brand-culture fusion.
 Key Takeaways from This Chapter:

• The integration of culture and brand is a key

leadership responsibility—your responsibility.
• You must consistently communicate the purpose
and values of your organization and why they’re
important, and do it in ways that reinforce their
distinct characteristics.
• Small decisions and behaviors telegraph to your
organization the strength of your commitment to
brand-culture fusion, so model behaviors you
want embraced organization-wide.
• Your efforts to integrate brand and culture are
likely to be stalled by the “frozen middle”; ensure
middle managers are just as engaged and
empowered as top leaders to cultivate culture.
• Rely on your core values when making decisions
about whom to hire, fire, and promote.
 PART 2

FIVE STRATEGIES TO
ACHIEVE BRAND-CULTURE
FUSION

The roadmap for your journey to brand-culture fusion

comprises strategies to nurture your desired culture by
infusing it with your brand, or vice versa.
 CHAPTER 4

ORGANIZE AND OPERATE ON-BRAND

Read this chapter to learn:

• Why your culture must be operationalized
throughout your organizational design and
operations
• How to use design thinking to match your
organizational design to your desired culture
• How to use your brand purpose and core values
to shape operations

When the leaders at Adobe, the maker of Photoshop and

other popular software, took an honest look at their
company a couple of years ago, they realized a deficit in its
customer service and support. The company had
experienced great success in a highly competitive market
because it employed extremely creative people and actively
nurtured their growth and development—which led them to
produce superior products. But since Adobe products were
originally sold almost entirely through channel partners like
computer manufacturers and retailers, developing a strong
support function to directly help their customers had not
been the company’s top priority.
As their business model evolved to include more direct-to-
customer sales, their brand identity had to evolve too:
Adobe needed to be known not just for its excellent
products and how they enable creativity, but also for
providing excellent customer support. To transform their
brand, they had to inject more customer-focused thinking
into of every one of their employees, regardless of role.
Senior vice president Donna Morris explained, “We realized
we needed to be as great to work with as we are to work for.
That required cultural change.”1
Morris and her colleagues started by combining
previously disconnected parts of the company into single
entities. First, they married the support functions for
personal and enterprise products, which had previously
operated independently, into one unit. Doing so produced a
more holistic view of customers throughout the company.2
Second, they created a new department—a combined
customer and employee experience organization—bringing
together the support people on the front lines of helping
customers with the HR team responsible for supporting
employees. In her new role leading customer and employee
experience, Morris’ responsibility is to ensure everyone—
employees and customers—has a positive experience with
Adobe. At the time of the change she explained, “[My role]
is making sure people are successful and we grow our
relationship with them. If they’re an employee, that means
attracting and developing them and helping them grow. If
it’s a customer, it’s the same thing.”3 The intent was that
this new department would be able to leverage the
company’s expertise in creating great experiences for
employees to produce excellent experiences for customers
as well.
Finally, as Adobe transitioned to a cloud-based
subscription model, it needed a more agile and adaptive
workforce culture to meet the new needs of its customers.
Morris and her colleagues assessed the number of Adobe
work locations and reduced them from eighty to sixty-eight.
They found that having so many offices had added
complexity to the way Adobe employees worked and
hindered its desired culture. Consolidating geographically,
she said, “was a very deliberate decision to ensure that our
employees had the opportunity to work together in close
proximity.”4

FROM TALKING ABOUT CULTURE TO

OPERATIONALIZING IT

Adobe’s leaders approach culture change as a strategic

business change. Most business leaders don’t. Research
from Korn Ferry, an executive search and recruiting firm,
reports that while 72 percent of executives agree that
culture is “extremely important” to organizational
performance, only 32 percent say their culture aligns with
their business strategy.5
That disconnect might be explained by the research
conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Aspen Institute,
which shows that a vast majority of executives see their
core values—and by extension, their culture—affecting only
their corporate reputation and their employee recruitment
and retention efforts. Far fewer believe that values and
culture influence their organization’s adaptability to
changing conditions, operational efficiency and productivity,
risk management, and growth in revenues and earnings.6
It’s a chicken-or-the-egg problem. If business leaders
don’t see how culture impacts business performance, then
they don’t operationalize—that is, put into action and use—
their core values throughout their business and, therefore,
they don’t see any definitive results from them. The
researchers conclude, “The next set of imperatives is for
business leaders to move from talking about values and
viewing them defensively to embracing them in order to
drive corporate performance and change.”7
 In other words, it’s not enough to set an overarching
purpose and core values for your organization without
considering how you are actually going to pursue them:

• How does your purpose stretch your organization?

• What operational changes are needed to enable
employees to live your values?
• How do your people need to work together
differently?
• What must your organization start or stop doing to
make your purpose and values a core part of the way
you do business?

To tap the full value and growth-creating potential of your

desired culture—one that is fully aligned with your brand—
you must operationalize it through strategy (the company’s
business objectives and budgets), management (its
leadership responsibilities and support), communication (its
internal and external messages), employee experience (its
daily employee interactions), organization (its structure),
and operations (its systems.) These last two areas—(1) your
organizational design: the units, hierarchy, and roles in your
organization; and (2) your operations: the different business
functions and day-to-day processes and practices at your
company—are critically important because they undergird
all the others. If your organizational design and your
operations aren’t supporting and advancing your desired
culture and brand, they’re probably detracting from it. You
send mixed messages and dilute efforts by not aligning the
two.
That’s what this chapter is about. I’ll explain why your
desired culture cannot be cultivated only through human
resources efforts—you must operationalize it. I will show you
how to apply design thinking to match your organizational
design to your desired culture and will share a range of
examples that prove the effectiveness of doing so. Then I’ll
discuss the importance of your operations on culture and
show how Brazilian personal care company Natura
redesigned its processes to affirm and advance its
overarching purpose and core values. I’ll close the chapter
by explaining how you can unify your people and processes
by identifying, assessing, and optimizing key brand
touchpoints using a tool I call the Brand Touchpoint Wheel.
With these insights and methods, you’ll be equipped to lead
a successful culture change.

DESIGN YOUR ORGANIZATION DELIBERATELY

The culture at Southwest Airlines is widely admired, but

what few people realize is that the company’s agile,
efficient, and fun culture is rooted in a unique organizational
design. This design features a high managers-per-employee
ratio, distributed leadership, and a boundary-spanner role
(responsible for bringing together information from different
operating units of the business).8
In fact, writing in The Southwest Airlines Way, Brandeis
University professor Jody Hoffer Gittell attributes
Southwest’s success largely to the “organizational
relationships” the company cultivates between managers
and frontline employees, between employees themselves,
and with outside parties. Southwest sees these relationships
“as the foundation of competitive advantage, through good
times and bad,” Gittell reports. “They see the quality of
these relationships not as a success factor, but as the most
essential success factor.”9 Southwest shows that by
developing and implementing a distinct organizational
design, you can produce a distinct organizational culture.
But most business leaders aren’t deliberately designing
their organizations these days.
 Executive coach Gill Corkindale observes in the Harvard
Business Review that organizations are being forced to
rethink their strategies and change the way they operate
more quickly and frequently, leading them to lose sight of
the big picture. In turn, Corkindale writes, this “can result in
lots of piecemeal change initiatives rather than looking at
the overall organizational design. I rarely come across
leaders who advocate wholesale organizational redesign or
use it as a way to support their people and business.”10
To reclaim control over your organization and implement
a design that invigorates employees and builds distinctive
capabilities, the consulting firm Strategy& recommends
adhering to several design principles. These include,
“Declare amnesty from the past”—that is, reflect on your
desired outcome instead of getting stuck in your current
state. Then set a new “bold direction” and “make the most
of top talent”—design positions to optimize the strengths of
the people who will occupy them. The following three
principles, in particular, address how your design choices
can facilitate brand-culture alignment and integration:

Benchmark sparingly, if at all. Instead of looking for

best practices from other organizations, design your
organization to leverage its unique capabilities. There are
strengths that only your organization has which produce
results that others can’t match. They’re probably the source
of whatever brand advantage you’ve enjoyed to date.
Design your organization to emphasize these.

Fit your company purpose. Design the spans of control

and layers of management to reflect your strategy, desired
differentiation, and vision. Your organizational design should
help your organization do the kind of work that is necessary
to pursue its purpose.
 Accentuate the informal. Acknowledge the intangible
ways people think, feel, communicate, and act. In other
words, consider how your existing organizational design has
produced the core values that are currently being lived out,
and then develop a new design that promotes the ones that
correspond to your desired brand type and discourages the
ones you want to change.11

Applying these design principles will ensure you don’t

simply design your organization in a way that’s typical in
your industry or produce a merely functional organization. It
will also help you avoid a common mistake leaders make:
assuming that an organizational design that has worked for
them at one company will work in another one.
Eddie Lambert, who is CEO of Sears Holdings at the time
I’m writing this, learned this lesson the hard way when he
decentralized the management of the Sears and Kmart
organizations and created over thirty silos of business lines
such as women’s wear, shoes, and home furnishings, each
with its own leadership and board of directors. A New York
Times article chronicling the downfall of the company
explained that this strategy is sometimes used at hedge
funds, the kinds of firms Lambert had managed previously.
But while the organizational design that emphasizes
intracompany competition worked brilliantly in Lambert’s
financial firms, it was a complete disaster in a department
store company where cross-functional cooperation and a
collaborative culture are required to create a seamless
customer experience. The organizational design led to
infighting among department heads and managers who
would “tell their sales staff not to help customers in
adjacent sections, even if someone asked for help.” The
article suggests it was one of the reasons why the company
was headed toward bankruptcy.12
Your goal should be an organization that’s designed
specifically to cultivate your desired culture—not someone’s
else—so that you can ultimately achieve brand-culture
fusion. With this goal in mind, consider how you might use
the three primary elements of organizational design:
structure, standards, and roles.

Organizational Structure

The structure of your organization—its hierarchy, divisions,

and organizing logic—determines who works together and
how. You can use organizational structure to facilitate the
relationships that will promote your desired culture and
advance the priorities that you want your culture to embody.
The renowned Cleveland Clinic uses a particular
organizational structure to support and advance its desired
culture and brand. It is organized into different specialty
centers focused on diseases such as diabetes, cardiac care,
etc. Harvard Business School professor Frances X. Frei
explains that this structure fits the unique demands of the
organization. Because Cleveland Clinic attracts the most
severely afflicted patients, its doctors operate in challenging
environments that require innovative solutions. She
observes, “Organizing into disease centers rather than
narrower, more traditional lines of specialization (such as
kidneys or blood) sets the stage for cross-disciplinary
collaboration—and thus for novel perspectives—within those
centers.”13

Organizational Standards

Organizational standards—rules that are applied company-

wide when forming departments, units, work groups, or
teams—are another element of design that can help you
create an organization that supports your desired culture.
For example, the leaders of Google implemented “the rule
of seven” throughout the company. In How Google Works,
former CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of products
Jonathan Rosenberg explain that, when designing their
organization, they wanted to create an environment where
“smart creatives” (multidimensional workers who have
technical expertise, business savvy, and creative flair) could
succeed. Knowing that smart creatives are oriented to
getting things done and need direct access to decision-
makers, Schmidt and Rosenberg encouraged managers to
have a minimum of seven direct reports—instead of adding
layers between smart creatives and decision-makers—to
produce less managerial oversight and more employee
freedom, the kind that allows smart creatives to thrive.14
Thus, the standard or organizational “rule of seven” was
born at Google.

Organizational Roles

When designing your organization, you should also carefully

consider how creating certain roles can advance your
desired culture. The unique role held by Donna Morris, who
led the cultural transformation at Adobe described at the
beginning of this chapter, serves as an example of how this
element of organizational design can be used strategically.
In her newly combined role as head of both the company’s
customer experience team and its human resources and
facilities teams, Morris helps to cultivate a culture in which
customer-focused thinking is in the DNA of every
employee.15
Another example of a unique role comes from LinkedIn.
There, “Culture Champions” are employees who volunteer
to promote the company’s culture and ensure employees
have a great experience on a daily basis. The company’s
250 Culture Champions, who are distributed across thirty
offices worldwide, organize an average of forty-eight
employee events a year, including “InDays,” the days given
to employees each month to “invest in themselves, the
company and the world.”16 LinkedIn’s communications
leader, Nicole Leverich, explained to me that since, at its
highest level, the company’s brand stands for creating
opportunities, it “sure as heck better create amazing
professional opportunities for its employees. We should be
at the forefront of benefits, learning, training. . . . Otherwise,
we’re not walking the walk.”17 Because culture and brand
must be so tightly intertwined at LinkedIn, the role of a
Culture Champion is a critical element of its organizational
design.
San Diego Regional Airport Authority created a new role
to support its desired culture by combining responsibilities
historically segregated into marketing and human resources
departments. Jeff Lindeman served as the head of the
Vision, Voice, and Engagement department and the Talent,
Culture, and Capability department for the public agency,
which manages the day-to-day operations of San Diego
International Airport. His role facilitated the transformation
the organization undertook in 2016. It promoted the “Let’s
Go” campaign to position the airport externally as an
international gateway and improve its competitiveness by
creating a unified, seemingly larger identity. “Let’s Go” was
also used internally to rally the organization and help
employees embrace the idea that the Airport Authority was
a global competitor, not just a county or regional agency,
and make decisions consistent with that identity. Lindeman
told me, “The campaign became a catalyst inside the
organization for being better.”18 The success of the
campaign can be attributed in part to Lindeman’s role which
uniquely joined external and internal efforts.
Structure, standards, and roles are the primary elements to
consider when you design or redesign your organization.
Other design building blocks include information flows (how
the organization processes and shares data and knowledge),
decision rights and accountabilities (who makes what
decisions and who has what responsibilities), networks (how
people connect and work together outside the formal
organization chart), and norms (what behaviors and actions
are expected). All of these are variables for you to use to set
the right design for your organization.
Once you have an initial design draft of your organization,
examine it for redundancies, making sure responsibilities
are allocated exclusively to the person or teams best suited
to fulfill them. Determine if the design is flexible enough to
evolve and adapt as your culture and brand do. Test it for
feasibility—does the design take into account constraints
that are out of your control (e.g., available technology)?
Make certain that responsibility for key metrics of brand
performance and culture health (e.g., customer and
employee retention, Net Promoter Score, and employee
engagement) are shared across the organization, as they
should be.
Most importantly, determine if your design is a good fit
with your culture—does the design promote your
overarching purpose, core values, and desired culture?
Think about how your employees’ ability and proclivity to
live out your purpose and values is cultivated or curtailed by
your organization design. For example, if you want a culture
that is less paternalistic and operates more democratically,
does the hierarchy in your organizational structure reflect
that? Or if your purpose is about inspiring people to be more
creative, do you hinder that by restricting creative
development to a single department?
 MARKETING & HUMAN RESOURCES:
COLLABORATION, NOT COMPETITION

One aspect of organizational design deserves

special attention: the relationship between
marketing and human resources departments.
Hilton Barbour, partner at Toronto-based consulting
firm Global Brand Leaders, writes about potential
conflicts between the two groups. In a piece
entitled “HR versus Marketing—The Next C-Suite
Confrontation,” he predicts a battle between the
two functions over employees. “If creating a world-
class brand experience remains the remit of CMO’s,
and without fully-engaged employees that’s not
possible, it stands to reason that employee
experience and engagement should fall under that
remit too.” He recognizes though that, as a
“marketing veteran,” he is biased, so his final
recommendation is to marry marketing and human
resources.19

Consider the arrangement at Umpqua, a regional

bank in the Northwest, that Tyler Laird-Magee
describes in her doctoral thesis. The senior officers
for Cultural Enhancement (human resources) and
Creative Strategies (marketing) have their corner
offices at either end of the executive floor and their
employees work side-by-side in between.20

The Cultural Enhancement head explains, “It’s

really not two different departments because brand
is culture and culture is brand. . . . We see
ourselves as being on the same team—we share
work, we share ideas.” And the head of Creative
Strategies adds, “I need and have to support what
she [the head of Cultural Enhancement] is doing
 and vice versa since we are really playing off of
each other. What I do helps her recruit really great
people. What I do creates reputation, but what she
does is deliver to that customer so that word of
mouth is there. . . . There are no dotted lines. . . .
We’re constantly in each other’s space.” Laird-
Magee observes, “To a visitor it is impossible to
know where one department ends and the other
begins.”21

Your culture is like a vine that requires a trellis to provide

support and structure to grow in the right direction. The
right organizational design provides that trellis.

ALIGN YOUR “WHAT” WITH YOUR “WHY” AND “HOW”

When it comes to fully integrating and aligning your culture

and brand, how you run your organization is just as
important as how you design it. Unfortunately, when most
companies take on the task of operationalizing culture, they
usually only consider changes to human resources
processes such as recruiting, on-boarding, training, and
rewarding employees. These processes are indeed critical to
cultivating the culture you desire. But your core operations
—that is, your company’s business functions and day-to-day
processes and practices—also help create the environment
in which your desired culture can thrive and align with your
brand identity.
But oftentimes, the processes and practices that
employees engage in on a regular basis—planning,
budgeting, sales, fulfillment, service, etc.—are the very ones
that prohibit employees from executing on your core values.
For example, mandating extensive budget and project
approval processes will prevent a company from cultivating
a less risk-averse culture. Insisting on detailed strategic
planning will prevent a company from cultivating an agile
culture.
But if you craft them the right way, your operations can
help your organization cultivate the right culture. For
example, if you want to undergird your performance brand
identity with a more competitive organizational culture, give
employees access to the company’s key performance
metrics and competitive intelligence and enroll them in a
process of regularly engaging with that information. If you
want to encourage a culture of experimentation to align
with an identity as an innovative brand, develop a process
for rapid prototyping.
When assessing the alignment of your company’s current
operations with your desired culture, consider the following:
what do your product processes (e.g., designing,
engineering, manufacturing, delivering, and servicing
products) convey about your culture? That it is agile,
original, or predictable? How about your sales process (e.g.,
goal-setting, prospecting and qualifying customers, closing
deals, attribution), or your annual planning and budgeting
process? If these processes are not in sync with where you
want to take your culture—that is, if they don’t help align
your culture with your brand—then it’s time for some
process reengineering.
Culture-aligned operations can be achieved at any
degree. On the more tactical end of the continuum, consider
how Marvin Ellison instituted “Project Simple” as part of his
efforts to turnaround JCPenney. To enable store employees
to become more customer-service oriented, he reduced the
number of emails managers get22 and sent weekly
instructions that streamlined what action items managers
had to tackle so they could spend more time with customers
rather than reviewing and filling out tons of paperwork.23
 At a more strategic level, consider how Brazilian
corporation Natura used new innovation processes to
promote its desired culture. Antonio Luiz da Cunha Seabra
founded Natura in a garage in Sao Paolo in 1969, and the
company has since become a $4 billion global beauty care
brand by operating as a different kind of company. Through
the years, the company had been recognized as an
innovation leader, including being named the eighth most
innovative company in the world by Forbes magazine in
2011.24
But starting in the mid-2000s, Natura faced intense
competition from around the world and it determined it
needed to fortify its innovative brand identity. So the
company leaders decided to double down on innovation in
its strategy and culture. They renewed emphasis on
innovation as a core capability and primary approach to
product development and added it as one of their culture
drivers, defining it as “being entrepreneurial, taking the
lead, doing what has never been done and assuming the
risks.”25
To bring about this culture of innovation, Natura leaders
revised many of the company’s innovation processes and
introduced new ones. They revamped their product
development process to develop new competencies,
integrating what they call a “Technology Funnel” to identify
new materials and alternative methodologies for product
testing and for measuring impact on the environment, with
an “Innovation Funnel” to identify customer needs and
market opportunities. They also implemented a new
portfolio management process, which put more emphasis on
analyzing the intangible value of new products26, and they
created new input, processing, and output metrics to assess
the effectiveness of these new processes.27 These changes
required employees to embrace more innovative actions
and decision-making, and as a result, they also embraced a
more innovative mindset.
Between 2007 and 2011, Natura increased revenues from
3 billion to 5 billion Brazilian Real.28 Three of its managers
concluded in a case study showcasing the company that
Natura achieved its remarkable results because it had
adopted the view that innovation was “a complex process
permeating all of the company, strongly influenced by
internal processes and corporate culture.”29
Their last observation makes an important point about
the interplay between process change and culture change.
So far I’ve described the role that operations can play in
advancing culture, but the relationship between the two is
less cause-and-effect and more symbiotic. Operations
impacts culture by shaping how people work, and culture
impacts operations by making that work effective and
efficient. When aligned and integrated, operations and
culture work together in a virtuous cycle that produces your
desired business and brand outcomes.

INSPECT YOUR BRAND TOUCHPOINTS

One way to identify which organizational areas and which

operational processes and practices are ripe for cultural
transformation is to work on brand touchpoints.
Brand touchpoints are ways that people in the outside
world come into contact with your brand. Some touchpoints
can be a single element, such as a product or a piece of
communication; other touchpoints are interactions or
experiences that combine multiple elements, such as the
installation of equipment or participation in a customer
event. Touchpoints exist throughout the entire customer
journey, from discovery (an email invitation, an in-store
display, or a business card) to purchase (a salesperson at
the register, a website check-out process, an invoice), to
use (a button on a device, a project plan, a mobile app), and
to service and support (a call center agent, the furniture in a
waiting room, a loyalty program).
Most organizations have hundreds of brand touchpoints.
For example, when I headed brand and strategy at Sony’s
electronics company, we identified over 240 brand
touchpoints, not including all the different products we
offered. A FedEx research project found more than 200
customer touchpoints, and John Deere Financial discovered
529 spanning multiple product lines.30
It’s quite common to overlook or underestimate how
back-office functions or employees in non-customer-facing
roles affect brand touchpoints. A large construction
company realized that its stringent contractor invoicing
process was a touchpoint that directly affected building
quality issues. When it switched to a shorter payment
schedule and required contractors to fill out fewer forms, it
began to attract better contractors, who in turn built better-
quality homes. RightNow, a customer relationship
management software company, identified areas in its
contracts that often resulted in protracted negotiations with
clients. By eliminating many of those sticking points, it was
able to shorten its sales cycle, benefiting both the company
and its customers.31
By identifying and assessing your brand touchpoints, you
can pinpoint which ones impact brand perceptions the most.
To improve the ones that have a negative impact as well as
leverage the most positive ones, you also need to identify
the people and processes within your organization that are
responsible for them. Here’s how.

Visualize Your Touchpoints with a Brand

Touchpoint Wheel
With a Brand Touchpoint Wheel, you can catalog and
visualize all the brand touchpoints at your company—and all
the organizational elements that must come together to
ensure each touchpoint is on-brand. It is a powerful tool to
help you integrate and align your internal workings and
external brand identity.
There are four steps to creating your Brand Touchpoint
Wheel.
Figure 4.1 Brand Touchpoint Wheel Example

Step one, audit. Conduct an audit of all the ways your

company communicates with the outside world and all the
experiences you provide customers and other external
stakeholders. This might seem like an overwhelming task,
but assembling a cross-functional team to conduct the audit
makes it more manageable—and you’ll also end up with
more comprehensive results.

Step two, organize. Organize your touchpoints by

following one of these approaches:

• Classify them according to the stages in your customer

experience journey, e.g., pre-purchase, purchase, and
post-purchase touchpoints. Then add noncustomer
interactions like annual reports, office buildings,
supplier invoices, and other corporate touchpoints. This
tack, though, requires you to double-list touchpoints
that serve more than one function since customers’
purchase journeys have become less linear and the
influences on their purchase decisions, less discrete. For
example, customers might interact with a mobile app
during the prepurchase stage while they are
considering buying the product, during the purchase
stage when they place the product they want to buy in
the cart and check out, and during the postpurchase
while they leave a customer review of the product or
need to find the customer service number. The “mobile
app” brand touchpoint, therefore, would need to be
listed in several of the purchase journey stages.
• Organize your touchpoints into three groups: objects
(e.g., advertising or packaging), people (e.g., call
centers or salespeople), and interactions or experiences
(e.g., social media or websites).
 • Group touchpoints according to those the company
controls or owns (e.g., service request forms, coupons,
and employee interactions with customers), those it
shares responsibility for (e.g., delivery service and
sponsorships), and those that it merely influences (e.g.,
review sites and employee word of mouth).

Whatever organizing logic you use, remember to include

your products themselves, since they usually have the
greatest impact on brand perceptions and yet are often
overlooked as brand touchpoints in this kind of exercise.

Step three, map. For each touchpoint, list the internal

departments, groups, or people who develop or deliver it,
and identify the processes or practices they use to do so.
Then map out the areas where you find commonalities or
overlaps so you can group them together into layers of
people or processes.
For example, your company might use product project
teams to manage the pricing, packaging, distribution, and
marketing of a product and all the touchpoints in each of
those areas, so you might locate those touchpoints next to
each other on your wheel and add a “product team” layer
inside the wheel that spans across them. Or your sales
process might include touchpoints from product brochures
to references and invoices, so you’d want to group those
together under a “sales process” layer.
As you work through this step, resist the natural
inclination to create layers by internal departments only and
instead consider how people from different departments
might work with each other to influence the touchpoints.
Doing so will produce a tool that not only clearly identifies
who and what is involved with each touchpoint, but also
helps break down organizational silos by illuminating where
cross-functional collaboration is imperative. In the sales
process example above, the marketing department might
be responsible for the product brochures, the sales
department for the references, and the accounting
department for the invoices. By grouping all three
touchpoints under one layer, you draw attention to the
coordination that is needed between all three groups during
the sales process.

Step four, arrange: Arrange the touchpoints, people,

and processes into a visual wheel, with your brand in the
center, all of the touchpoints on the rim, and the different
groups or processes from step three as spokes radiating out
to them. (See figure 4.1. Go to the FUSION website,
http://deniseleeyohn.com/fusion, to download a
worksheet and wheel example to help you create a Brand
Touchpoint Wheel for your organization.)

Analyze, Prioritize, and Optimize Your Brand

Touchpoints

Once you have a visual representation of all your brand

touchpoints, assess how well each touchpoint reflects your
desired brand identity. Use customer research, self-
assessments, and industry reports to help you analyze how
important each touchpoint is in shaping people’s
perceptions of your brand. Next, prioritize the touchpoints
that are most critical to revisit by considering the size of the
gap between how well you’re delivering on them today and
how well you should be—and the cost and time required to
close the gap.
Finally, once you’ve designated a touchpoint as a priority,
you can determine if you need to change your
organizational design or your operations or perhaps both to
bring it to its optimal state. In the sales process example,
you might discover that adding a new position like
Southwest Airlines’ boundary spanners would facilitate the
sharing of best practices across business units, leading to
better sales pitches and to your desired culture of
collaboration. Or you might find that instituting a clearer
invoicing process would reduce redundant efforts and
support your core value of transparency.
Working on brand touchpoints by going through the
process of visualizing, assessing, prioritizing, and optimizing
them in this way is particularly useful in your efforts to
create brand-culture fusion because it connects the dots
between what you do inside your organization and how
you’re perceived on the outside. If you can better align
these processes and practices with your desired culture,
then your touchpoints will create the clear, cohesive identity
you desire for your brand. By engaging your colleagues and
employees in the process of developing a Brand Touchpoint
Wheel and tackling the necessary improvements to your
operations that it reveals are needed, you enroll your entire
organization in your transformation effort.

CULTURE IS NOT “SOFT STUFF”

Culture-change efforts often fail because culture is

considered only an input to operations. That is, leaders
believe—mistakenly—that if they had a better culture, then
their organization would run like a well-oiled machine. While
it’s true that a good culture can influence the effectiveness
of your organization—for example, by bridging
organizational silos and overcoming disconnects in company
operations—culture is also an outcome of your
organizational design and operational functions, processes,
and practices.
In an article for the Harvard Business Review,
organizational behavior expert Jay W. Lorsch and his
colleague Emily McTague explain that “culture isn’t
something you ‘fix.’” They believe “cultural change is what
you get after you’ve put new processes or structures in
place to tackle tough business challenges like reworking an
outdated strategy or business model.”32
Organizational guru Jon Katzenbach adds, “Trying to
change a culture purely through top-down messaging,
training and development programs, and identifiable cues
seldom changes people’s beliefs or behaviors.”33 His point
makes sense. Research in neuroscience suggests that
people are more likely to act their way into believing
something than they are to think their way into acting.
Therefore, set up your company to act differently by
changing your organizational design and operations.
For too long culture has been considered the “soft stuff”
of business, downplayed in favor of hard strategies and
metrics or relegated to feel-good efforts. It’s no wonder only
19 percent of culture changes are successful.34 But leaders
who employ a more integral approach to designing and
running their businesses to cultivate their desired culture
end up succeeding—and over time they achieve brand-
culture fusion.
Once you have the large structural and operational pieces
of your desired culture puzzle in place, you can move on to
imbuing it into your employee experience. The next chapter
shows you how.
 Key Takeaways from This Chapter:

• You must operationalize culture through

organizational design—the units, hierarchy, and
roles in your organization—and operations—your
business functions and day-to-day processes and
practices.
• Use the three primary elements of organization
design—structure, standards, and roles—to
design or redesign an organization that’s aligned
with your desired culture.
• Oftentimes, your operational processes and
practices prohibit employees from executing on
your core values.
• You can align your operations with your culture to
any degree—either more tactically by tackling
specific processes or practices, or more
strategically by launching broad initiatives that
align or improve processes and practices across
the organization.
• Working on brand touchpoints helps you connect
the dots between what you do inside your
organization and how you’re perceived on the
outside.
 CHAPTER 5

CREATE CULTURE-CHANGING EMPLOYEE

EXPERIENCES

Read this chapter to learn:

• How employee experience involves far more than
traditional human resource efforts and produces
far greater results too
• How to deliberately design your employee
experience so that it advances your desired
culture
• Why employee experience and customer
experience must be inextricably linked

When the overarching purpose of your company is “to

help create a world where you can belong anywhere,” your
employees ought to feel they belong in your organization. At
least that’s what the leaders of Airbnb, the lodging rental
and hospitality company, believe. And this belief explains
why they place so much importance on employee
experience (EX).
In fact, EX is the critical strategy that Airbnb—which has
reached a $31 billion valuation in less than ten years—relies
on to build its brand and pursue its purpose. In 2016, the
company adopted the slogan “Belong Anywhere” to express
its brand identity and launched the “#belonganywhere”
brand campaign. But its leaders believed these efforts
needed to represent more than an external idea—the
concept of belonging needed to apply inside the company
as well. Mark Levy, who was Airbnb’s global head of
employee experience, explained to me, “We need to create
a place where our employees feel they belong,” he says.
“Belonging starts here. We have to figure out internal
belonging first, then we can break down the walls [with
customers].”1
The fact that Levy’s role even existed at the company is a
testament to its commitment to aligning employees’
everyday experiences with its purpose and values. Before
Levy’s arrival, the talent department was a small team
doing traditional HR work, and the recruiting department
was a larger team tasked with growing the employee base
to meet the needs of the business, while a group called
“Ground Control,” which was responsible for bringing the
company’s culture to life through its workspace
environment, internal communications, employee events,
celebrations, and recognition programs, reported into a
different unit. Realizing that these functions and others in
the company could address the end-to-end employee
experience if they were combined, Levy and the company’s
founders asked themselves how they could bring together
all the different ways they help employees be successful
and feel that they belong.2
Taking a cue from their customer experience (CX)
department, they created an “Employee Experience” group
by:

• Combining the previously disjointed HR and company

culture efforts
• Adding or joining facilities, safety, security, food,
global citizenship/social impact, diversity, and
belonging functions
• Developing the specialist areas of total rewards,
learning, talent design, and talent systems
 —“everything in the whole journey of an employee’s
experience,” as Levy describes it

The EX team works across functional silos to “create a

seamless service delivery model or support for employees,”
he explains. “Running across everything is a focus on
mission, values, and culture—that’s the glue that holds
everything together.”3
EX at Airbnb starts well before an employee officially joins
the company. Since Airbnb has far more interested
applicants than positions to fill (in 2016, it received 180,000
resumes for 900 positions), its hiring process primarily
involves weeding people out, not attracting them, as is the
case for some companies. To do that, Airbnb interviews
candidates to make sure they are a good fit not only with
the position they are interviewing for but also with the
company’s culture. Candidates are asked to participate in
two interviews reserved exclusively to assess their fit with
Airbnb’s core values. The founders select the employees
who conduct these “core values” interviews—and although
they work outside of the function for which a candidate is
interviewing, they have final say in whether or not a
candidate gets offered the job.4
This rigorous interview process serves another function as
well: It offers candidates their first experience with Airbnb’s
unique culture, Levy explained. By taking the time to learn
about the candidate as a person and their values, the
interviewers live out and model one of Airbnb’s core value:
“Be a Host: Care for others and make them feel like they
belong.”5
The company’s overarching purpose and core values are
also at the heart of its week-long on-boarding experience,
which introduces new hires to Airbnb’s purpose and core
values, its business strategies and functions, and ways of
working. Part of the experience includes shadowing a
support specialist to give new employees firsthand exposure
to the challenges guests and hosts face and how Airbnb
supports them. By going through the on-boarding process
with other new hires, Levy told me, Airbnb also inspires a
sense of belonging among them, enabling them to form
cohorts that hopefully stay together throughout their
careers.6
Once employees begin their jobs, their daily experiences
—where and how they work—continue to be directly
informed by the company’s brand identity, purpose, and
values. The food served in their café, for example, is
inspired by a different travel destination every day. Hosts
are celebrated everywhere: Each conference room is
designed to match an actual host property, and giant
portraits of hosts line the hallways.
Airbnb also designs its offices to help employees feel at
home, a place where they belong. Included are a kitchen, a
library, and places to meditate, practice yoga, or write on
the walls. A green atrium that stretches up to three floors
high evokes the feelings of being in a home garden. The
company provides “landing stations” where employees can
charge their devices and store their stuff, but it doesn’t
confine them to assigned desks, so they can work wherever
they feel most comfortable.
The “Ground Control” team continuously shapes the
employees’ experiences in ways that reinforce belonging. By
staging pop-up celebrations and themed events based on
holidays in the communities around the globe where Airbnb
does business, the team creates an environment that not
only supports employees’ sense of belonging to a worldwide
community but also encourages them to create belonging
experiences for customers. Airbnb sees employees as brand
ambassadors who can increase the brand’s awareness and
reduce one of the company’s biggest brand challenges,
which is confusion about what it does and how it works. If
employees personally experience the company’s purpose
and feel they belong, Levy explained, they can help clarify
Airbnb’s brand proposition to others.7
These are some of the many ways that Airbnb infuses its
EX with its unique core values. It’s no coincidence that the
company is producing sustained growth (with profits
projected to increase by 3,400 percent in four short years),8
enjoys the strongest advocates of any brand according to
YouGov BrandIndex,9 and is one of the best companies to
work for according to jobs site Glassdoor.10

WHAT IS EX?

Airbnb is only one of a growing number of companies

discovering the importance of EX and its power to positively
impact business performance in many areas—not only
employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention, but also
brand equity, competitive advantage, and sustainable
growth. EX, they’ve found, produces these far-ranging
results by planting the seeds that grow into a strong and
definitive culture. No wonder “creating a compelling
employee experience” was named by Forbes as the No. 1
HR trend in 201711 and 70 percent of executives around the
world surveyed by Deloitte’s Human Capital Group said EX
was an important or very important trend.12
But there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about
what EX actually entails. Is it new-and-improved HR? Does it
simply involve making employment more fun and
enjoyable? Is it is about relating to employees as if they’re
customers?
In some ways, it’s helpful to understand EX by describing
what it’s not. EX is not “employer branding,” which is about
developing a distinctive external reputation to help you
build your corporate image and recruiting efforts. If your
efforts are geared exclusively toward people outside your
company, not only will they fall short of engaging your
existing employees, but also they will fail to cultivate the
employee mindset and behaviors that are needed to
support your desired brand identity.

THE RULES OF EX

Some of the old and new rules of EX, according to

consulting firm Deloitte13:

Old Rules New Rules

EX Definition Defined by Defined as a

annual holistic view of
engagement life at work,
surveys requiring
constant
feedback, action,
and monitoring

EX A series of Someone
Management HR leaders responsible for
working on the complete
recruiting, employee
rewards, experience,
engagement, focused on
and other HR employee
programs journeys,
experiences,
engagement,
and culture

Employee Wellness and An integrated

Wellness health program for
 programs employee well-
focused on being focused on
safety and the employee,
managing her family, and
insurance her entire
costs experience at
life and work

Rewards Designed to Also include

cover salary, nonfinancial
overtime, rewards: meals,
bonus, leaves, vacation
benefits, and policy, fitness,
stock options and wellness
programs

Figure 5.1

EX is also not about giving employees perks simply to

make them feel good. Nor is EX the same as employee
engagement, although the two are closely related:* great
experiences produce engaged employees. For years,
companies have studied the end result—employee
engagement—without understanding how to produce it—
employee experience.
Finally EX is not about engaging employees as you would
customers. Employees and customers differ in significant
ways. But CX does provide a model for defining and
understanding EX. Since CX is the sum of all interactions a
customer has with a company, then EX is everything an
employee experiences throughout his or her connection to
the organization—every employee interaction, from the first
contact as a potential recruit to the last interaction after the
end of employment.
 Jeanne Meister, founding partner of HR advisory and
research firm Future Workplace, refers to the helpful phrase
“workplace as an experience” to explain EX: “The essence
of the ‘workplace as an experience’ is where all the
elements of work—the physical, the emotional, the
intellectual, the virtual, and the aspirational—are carefully
orchestrated to inspire employees.”14 Perhaps Airbnb’s Levy
says it best: “Anything that sets employees up for success
or improves our culture should be a part of EX.”15
If you want your EX to be as effective as Airbnb’s, then
you must deliberately, clearly, and carefully design it to
support your overarching purpose and express your core
values. The rest of this chapter will show you how. I will take
you inside many companies that have developed EX
programs and share their approaches to designing them
effectively so you can learn what they know:

• How to design EX to advance your desired culture

with a four-step process of segmenting employees,
prioritizing interactions, adopting a design model,
and designing experiences to support your desired
culture
• How to involve employees in EX design
• Why EX should be integrated with CX to produce
better outcomes for employees and customers and
greater brand-culture fusion

The companies I highlight in this chapter excel through EX

because they elevate it to a top priority. Leaders at these
organizations don’t regard EX as merely an initiative to be
delegated to HR managers—they consider it a critical way to
run their business and they channel the necessary
resources and attention to it accordingly. You should too.
 MAKE EX A PRIORITY

The research group Bersin by Deloitte reports that

organizations currently spend over $1 billion annually to
improve employee engagement.16 And yet the Gallup
organization has found only 13 percent of employees
working for an organization are engaged and has declared a
“worldwide employee engagement crisis.”17
According to Jacob Morgan, author of The Employee
Experience Advantage, this disconnect is the direct result of
the short-term thinking that leaders often revert to when it
comes to their employees. Most companies rely on a system
of carrots and sticks to try to motivate and engage people.
Instead, Morgan argues you should focus on how employees
experience your organization day by day and redesign your
workplace and practice around them.18
His research shows that organizations that invested most
heavily in EX were not only included 11.5 times as often in
Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work and 4.4 times as often in
LinkedIn’s list of North America’s Most In-Demand
Employers, but they were also 28 times more often listed
among Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 2.1
times as often on the Forbes list of the World’s Most
Innovative Companies, and twice as often in the American
Customer Satisfaction Index. Most important, he finds that
“experiential organizations had more than four times the
average profit and more than two times the average
revenue. They were also almost 25 percent smaller, which
suggests higher levels of productivity and innovation.”19
These findings make a clear case for adopting EX as a top
priority for your company. How? By allocating resources—
human, financial, technological, etc.—to EX. For some
companies, investing in EX may require incremental
spending, but you can often achieve EX excellence simply
by using existing resources in new ways. Plus, if you
determine that benefits like childcare or an on-campus gym
are critical to providing an EX aligned with your core values
(not just to make you a trendy employer) but can’t afford to
provide them, you can still offer these benefits by acting as
a middle man between employees and services they pay
for. Morgan notes that most experiential companies are only
in “the concierge and convenience business. . . . They
coordinate with service providers for a price break and then
make those services available and convenient for their
employees.”20
Above all, you’ll need to think differently—you’ll need to
understand that a new “implicit social contract between
employers and employees,” as a research report from
Deloitte calls it, is emerging. The stability that once
characterized the best employee-employer relationships is
being disrupted by employees’ tendency to change jobs
more frequently and other factors. Therefore, “employers
must provide development more quickly, move people more
regularly, provide continuous cycles of promotion, and give
employees more tools to manage their own careers,” the
report by Deloitte concludes. Your efforts, they say, must be
oriented around the different needs and expectations that
today’s employees have.21
In my work with companies that want to transform
themselves, I’ve found that they’re only able to do so if their
core values are woven into the fabric of their EX at every
point in an employee’s journey with the company. You must
imbue the core values of your desired culture in the daily
experiences you create for your employees so that they can
soak them in and reflect them back with their behaviors and
attitudes. As the company’s core values come to life for
employees, a better culture and stronger brand identity
emerge.
 DESIGN YOUR EX IN FOUR STEPS

You can apply the same methods and tools that produce
successful CX to the design of your EX. There are four main
steps to follow:

1. Segment employees into discrete groups.

2. Identify the employee interactions that you should
explicitly design.
3. Adopt a design model.
4. Design experiences so they support your desired
culture.

Step 1: Segment Your Employees

Marketing and operations teams start CX design by

segmenting customers into discrete groups because
different people have different wants and needs. To design
great experiences for their customers, companies must first
identify these differences. Fast food chains, for example,
usually differentiate between customers who are primarily
motivated by low prices vs. customers who seek out new
products or those who just want a convenient meal.
Different customers also represent different value to
companies. A large organization that needs a sophisticated
telecommunications system is probably more valuable to a
telecom provider than is a small firm that needs little more
than a basic phone system. Segmentation enables
companies to understand and prioritize their customers.
Like customers, different employees have different needs
and desires and contribute different value to the
organization. These differences don’t always manifest
themselves by role, level, or department, so sometimes you
need to use a segmentation approach that enables you to
see beyond groups in your organizational chart. Your
objective should be to identify meaningful distinctions within
your employee base and define clearly discrete segments of
employees.
There are several ways to identify and profile the most
relevant employee segments in your organization. Here are
four particularly helpful ones:

By the role that work plays in employees’ lives. A

Harvard Business Review article suggests grouping your
employees in the following six role-based segments:

1. Expressive legacy—work for these employees is

about creating something of value that lasts.
2. Secure progress—work is about improving one’s
station in life and progressing along a predictable
path.
3. Individual expertise and team success—work is
about being a valuable part of a successful team.
4. Risk and reward—work is one of many ways to live a
life full of change and excitement.
5. Flexible support—work is a source of livelihood but
not a priority.
6. Low obligation or easy income—work is a source of
immediate financial gain.

By using this segmentation approach, you can design EX to

address employees’ different personal values.22

By the value that employees contribute to the

organization. Researchers from the University of Glasgow
recommend factoring how your people contribute beyond
their costs, their employment mode (employee vs.
contractor), and how much they identify with the
organization. They identify four potential segments:
 1. Core knowledge employees—e.g., senior managers,
financial analysts and fund managers, senior design
engineers, senior medical staff, etc.
2. Compulsory, traditional human capital—e.g.,
maintenance workers, technicians, software
engineers, mid- to low-level managers,
administrators, etc.
3. “Idiosyncratic” human capital or business partners—
e.g., consultants, project managers, academic
researchers, etc.
4. Ancillary human capital/contract workers—e.g., call
center staff, low-level HR specialists, etc.23

Although the terms the researchers use to describe each

group might lack nuance, they convey meaningful
differences in the level and nature of employees’
contributions and therefore the amount or kind of
investment you should make in each.

By how aligned employees are with the company’s

strategy and goals. Dr. Leslie de Chernatony uses an
assessment of employees’ alignment with the company on
two dimensions: “intellectual buy-in,” the extent to which
people are aware and aligned with their organization’s
strategy and understand how they can contribute to it, and
“emotional buy-in,” their commitment to achieving the
company’s goals. Laying them out on a two-by-two matrix,
four segments emerge:

1. Weak links—low intellectual and low emotional

2. Bystanders—high intellectual and low emotional
3. Loose cannons—low intellectual and high emotional
4. Champions—high intellectual and high emotional24
This segmentation approach allows you to prioritize
champions in your EX and then devise specific EXs to try to
convert the others into champions.

By the degree to which employees adopt strategic

change. For some of my clients, I segment employees by
their position on an “adoption curve,” that is, by their
willingness and ability to change their attitudes and
behaviors and adopt new ones. By differentiating among
“doubters,” “observers,” “supporters,” “participants,” and
“drivers,” you can tailor your strategies and
communications to move people along the adoption curve
and achieve the desired change.

Rather than come up with an employee segmentation to use

throughout your entire EX, you might also consider
segmenting employees specifically for the design of a
particular EX interaction. NCR (formerly National Cash
Register), the maker of transaction systems, adopted a
segmentation specifically for its on-boarding interaction.
NCR takes its core values extremely seriously, especially its
value of “customer dedication: We genuinely care about the
success of our internal and external customers. We partner
with them to understand their businesses and develop
solutions that deliver the highest levels of quality, service
and value.”25 When designing a new global on-boarding
program, NCR’s human resources managers leaned on this
core value to guide their employee segmentation: How
could they serve their internal customers best and develop
high-value solutions for their specific needs? They decided
to group new hires not just by their roles, like software
engineers and executives, but also based on their
professional background or experience, such as recent
graduates and veterans who might need help transitioning
into the corporate world. They then tailored their on-
boarding portal by segment, creating, for example, unique
curriculum for recent graduates with lessons to help them
better navigate their first professional experience after
college.26
Whatever segmentation approach you choose, you will
find it makes your EX design work more manageable and
your EX efforts overall more successful.

Step 2: Identify Priority Employee Interactions

Once you’ve identified your employee segments, you are

ready to pinpoint the employee interactions that you should
prioritize. It’s impossible to provide an excellent experience
for every employee and for every interaction he or she has
with the company—nor is it necessary. Instead, you should
focus on designing experiences that address the needs and
wants of employees who represent the most value to your
organization and those interactions that have the most
potential to advance your desired culture.
To identify those priorities, you can borrow another tool
from CX: experience architecture. Architectures, such as
brand architectures or information architectures, are used
by companies to bring focus and structure to planning in
much the same way they are used by architects and
contractors when building a house. An employee experience
architecture helps you identify and prioritize the specific
interactions that should comprise your EX.
Figure 5.1 Employee Experience Architecture
Template

To create an Employee Experience Architecture, start by

drafting short statements that define the foundation of your
“house”—your desired culture, the culture that corresponds
to your brand identity—and the roof—your overall EX
strategy, the feeling or takeaway employees should glean
from their entire experience with your organization. Your
foundation and roof should be closely related and explicitly
articulated. For example, at Airbnb, its foundation—its
desired culture—can be summarized by its purpose,
“belonging,” and its core values, which include “own the
mission” and “be a host.” Its roof—Airbnb’s overall EX
strategy—is the feeling that “employees belong anywhere
and help people belong wherever they go.” (See figure 5.1.
Go to the FUSION website,
http://deniseleeyohn.com/fusion, to download a
worksheet and architecture template to help you create an
Employee Experience Architecture for your organization.)
The rooms in the architecture in between your foundation
and roof are the specific interactions that comprise your
overall EX. Create a grid with your employee segments as
columns and interactions as rows. For example, a client of
mine identified the following ten interactions (but you may
have more or fewer of them):

1. Sourcing and recruiting

2. Pre-boarding (after the job offer is accepted but
before work begins)
3. On-boarding (orientation and initial training)
4. Compensation and benefits
5. Ongoing learning and development
6. Ongoing engagement, communication, and
community involvement
7. Rewards and recognition
8. Performance planning, feedback, and review
9. Advancement
10. Retirement, termination, or resignation

Once you’ve listed the interactions, then prioritize the

intersection of each segment and interaction in the grid.
Assign a value to each based on factors such as:

• Its potential impact on your culture. For example, in

Chapter 3, I explained that hiring employees who fit
your culture and values is critical, so you should
prioritize the recruiting interaction for most, if not all,
your segments. Identify other interactions that are
 particularly important in your organization and
influential to your specific desired culture.
• The importance of the employee segment. While all
employees are important, your focus should be on
interactions for segments who contribute the most
irreplaceable value to your organization and those
who wield the most influence on customers and other
employees.
• The size of the gap between what an interaction
currently delivers to employees and what employees
feel the interaction should deliver to actually address
their needs. Use employee research to help you
identify the biggest gaps from your employees’ point
of view. For example, if core knowledge workers
express a desire to know more about the company’s
business strategy before they begin working, then
you should prioritize that as part of their recruiting
and on-boarding interactions. Generally speaking, the
bigger the gap, the more you should prioritize the
interaction.

As you prioritize, look for synergies between the

intersections of segments and interactions—a focus on one
intersection might yield improved results in another. The
resources you put into on-boarding training for one segment
may be easily extended into ongoing learning and
development for it and others, for example.
With your Employee Experience Architecture complete,
there is one more step before you begin designing specific
EXs.

Step 3: Adopt an EX Design Model

Once you know the interactions you should prioritize,
determine the categories of elements you will include in
each experience. I recommend a three-category design
model:

1. Environment—elements of the physical workplace

plus everything else that employees see, hear,
touch, taste, or smell; for example, posters in the
hallways, flowers or other decorative items, and food
and drinks
2. Tools—technology and other instruments or
materials that employees use, such as software
applications, reference guides, and office supplies
3. Intangibles—elements that impact the way
employees think and feel, including communications,
leadership styles, and policies

Rabobank Nederland, a large financial services provider in

the Netherlands, used a similar model when it began
developing an EX to support a new, more self-directed work
culture. The new EX, which it called “Rabo Unplugged,” was
designed to enable “the organisation to better respond to all
needs of customers, while at the same time giving more
freedom and responsibility to the employees,” writes Josee
Lamers in a Cornell University case study.27
The Rabo Unplugged design team delineated three
categories of EX elements: mental (which they defined as
“personal responsibility and freedom of choice for the
employee”), virtual (information and communication
technology infrastructure, tools, and equipment), and
physical (design of offices). By dividing elements of the
experience into these three categories, they could easily
assign managers from the company’s functional groups to
lead changes in each (e.g., the virtual elements were
spearheaded by someone from the information technology
group) as well as articulate the key requirements for each
(e.g., standardization and a user-driven approach for the
virtual elements).28
A different model might make sense for your organization,
but be sure to explicitly set the categories of elements that
you want to include in your EX. This simplifies and organizes
the actual design work, which is the next and final step.

Step 4: Design Experiences that Support Your

Desired Culture

Now apply the design model to each priority employee

segment/interaction intersection that you identified in Step
2 and determine the experience you should design and
deliver. To start, focus on creating an experience for a single
high-priority interaction and designate it a “signature
experience.” A signature experience is the most “visible,
distinctive” experience of an organization’s overall EX,
explain Tamara Erickson and Lynda Gratton in the Harvard
Business Review article “What It Means to Work Here.” They
recommend designing a signature experience to serve as “a
powerful and constant symbol of your organization’s culture
and values.”29
Let’s say you’ve prioritized designing a new recruiting
experience for the segment of employees who engage with
customers face-to-face on a daily basis. Using the three-
category design model (environment, tools, and
intangibles), determine the elements of the experience for
each of those categories.
First, decide the “environment” elements of the recruiting
interaction, such as where to conduct the interviews, the
design of the room or space where the interview will take
place, and leave-behinds such as a company brochure or
thank-you gift. Then consider the “tools” of the experience,
like the online application, personality tests, and other
elements used during the process. Finally identify the
“intangible” elements that shape the recruiting experience,
such as the tone and manner of the invitation to interview,
of the interview itself, and of the follow-up to the interview.
Imbue each element with the core values and other
unique aspects of your desired culture. For example, if your
culture is performance-oriented, consider incorporating
tests and assignments into the interview process to
reinforce the core value of achievement. If one of your core
values is transparency, consider laying out the screening
process for candidates or giving them information about
their status as a prospective employee.
Don’t limit yourself to commonly-accepted practices and
don’t be afraid to design an experience that might be very
attractive to some people and a complete turnoff to others.
Instead of sending a standard email thanking potential
candidates for submitting their resume, for example, use
the tone and manner of the message to reflect your
company’s unique core values and brand personality. If your
company’s desired culture is casual, sending a funny and
friendly electronic greeting card that expresses your sincere
gratitude for their submission would be enough to attract
potential candidates that fit your laid-back culture. But this
approach will probably turn off employees who are more
serious and earnest and expect a formal message outlining
when they will hear back from you and how.
“Companies—even very large ones—don’t need to be all
things to all people. In fact, they shouldn’t try to be,”
Erickson and Gratton advise. Your signature experience
should not only serve as a tool to express to everyone what
makes you unique, but also specifically to ensure you
attract and retain people who fit into your organization more
easily and enthusiastically.30
 Once you’ve designed your signature experience, move
on to the rest of the interactions you identified as priorities
in Step 2. For each interaction, consider what experience is
in place currently in your organization and whether it should
continue as is, be fine-tuned, or be stopped and redesigned
entirely.
Most important, as you go through this design process,
remember your objective is to cultivate your desired culture.
Ground your EX designs in the desired culture that you
articulated as the foundation of your architecture. And once
you have an initial architecture draft complete, inspect your
whole “house” and ensure your design supports its roof—
your overall EX strategy. You might have to go back to the
drawing board several times before you get it right. Later on
in this chapter I’ll discuss why and how to involve your
employees in that process.

CRAFT AN EX THAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU

Just as great houses don’t pop out of the ground on their

own, great employee experiences don’t just happen. You
must work through each step described above deliberately
—taking shortcuts will likely increase the complexity of the
process. You also need the discipline to design EX to your
desired culture. Think carefully about what behaviors and
mindsets you want to reinforce and reject any ideas for
experiences that don’t align, no matter how creative they
might be.
It might be helpful to find inspiration in the successes
others have had with their EX. Since EX design and
management has only recently emerged as a business
priority, there are only a few organizations that have
implemented comprehensive and integrated EX programs
like Airbnb. But many organizations have designed isolated
employee experiences that can serve as fodder for your
efforts. The following are some of the best ones that I use to
inspire and instruct my clients.

Recruiting experience: One of the five attributes

HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company, values
in prospective candidates is “adaptability.” HubSpot looks
for “constantly-changing people who are life-long
learners.”31 Culture leader Katie Burke says she and her
team re-did the company’s job descriptions to “make it
abundantly clear that if you’re a lifelong learner, open to
challenging us, open to challenging the status quo and an
interesting dynamic, you would be a great fit here.” Note
that she doesn’t say they want people to “fit in.” In fact,
they avoid using acronyms in the descriptions, which they
found not only confused candidates but also sent the
message that they were expected to adapt and conform to
the company’s “language” and processes rather than bring
their own (and new) perspective to them.32

On-boarding experience: One of the core values at

church staffing company Vanderbloemen Search Group is
“Wow-Making Excellence,” so it puts books about
operational excellence such as The Nordstrom Way and The
New Gold Standard (about the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company)
on a reading list it gives to new employees. This is only one
of the small company’s unique approaches to on-boarding,
and it shows that you don’t have to be a large company with
deep pockets to design an influential EX. You just need to be
as convinced of its importance as CEO William
Vanderbloemen is. Achieving “total buy-in from new hires” is
the best way to preserve his company’s culture, he writes.
“Each hire can make an impact on your culture, so from day
one, make sure you’re teaching your new employees about
your culture.”33
 Training experience: Clio, a provider of legal practice
management software, expects its employees to know not
only what the company’s purpose is—“to help our
customers succeed and realize the full value of our
product”—but also how they contribute to bringing it about.
In his book The Service Culture Handbook, customer service
expert Jeff Toister describes how Clio goes beyond training
its customer service agents on how to answer customers’
questions and fix their problems efficiently and effectively. It
also helps them develop the specific skills required to fulfill
the company’s purpose, like rapport building, active
listening, and empathizing. For example, they learn how to
engage in a constructive, helpful dialogue with customers
regarding their unique needs and how Clio might fulfill
them, so customers are more likely to be delighted with the
solution presented and less likely to discontinue their
accounts.34

Engagement experience: San Diego–based nonprofit

Plant With Purpose seeks to reverse deforestation and
poverty through its work with over 500 rural communities in
places like Haiti and Burundi. Because its leaders believe
that employees best understand and embrace the purpose
of the organization when they experience it firsthand, the
nonprofit arranges for all employees, regardless of role, to
spend time working at one of their field locations. Executive
director Scott Sabin explains that, although providing this
employee experience consumes time and money (both in
low supply at this twenty-person, $3.5 million organization),
it is critical because “we believe that this work flows from
the heart.” The experience of working alongside the local
farmers helps employees, Sabin told me, “feel the
connection between what we are doing here and the lives
we are impacting elsewhere.”35
 Performance Review experience: As part of its efforts
to create a more customer-oriented culture, Adobe
redesigned specific EX experiences, including eliminating
annual performance reviews. In place of a system that was
out of sync with the fast pace that a customer-oriented
company requires, Adobe instituted regular check-ins where
managers and employees meet for informal discussions at
least once a quarter. EX/CX head Donna Morris describes
check-ins as “an ongoing mechanism for ensuring that all
our employees are aligned with the overall goals of the
organization” and lists it as one of the critical ways the
company has changed its culture.36

Compensation experience: Valve, the creator of video

game platform Steam, promotes a culture of creativity and
democracy. These values enable it to attract and motivate
the kind of self-directed employees who produce the
constant stream of innovations by which the brand is
identified. To reinforce its culture, Valve applies a unique
approach to compensation decisions in which project teams
evaluate their own members on their contribution to the
group and the product as well as on their technical ability
and outputs. By using a peer-ranking system and factoring
in a range of ways that employees contribute value, Valve’s
leaders “gain insight into who’s providing the most value at
the company and thereby adjust each person’s
compensation to be commensurate with his or her actual
value.” Its handbook explains the goal is “to get your
compensation to be ‘correct . . .’—paying someone what
they’re worth.”37

Office Hours experience: Lifestyle brand Tower made a

dramatic change to its office hours—employees only work
8:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Monday through Friday. Its founder and
CEO, Stephan Aarstol, explains in his book The Five-Hour
Workday why he decided to move his company to a shorter
work schedule. Tower sells stand-up paddleboards and other
gear for the “beach lifestyle,” and one day while reflecting
on his business, Aarstol realized he needed to make his
brand values a part of his company’s “fabric.” “We’re telling
customers to take life by the horns,” he writes. “To live more
extraordinarily. To live differently. To play more. But were we
really doing this ourselves?” He had previously researched
the benefits of a reduced work schedule, and in that
moment, he decided to implement a five-hour workday for
his employees. “Leaving work at 1:00 P.M. every day would
be an unavoidable daily reminder of the exact brand we
aspired to be,” Aarstol explains. “We would be different from
everyone else.”38

Workplace Environment experience: Chinese Internet

giant Tencent designed its new headquarters in Shenzhen to
echo and reinforce its cultural emphasis on innovation. The
company wanted to heighten the sense of community
among its employees, increase their “social well-being,” and
encourage “serendipitous interactions” between teams to
spark collaboration and new ideas. In an interview with
Architectural Digest, architect Jonathan Ward explained that
he designed a series of sky-bridges as a “critical solution” to
meet these objectives. Each bridge incorporates a theme
such as health, culture, or education “to help Tencent
employees think and work differently than they had before.”
He clarifies that the bridges aren’t just “visual aesthetics”:
“The design draws employees together more frequently and
in new ways. . . . They also house most of the common
areas for employees to interact.”39

I’ve provided these examples to give you a sense of the

range of experiences you might consider as you design EX
at your company. But keep in mind, your approach should
not be to copy any one of these tactics exactly or to try to
achieve the “cool” factor that some of these companies
seem to have. Instead, you should design your EX to
uniquely express and embody your unique desired culture.
Ultimately, your goal should be to implement a cohesive,
comprehensive approach to EX across all employee
interactions—not to come up with a couple of disjointed
experiences. Of course, you have to start somewhere, but
continue to build your EX over time. In this way, EX is more
a mindset than an initiative. Companies that use EX to
achieve their business and brand goals view it as an
ongoing effort, and they constantly seek out new ways to
support and advance their desired culture through it.

GET EMPLOYEES INVOLVED

Just as leading CX companies have reaped the benefits of

involving their customers in the CX design and development
process, your EX will be more successful if you involve your
employees in your design efforts. By seeking input from
your employees, you’ll design experiences that not only
better address their needs, but that are uniquely suited for
your company. HubSpot’s Burke observes, “Even the most
humble, involved, and on-the-floor executives do not see
and experience the same challenges as employees on the
frontline, making feedback from the frontline critical, not
just to understand what’s going on in your business, but to
actually fix it.”40
Involving employees in EX design also increases their
involvement in cultivating your culture in general. Airbnb’s
Levy, for example, told me that inviting employees to
design the company’s conference rooms “democratized” the
culture at the company and increased employees’ feelings
of ownership of it.41 And when a company involves its
employees in EX, it affirms their value to the organization
and generates goodwill. The Employee Experience
Advantage author Morgan says, “Successful organizations
don’t create things for employees, they create things with
employees.”42
There are many ways to effectively solicit input and
collect feedback from your employees. You can collect this
info via informal group check-ins, employee focus groups,
formal employee engagement surveys, and “pulse” surveys.
In addition, you can gather valuable and candid feedback on
your company’s EX from departing employees during exit
interviews and even from prospective employees by fielding
recruitment surveys. The key to gathering employee input,
Morgan says, is to remember that “communication,
collaboration, and feedback need to happen in real time.”
Although data collected through an annual or semi-annual
employee engagement survey is valuable because it is
quantifiable and trackable, consider collecting employees’
feedback at various intervals and continuously.43
As important as it is to use the right methods for
collecting employee input and feedback, you must also
ensure your organization has the right mindset to act on the
input it receives. You need “managers who are open to
asking for and receiving feedback, a culture that embraces
transparency as default mode, and an organization as a
whole that is prepared to take action based on the
learning,” advises Morgan.44 Nothing will alienate your
employees and destroy your EX faster than to ask for their
opinions and then ignore them.
However, you can—and should—set expectations for how
you will use employees’ input. When HubSpot’s chief
revenue officer Mark Roberge redesigned the compensation
plan for his company’s sales reps, he sought input from
members of the sales team by holding town hall meetings
and opening up the floor for brainstorming sessions. After
each meeting, he created a page on the company’s internal
website to describe some of the ideas that had emerged
and to invite comments. But, throughout the process, he
clarified who would ultimately make the final decision. “I
was very explicit that the commission plan design was not a
democratic process,” he explains. “It was critical that the
salespeople did not confuse transparency and involvement
with an invitation to selfishly design the plan around their
own needs.” He found that most people appreciated being
involved, even if the change ended up not being favorable
to them.45

INTEGRATE YOUR EX WITH YOUR CX

One of the most efficient ways to move your organization

closer to brand-culture fusion is to directly and explicitly
integrate your EX with your CX. When people have an
experience as employees that is clearly and distinctively on-
brand, they’re more likely to deliver an experience for
customers that is as well. As they experience the benefits of
the brand themselves, they gain not only the motivation to
deliver them to customers, but also the knowledge of what
it takes to do so. And if they see a gap between their actions
or capabilities and what it takes to deliver excellent CX, they
usually develop interest in closing that gap by learning new
skills and working with others on new ways to do so.
Ultimately, they feel more ownership for delivering on your
company’s brand promise.
Directly connecting employees to customers helps
companies integrate EX and CX. Annette Franz, author of
the popular CX blog, CX Journey, calls this giving employees
“a clear line of sight” to customers. Often, though,
organizations only make sure employees at the front line
have a clear line of sight to the customer. But, Franz writes,
“The customer experience isn’t just created at the
frontline.” You should use your purpose, core values, and
most of all, communications, to ensure that “everyone has
their sights set on the right target.” 46
USAA, a company that provides insurance and financial
services to millions of military members and their families,
creates an EX to help employees feel directly connected
with their customers’ lives. To begin their training,
employees receive “deployment letters” that real soldiers
get. They are told, “Get your affairs in order and report to
the personnel processing facility.” During training, they
often eat MREs (meals ready to eat), which gives them a
literal “taste” of a soldier’s life, and they are expected to
walk around with sixty-five-pound backpacks. They are
asked to read actual letters that soldiers in the field have
written to their families back home. These experiences help
employees cultivate empathy for their customers and
develop new products and innovative solutions that
customers love—such as a mobile service for deployed
customers to receive account balance updates by texting
USAA, and biometric authentication technology that
provides extra security for customers’ mobile devices.47
At Airbnb, EX and CX are so intertwined it’s somewhat
difficult to separate them. Employees stay in Airbnb
locations whenever they travel for business, and each
employee is given $2,000 a year to spend on staying with
Airbnb hosts while on vacation. Since the company also
considers hosts as customers, it strongly encourages
employees to serve as hosts—and when the company
invites hosts to attend meetings at its offices, it expects
employees to host them in their homes.48
What’s more, every year, hundreds of Airbnb employees
attend a three-day event alongside hosts. They discuss the
successes and challenges of the past year and have the
opportunity to learn from one another. Desirree Madison-
Biggs, Airbnb’s CX program leader, says EX and CX at
Airbnb parallel and reinforce one another. “We are the
customers, the customers are us.”49 The result? Employees
and hosts develop empathy for each other, experience
belonging together, and ultimately create better
experiences for each other.
In addition to creating opportunities for your employees
to interact directly with customers, you should also give
them the tools and insights to understand how they and
their teams are performing on CX. Customer feedback
empowers employees to understand how their day-to-day
actions impact customers and to take ownership for those
actions, which leads to improved CX and EX. Adrian
Walkling, vice president of insights at Medallia, a customer
experience management platform, explains, “Getting
customer feedback into the hands of your employees and
empowering them to act on it actually drives significant
employee engagement.”50

FUEL FUSION WITH EX

EX is just now emerging as a discipline that many

companies are exploring. If you want to lead the field and
ward off competitive threats, the time to invest in it is now.
And the way to get the most out of your investment is to
design EX specifically to develop your desired culture.
EX excellence by itself may increase your competitive
advantage as an employer, but putting EX at the center of
your efforts to align and integrate your brand and culture
will give you an edge as a business. Your employees won’t
simply be more productive, they will produce the right
results. They won’t just stay at your company because they
have a good experience, they will want to be a part of
creating a great experience for your customers. And they
won’t just be motivated because they feel valued, they will
feel connected to your purpose and be driven to help fulfill
it. These results are what brand-culture fusion—the
integration of brand and culture—is all about.
This chapter has covered why EX is important, how to
design it, how different companies use it, and how to
integrate it with CX. The next strategy advances EX by
weaving your desired culture into the daily details of your
organization. Read on to learn how to make a big impact by
thinking small.

Key Takeaways from This Chapter

• Companies that invest in EX are recognized as
better employers and produce better business
results.
• To achieve your desired culture, you must
express and demonstrate it in the daily
experiences you create for your employees.
• There are four main steps in EX design: segment
your employees, prioritize interactions, adopt a
design model, and design experiences that
support your desired culture.
• Your EX will be more successful if you involve
your employees in your EX efforts.
• To move your organization closer to brand-culture
fusion, directly and explicitly integrate your EX
with your CX.
 CHAPTER 6

SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

Read this chapter to learn:

• What rituals and artifacts are and how to use
them as subtle but powerful cues about your
desired culture
• How to use your company’s policies and
procedures to communicate and reinforce your
desired culture
• How to ensure your policies and procedures don’t
just sit on a shelf in a manual

Recently while attending a business conference,

something unusual caught my eye: monks. After
maneuvering my way toward the front of the room so I could
get a good seat for the keynote presentation, I saw a group
of about twenty or so Buddhist monks with their shaved
heads and flowing yellow robes sitting in the next section
over. It was a strange sight at a technology conference, and
I wondered if they had possibly wandered into the wrong
venue and would soon be surprised when a businessperson
and not a spiritual leader took the stage.
A few moments later, the lights were dimmed and a man
decked out in traditional Hawaiian garb appeared in the far
corner and started blowing a conch shell. As the long
baritone notes resonated through the room, I began to think
that perhaps I was in the wrong place. This was not the
typical start to a presentation by the CEO of an $8.5 billion
company.1 But eventually I came to realize there is nothing
typical about Marc Benioff or his company, Salesforce.
Benioff started Salesforce at a time when software-as-a-
service and cloud-based software was a new technology,
but in less than twenty years, he’s been able to turn what
was then a novel idea—that enterprise software could be
delivered over the Internet and as a subscription service—
into the standard of the industry. Salesforce now counts GE,
Toyota, and Facebook2 among its 150,000 customers.3 It has
been named by Forbes as one of the World’s Most
Innovative companies six years in a row. Fortune has listed
it as one of the World’s Most Admired Companies and Best
Companies to Work For, and Benioff has been heralded one
of the Most Respected CEOs in the World by Barron’s.4
As noteworthy as these accomplishments may be, what
stands out most about Salesforce is its organizational
culture. Unlike the culture of most technology companies,
which emphasize innovation or performance above all else,
Salesforce’s culture is built around the spirit of Ohana, the
Hawaiian concept of family and the strong, supportive
bonds that form within families.
Ohana explains why Salesforce not only begins its annual
customer “Dreamforce” conference with a traditional
Hawaiian blessing, but also why it is attended by the monks
and nuns from the Plum Village Monastery, who lead
meditation sessions and encourage mindfulness throughout
the conference. These are just a few of the manifestations
of the Ohana culture at Salesforce.
Dreamforce is an annual ritual through which Salesforce
shares its organizational culture with external customers
and third parties. But employees experience many rituals
and artifacts that cultivate Ohana among them as well on a
day-to-day basis at the company. Like other great
organizations, Salesforce regularly expresses and cultivates
its desired culture through ceremonies, symbols, and other
similar small gestures.
Another company that couldn’t seem more different from
Salesforce but similarly recognizes the value of infusing
even the smallest details of organizational life and
employee behavior with its culture is Zingerman’s, a
specialty food business. How to clean a knife, double-check
an order, and run a meeting may seem like procedures that
don’t need to be explained to employees, but Zingerman’s
seventy-two-page “Staff Guide” includes detailed
instructions for these and myriad others. 5

Started as a single deli over thirty-five years ago in Ann

Arbor, Michigan, today Zingerman’s is a $64 million
“Community of Businesses”6 that spans fourteen operating
specialty food units.7 Inc. magazine has called it “The
Coolest Small Company in America”8 and it counts the
editors of Bon Appetit, Alton Brown from the Food Network,
and even Oprah among its fans.9 Well-known for its playful,
down-to-earth brand identity (its catalogs and website
feature hand-drawn images and folksy language),
Zingerman’s infuses its fun and funky brand and culture into
every aspect of its business, including its Staff Guide.
Besides offering specific details on procedures like knife
cleaning, the guide, of course, includes the company’s
policies on harassment, disabilities, and other legally-
required subjects. But even those are written in such plain
and clear language and presented in such a visually-
attractive manner that any employee who takes the time to
read them might actually understand and value these
policies.
So far in this book I’ve shared how to cultivate your
desired culture by changing strategic aspects of your
organization—how it is structured, how it is run, how
employees experience working at it. But to nurture your
desired culture, you also must focus on the smaller, tactical
but equally significant aspects of your organization: (1)
rituals and artifacts—things your organization regularly does
or creates to commemorate or symbolize what’s important
to it; and (2) employee policies and procedures—the codes
of conduct, rules of engagement, and other instructions that
set the tone and guidelines for working at the organization.
Although these aspects of the organization are part of your
employee experience (EX), I’m covering them in this
separate chapter because they are often overlooked. I
recognize that they may seem too commonplace to be
significant or warrant attention, but they wield more power
to facilitate your desired culture than you might realize.
In this chapter I share how companies including
Salesforce and Zingerman’s have leveraged seemingly
insignificant but absolutely critical aspects of their
organization to integrate and align their brands and
cultures. I also provide ideas for rituals and artifacts and an
inventory of common organizational policies and procedures
that you can adapt to better express and align with your
core values. My goal is to inspire you to brainstorm ways—
big and small—that make your organization more on-brand
in the details of the day-to-day.

GIVE YOUR CULTURE LIFE THROUGH RITUALS

The Ohana spirit that I experienced firsthand at the

Salesforce conference is intricately woven into the fabric of
the company’s organizational culture—in everyday practices
that individually might seem small but collectively bind
employees together.
One way in which the Ohana culture comes alive at
Salesforce is through its rituals—meaningful, recurring
activities or events that mark a milestone. Every time an
employee at Salesforce greets someone with “Aloha” or
signs off an email with “Mahalo,” he or she is engaging in a
daily ritual that expresses the company’s unique family-
oriented culture.
Similarly, some employees wear Hawaiian shirts on
Fridays, as a reminder of the Ohana spirit that Benioff
started the company with. Sam, a business development
representative at the company, explains on the company
blog that when employees wear the shirts, they are
“remembering the early days of Salesforce.com when the
company was just a few people and a bunch of servers in an
apartment. We’re reminding our teammates that even
today, it’s possible to work hard and have fun at the same
time.” He admits, “They’re just shirts—but the shirts
represent a history that I’m proud to support.”10 Today,
those who have been with Salesforce for over ten years are
inducted into the “Koa Club” and treated to a memorable
Hawaiian-themed appreciation dinner to mark the special
event in the employee’s journey with the company.11
Jason Martin, head of public services at Stetson
University, explains that the value of rituals such as these is
more than the expression of a fun theme. Rituals, he writes,
serve purposes that are both manifest and latent. “The
manifest purpose of the ritual generally contributes to the
workings of the organization and helps the organization
achieve its mission and accomplish its daily tasks. The
latent purpose is where the celebration of the sacred occurs.
Rituals . . . can be used to both instill new values into the
culture and change the organization’s culture.”12 In the case
of Salesforce, the Hawaiian-inspired rituals remind
employees regularly of the values of Ohana: “being
genuine, inclusive, caring, and compassionate, enjoying a
healthy dose of fun, and treating those around you like
family.”13
Martin also explains that rituals have particularly powerful
impact on culture because “they require active participation
by the organization’s members.” When employees
participate in a ritual, he says, “they are united emotionally
and their energy is focused upon that which is sacred: the
values the organization and its culture embrace and hold
dear.” He explains this is how rituals create community
within an organization. “Through the order, community,
meaning, and inspiration created by rites and rituals,
transformation occurs.”14 In other words, it wouldn’t be
nearly as effective for Salesforce executives to give talks
about Ohana or for the company to distribute a guide that
promotes its culture. By regularly and personally engaging
in company-specific rituals, employees experience Ohana
and contribute to cultivating it.
To identify appropriate rituals for your organization, start
with your core values and determine which ones need to be
promoted or reinforced the most. Then think about shared
experiences that you could create around them or identify
special events or dates that you could turn into celebrations
of these values. Look at the rituals in societal cultures of
various ethnic, geographic, or other groups to see if they
offer helpful parallels to your organization and its values.
Invite employees to brainstorm with you.
Consider important moments at your organization such as
critical customer presentations or other high-stakes
meetings. How might you use rituals to prepare your people
to take on these challenges? SDA Bocconi School of
Management Professor Paolo Guenzi explains that rituals are
used in sports to stimulate athletes’ emotions and reduce
their anxiety when they’re preparing to compete. When the
New Zealand rugby team performs the haka—a legendary
Maori posture dance—before their matches, Guenzi writes, it
triggers “feelings of connectivity, timelessness, and
meaning, which stimulate mental flow states. These, in turn,
reduce anxiety and increase energy and focus.”15 You can
achieve the same results with your rituals.
 In fact, you can influence your culture simply by adding
an element of ritual to a regular occurrence. An executive at
a media company—who was the designated leader of the
remote location that housed the division she headed as well
as other divisions of the parent company—used the first few
minutes of every all-hands meeting to reinforce a sense of
unity among everyone who worked under the same roof. In
a ritual that became known as “I’m excited about . . . ,” she
would kick off the meetings by saying, “I’m excited about”
and then she would announce a recent success or initiative
that had recently been launched, or progress on a challenge
or problem that her people had been grappling with in her
division.
Then people from all divisions would follow suit: they
would raise their hands and share what they were excited
about, always prefacing their remark with “I’m excited
about . . . .” Sometimes they were excited about the launch
of a program or a new product, or the fact that a new
employee was joining the group, or someone was back from
leave. Most employees, regardless of role, felt comfortable
sharing. Even the office manager would share milestones
about upgrades to the facility that were eagerly anticipated
by everyone. After each announcement, everyone would
clap. With this simple ritual, this leader effectively cultivated
a collaborative culture that enabled disparate parts of the
organization to come together and learn about each other
and what success looked like for them.
As you think about how you might use rituals to cultivate
your desired culture, don’t be afraid to imbue even the most
routine practices with significance. In the book Corporate
Cultures, organization consultants Terrence Deal and Allan
Kennedy say, “In strong culture companies, nothing is too
trivial. Any event that occurs in a work context is an event
to be managed.”16
 In setting up a ritual, your greatest challenge will be to
identify one that feels organic and meaningful to
employees. Sometimes it’s best to observe the ways
employees already interact with each other and see if an
existing behavior or practice can be imbued with cultural
meaning by explicitly linking it to an aspect of your desired
culture. For example, if you want to cultivate a stronger
culture of recognition and you notice that your employees
often send congratulatory messages to their colleagues
after a job well done, you could ask them to share their
messages with you, and then every Friday you could send a
thank-you note to each of the people who deserve to be
recognized.
Michael Kerr, author of The Humor Advantage, provides a
good list of opportunities for rituals, including:

• A start-of-the-day or -week ritual that jump-starts

people’s attitudes or reminds them of the biggest
priority of that day or week
• End-of-the-day or -week ritual that celebrates the top
successes of that day or week
• A different ritual for each day of the week
• A ritual to kick off each quarter or to celebrate the
end of the fiscal year
• Rituals around welcoming new employees and
making them feel part of the team
• A ritual that kicks off or ends every meeting
• A ritual that celebrates the founding date of your
company
• Rituals to celebrate every big sale over a certain
amount, each time your organization takes on a new
major client, or when your company hits a certain
monetary milestone or number of customers
 • Rituals that celebrate “smart failures” and setbacks
in fun ways17

There are so many possibilities, but take care not to

waste these opportunities by implementing widespread,
meaningless, or random rituals. Every company can—and
probably should—celebrate people’s birthdays to affirm its
commitment to employees. But your goal should be to
develop rituals that are more unique to your organization;
rituals that help you cultivate the specific culture that
corresponds to your brand type.
As you develop these rituals, be thoughtful about the
subtle messages that they send and their long-term
implications. Matthew Prince, CEO and cofounder of
Cloudflare, a cybersecurity firm, told Adam Bryant in the
New York Times’ “Corner Office” column how he thought
carefully about his company’s growth when considering a
proposed ritual. In the company’s early days, a young
engineer suggested that they start a tradition of going out
every Friday after work to get to know each other and talk
about the week. When Prince and his partner vetoed the
idea, they initially got a lot of flak for their decision. But they
explained to their people that they wanted the company to
be able to hire a diverse group of employees and going out
for drinks after work might not fit into the lifestyles of future
employees. “If they can’t feel like they’re part of the team,
then they’re not going to come work for us,” he said. “We
wanted to make Cloudflare a place where, no matter who
you were, you could come here and work, and you’d be
judged on that work. We weren’t trying to re-create
college.”18
Here are some examples of other companies’ rituals that
may inspire you or provide a thought-starter:

• Chevron employees reinforce the company’s core

value of safety by opening each meeting with a
 “safety moment,” whether to report on an accident
that was avoided due to safety procedures or to
simply encourage people to use handrails in the
stairways.19
• When BELAY, a company that provides virtual
assistants to companies, has a milestone or success
to celebrate or announce, its leaders call an
impromptu late-afternoon meeting. But since every
employee works remotely (BELAY doesn’t even have
a corporate office), everyone dials in from their
location through Zoom, a video conferencing system,
with beers in hand to participate in a virtual toast.
Founder Bryan Miles credits this ritual as well as the
company’s annual summits and regular community
service days with maintaining a strong culture within
his remote workforce.20
• At moving company Gentle Giants, every new hire is
required to run the stairs at Harvard Stadium. More
than a rite of passage, the ritual is considered an
integral part of training. The company believes that
only once someone has run up and down the 3,441
steps of the venerable venue is he or she prepared
for the “inevitable stress of moving day,” so it uses
the ritual to ensure its people are “always ready with
both a powerful body and calm mind.”21
• A different kind of moving company uses an entirely
different ritual for an entirely different purpose. At
11:11 A.M. every day (an easy time to remember),
College Hunks Hauling Junk holds a football-inspired
meeting in which selected staff kick field goals for
rewards. Doing so enables the company to make
what could be hard, menial work fun and to
differentiate its culture from competitors. Nick
Friedman, one of the company’s cofounders,
explains, “I think what sets us apart is that while
 we’re serious about quality service, we also know
how to have fun. When our team members have a
good time, they make the experience more enjoyable
for clients.”22

As with all aspects of your culture, your rituals should be

unique to your organization. What works at your company
might feel totally out of place or be misunderstood at
someone else’s. The key is to identify those routines and
activities that interpret and reinforce the specific elements
of your desired culture. Developing a ritual is a seemingly
small act that over time can produce big advances in your
culture-building.*

MAKE YOUR CULTURE VISIBLE THROUGH ARTIFACTS

Artifacts—symbolic objects or other physical items that

either make the organizational culture visible or that
commemorate a milestone—can play a similar role as rituals
in cultivating your desired culture. At Salesforce, the Ohana
culture is reinforced by artifacts such as the names of the
company’s conference rooms (e.g., Maka Launa and Hala
Kahiki) and the glass surfboard awards that are distributed
to acknowledge employees’ years of service. The Hawaiian-
themed artifacts subtly remind employees of the company’s
not-business-as-usual culture and provide them with a
means of identification with the Salesforce family.
Companies often use artifacts externally to reinforce their
brand identity. In Entrepreneur’s Guide to the Lean Brand,
Brant Cooper and Jeremiah Gardner explain how packaging,
uniforms, and logos serve as “memory triggers” for
customers. “The goal in building brand artifacts,” they write,
“is to create a strong, distinct memory structure, by which
your audience navigates a crowded marketplace to find its
way to the value you are providing.” By turning abstract
ideas into clear cues (sights, sounds, touches, tastes, and
smells), artifacts allow consumers “to better identify with
who you are, your story, and ultimately what value you offer
to them,” they write.23
Artifacts can also serve as memory triggers and play
explanatory roles inside an organization. Organizational
psychologist Amy Bucher says, “Cultural artifacts are
symbols that help both insiders and outsiders understand
what it means to belong to that group.” In addition, artifacts
engage employees the same way that rituals do: By using,
receiving, or otherwise interacting with artifacts, they
personally and directly experience the culture—even if it’s in
the smallest way. “For group members, artifacts can also
help solidify commitments and guide daily behaviors,”
Bucher explains.24
To determine how to use artifacts to solidify your
employees’ commitment to your culture and guide their
daily behavior, ask yourself, “What are the crucial memories
or associations that we need to trigger internally?” Then
consider how to link those memories and associations to
tangible objects including elements of your physical
environment, the language your organization uses,
technology and tools, artistic creations, expressions of style
(e.g., dress code or uniforms), and communications and
publications. As with rituals, even the smallest item can
symbolize a big idea.
The key is to be deliberate in your choices. “Cultural
artifacts can subtly but surely impact the way an
organization feels and functions,” Bucher explains.25 David
Burkus, author of The Myths of Creativity and Under New
Management, expounds on the point, writing that an
organization’s core values are the “plumb line” to which
artifacts must align in order to be meaningful and
productive. For example, he writes, “There is nothing
magical about a free food program, but a free food program
in a culture with basic assumptions about the value of
collaboration and sharing can enhance the creative output
of the entire organization by providing meals over which to
share ideas.”26
You might select very obvious artifacts like these
companies have:

• Amazon hands out “Door Desk Awards” to acknowledge

employees who develop an idea that creates significant
cost savings for the company, enabling it to charge
customers lower prices. Early on, the company used to
save money by hammering legs onto doors to build
desks. Since then, the door desk has become a symbol
of the company’s frugal, pragmatic culture.27
• City Year, a nonprofit organization that places young
Americorps members in urban schools to help students
stay in school and on track to graduate, is known for
the iconic red and yellow jackets that the members—
the organization’s employees—are required to wear
during their year of service. CEO and cofounder Michael
Brown says the jackets are a symbol of the members’
“idealism and commitment to give a year and change
the world.”28 Gillian Smith, former chief marketing
officer, explained to me that the jackets are more
instrumental than a simple uniform would be. They
instill “a sense of unity and pride” among the members.
The jackets also serve as a powerful identifier and
inspiration for the school’s students. “Students know
that if they see someone in our red jacket that person is
someone who can help them and who they can look up
to,” Smith says.29
Other companies use artifacts that are more subtle:
• When Chip Conley was CEO of the boutique hotel chain
Joie de Vivre, which he founded, he would show
employees his appreciation by giving them copies of
 the children’s book The Little Engine that Could when
one of them displayed a “can-do” attitude. The book, he
writes in PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo
from Maslow, helped “define the Joie de Vivre spirit. . . .
Although simple and somewhat sentimental, the book’s
optimistic and resourceful message resonates well with
Joie de Vivre’s history and reputation as a David
struggling among the Goliaths of the hospitality
industry.”30
• At Siebel Systems, the CRM software company,
customer satisfaction is a core value. To subtly reinforce
it, all the artwork on the walls comes from customers’
annual reports, and all the conference rooms are named
after customers.31

USE RITUALS AND ARTIFACTS TO ENGAGE

EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS

If your organization has external stakeholders such

as investors, franchisees, agencies, etc., who play
an integral role in shaping your brand identity, you
can use rituals and artifacts to extend your culture-
building efforts to them. City Year, for example,
uses its red jackets to engage its key donors.
Donors who meet a certain threshold of giving are
inducted into the “Red Jacket Society” in a special
ceremony where they are given a red jacket just
like the ones worn by the organization’s employees.
During the ceremony, donors join City Year leaders
and employees in a tight huddle so that everyone
can talk about what the jacket means to them. The
ceremony (the ritual) and the jacket (the artifact)
not only bond together employees and key external
stakeholders, but also cultivate the organization’s
 core value of inclusivity by welcoming into the
organization’s fold those external stakeholders.32

These are just a few examples of company artifacts. The

possibilities of artifacts that you can create are only limited
by your imagination. Be careful, though, not to create
artifacts that are simply gimmicky memory-triggering
devices that employees will find little value in, and don’t
default to the standard tchotchkes and swag that most
every company has doled out at some point. Your
employees don’t need another random T-shirt or wristband;
they do need powerful reminders of your desired culture.
Along with rituals, artifacts serve as the glue that binds your
people together and the scissors that carve out the virtual
shape of your organization.

PROMOTE YOUR CULTURE THROUGH POLICIES AND

PROCEDURES

From the beginning, Zingerman’s founders Paul Saginaw

and Ari Weinzweig have operated their company
thoughtfully and deliberately. Early on, they established “12
Guiding Principles” for the organization, including “Strong
Relationships” and “A Place to Learn,” and adopted “3
Bottom Lines”—great food, great service, and great finance
—to convey their goals.
Today, the culture at Zingerman’s is distinguished by a
strong, almost palpable passion for food, service, and
results. Everyone there loves food and is committed to
making and selling flavorful, high-quality, authentic
products. They don’t just strive to meet customers’
expectations, they aim to exceed them. They try to give
customers, as their Staff Guide notes, “a sense of
wonderment at how we have gone out of our way to make
their experience at Zingerman’s a rewarding one.” The
organization’s leaders cultivate creativity, hard work, and
commitment among employees so they will deliver this
brand of service. And they believe profits are the “lifeblood”
of their business, so they enroll as many of their people as
practical in operating and improving the company.33
To support these foundational values, Zingerman’s
emphasizes employees’ growth and development and seeks
to empower them through education. Its leaders state:
“Learning keeps us going, keeps us challenged, and keeps
us on track.” They educate employees about the food they
sell because “the more we learn about food . . . the more
effectively and profitably the business will operate.” And
they educate them about the workings of the business
because “the more we understand about the business, the
more productive we will be.”34 Zingerman’s commitment to
education and empowerment is so strong that one of its
businesses, ZingTrain, offers public seminars, private
trainings, and a host of resources to executives around the
world, including a series of books written by Weinzweig,
Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, which explain what his
company does and why and how they do it.35
Given their focus on educating employees in all aspects of
the business, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the
founders have developed a detailed guide of company
policies and procedures, as I described earlier in this
chapter. What may be surprising, though, is that their
employees actually read and refer to it. That may have
something to do with the guide’s tone and manner.
Zingerman’s Staff Guide used to be like so many other
companies’: a dry manual that gathered dust on the shelf.
But when Weinzweig and his colleagues asked themselves
why their product catalogs and other external
communications were “colorful, engaging, and informing”
but their internal materials weren’t, they decided to “apply
what we do for the consumer to the staff.”36
Today, the Staff Guide is designed in the same creative
style as the company’s external communications. Its
content is also more engaging than most. Alongside
explanations of the company’s systems, measurements of
success, “5 Key Areas that Make Us Different,” and
information on its extensive training and education offerings
are puzzles, pithy quips, and humorous anecdotes. These
additions draw employees into the guide and facilitate their
personal experience with it.37
But perhaps the best explanation for why the Staff Guide
is actually used by employees comes from Weinzweig. He
explained to me how, in keeping with the organization’s
culture of empowerment, the information in the guide is
differentiated between standard operating procedures
(SOPs) and what he calls “recipes”—general guidelines for
how Zingerman’s leadership wants an employee to do
something. “An SOP tells people the way you do something;
there’s no creative application,” Weinzweig said. “But
recipes require creativity.” Their “Service Recipe,” for
example, outlines three ingredients: (1) find out what the
guest wants; (2) get it for them accurately, politely, and
enthusiastically; and (3) go the extra mile—that is, “do
something that’s small but blows the customer’s mind.” It’s
up to the individual employee, Weinzweig explained, to
figure out what that something extra should be—even if
they have to do it on their very first day of work.38
These recipes are so powerful that many employees cite
them as one of the reasons why they like working for the
company. Recipes assume employees are capable of using
their judgment and creativity to do things in keeping with
the company’s culture—and with the intent of delivering on
the brand promise. Employees, in turn, appreciate being
trusted to contribute in their unique way. “You treated me
like I was smart from the beginning,” employees have told
Weinzweig. For him, recipes are a way to “honor people’s
integrity, intelligence, and creative ability and require them
to put them to use.”39
“A handbook is one of the top materials a leader can
develop,” he says. “It’s an essential communications
tool.”40 The Zingerman’s Staff Guide is specific and
prescriptive when it needs to be, but otherwise it is a
collection of culture-building information, insights,
inspiration, and examples that help employees understand
what the company is all about.
Zingerman’s serves as a terrific model for how all
companies should leverage their policies and procedures to
cultivate their desired culture. Here are the steps involved:

Step 1: Establish Policies and Procedures that

Align with Your Culture

First, establish policies (decisions and behavioral norms and

guidelines) and procedures (plans of action required to carry
out or implement policies) that are right for your
organization and that reflect the uniqueness of your culture.
As always, start with the overarching purpose of your
organization. What strategies have you set to pursue it? And
which of the company’s core values would support those
strategies? Once you’ve identified these strategies, you can
create guidelines and procedures to achieve them and
support your values.
For example, Google’s original purpose (“to organize the
world’s information and make it universally useful and
accessible to everyone”41) and business strategies
(pioneering new offerings that attract audiences to use its
search engine more often) required a highly empowered
workforce and core values that promote innovation. As a
result, the company instituted a policy allowing employees
to use 20 percent of their time to work on what they think
will most benefit the company.42
For each policy you establish, Nancy Flynn of the ePolicy
Institute recommends asking yourself a series of questions:

• Who is the intended audience for this policy?

• Why does this particular situation or behavior merit a
formal rule?
• What do we hope to accomplish with this policy?
• What benefits will this policy deliver to our
organization and our employees?
• Are employees likely to respond positively or
negatively to this policy?43

Craft each policy by answering these questions in a way

that conveys and cultivates your desired culture. And
remember to articulate each policy so that it is clear,
relevant, and accessible to employees.
The following are some of the policies and procedures you
should consider establishing or revamping:

• Employee benefits (beyond holidays and insurance)

• Attendance and working days/hours/locations
• Pay periods, days, methods
• Paid time off: vacation, sabbaticals, sick days, and
other personal days
• Family and medical leave
• Use of supplies, technology, equipment, and vehicles
• Dress code
• Approvals of budgets, expenses, people decisions,
etc.
• Customer service standards
• Training and education
 • Office visitors
• Recycling and other sustainability practices
• Use of social media
• Communications
• Office decor
• Discipline and termination
• Health and wellness
• Performance planning and reviews

As you look through these, remember that many policies

and procedures must be in place for legal or regulatory
reasons and they often must follow specific laws—they’re an
important and necessary part or organizational life. But your
company policies and procedures should serve a purpose
beyond legal compliance. If you develop your employee
handbook for legal reasons only, you will likely set a tone of
defensiveness and give the appearance that the company
considers employees variables that need to be controlled
rather than partners in creating something special.
But if you think of your policies and procedures as the
foundation for the relationship between your employees and
your organization, you can use them to express its unique
core values, show employees how to work together to fulfill
its overarching purpose, and convey its distinctive
personality. Consider the following examples:

• A policy at Joie de Vivre asks every employee to

spend a night each quarter in one of the company’s
hotels other than the one where they work (at the
company’s expense, of course). The policy is
designed to help employees see the guest
experience with fresh eyes, which in turn supports
one of the company’s culture goals: encouraging
employees to define their work by Joie de Vivre’s
purpose (delivering a great guest experience), not by
 the specific tasks assigned to them that might or
might not involve contact with a customer.44
• San Francisco–based advertising agency Traction has
“The Burning Man Policy,” which refers to the
notoriously wild, weeklong art and self-expression
festival that takes place every year in the Nevada
desert. The policy states that the company “will
prioritize requests for time-off—even if employees
have no vacation time left—to attend events that
inspire or enhance professional and/or creative
development such as Burning Man or SxSW.” CEO
Adam Kleinberg explains that he and his colleagues
created the policy to ensure employees would be
able to attend events that “inspire creativity,
innovation, and original thought.” As a creative
agency, Traction sees these events as “rare
opportunities to light the fire of creative energy that
fuels this business,” so it doesn’t shy away from
encouraging employees to participate in them even if
other companies would be concerned about the
nudity, drug use, and sex that some, like Burning
Man, might involve.45
• Motley Fool, the company behind the investment
advice website, says one of its core values is
“Honest. Make us proud.” In that spirit, its “Fool
Rules” guide tells employees it’s okay to send and
receive personal emails at work and that no one at
the company monitors emails or checks employees’
computers. By allowing employees to use their
computers at their own discretion, the company
conveys that it trusts them to use their time
honestly.46
 Step 2: Design a Compelling Employee
Handbook or Guide

The next step is to codify your policies and procedures into

a guide or handbook that is designed as if it were a
communications piece for an external audience. If your
guide is high-quality and designed to engage, employees
will be more likely to read and regularly refer to it. Be sure
the tone and manner of the guide or handbook aligns with
your brand. Your brand identity and culture should be
mutually reinforcing, even in the styles used to
communicate your policies and procedures.

Step 3: Engage Employees with Your Guide

Developing and publishing your policies and procedures is

only the beginning. You must then disseminate the guide
and train employees on the policies and procedures in it.
Engage new employees with your guide right from the
beginning during their on-boarding process. At Zingerman’s,
Weinzweig and Saginaw personally conduct orientations for
all new employees even though the company has grown to
over 500 employees. In these “Welcome to Zingerman’s
Community of Businesses” classes, they convey “the
intellectual, emotional, historical, and ethical story of
Zingerman’s, and some of the key ways we work to make it
all happen,” Weinzweig writes in his latest book.47 They
review material from the Staff Guide in the class, but he
believes offering both the class and the guide are important
because different people learn in different ways.
When new employees experience the company’s
founders’ personal involvement with the guide, they sense
the importance of the policies and procedures outlined in it
—and are more likely to absorb and use them. Weinzweig
considers teaching the class so critical to the company’s
culture-building efforts that, he writes, doing so is “one of
the last things we’ll give up in the steady and sustainable
march of our organizational progress.”48
You should also engage your employees with your guide
by keeping it up-to-date. University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth Professor Michael Griffin says an employee guide
should be a “‘living document’—very much dynamic—
subject to change.” He explains, “Existing policies need to
be expanded, supplemented, and revised as business
conditions change, as business process reengineering takes
place, as an organization downsizes, and as quality
improvement initiatives are implemented.”49 Whenever you
make policy changes, use the occasion to renew employees’
attention to your guide.

DESIGN EVERY DETAIL

In my previous book, What Great Brands Do: The Seven

Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the
Rest, I described how great brands sweat the small stuff in
their customer experiences because they know all the little
things they do for someone in person are far more
influential in shaping brand perceptions than all the big
things they promise in their advertising. Great brands
design their customer experiences down to the finest details
of execution and constantly search for new opportunities for
brand expression in every element of what they do.
Great companies apply that level of detail and discipline
inside their organizations as well. They cultivate their
desired culture through every aspect of the organization
from their employee handbook to how they run or open a
meeting. They know that even the smallest rituals and
artifacts and the most mundane of policies and procedures
can communicate and reinforce their overarching purpose,
core values, and desired culture. Like Salesforce,
Zingerman’s, and the other companies described in this
chapter, they leverage small and sometimes seemingly
inconsequential aspects of the business to make big,
significant statements.
In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to launch culture
changes that lead to brand-culture fusion—including those
involving rituals, artifacts, policies, and procedures—through
employee brand engagement efforts.
 Key Takeaways from This Chapter
• To nurture your desired culture, infuse even the
smallest and most ordinary (but still influential)
aspects of your organization’s daily life with your
values and purpose.
• Create rituals that interpret the unique and
specific elements of your desired culture and
reinforce your most important core values.
• Use artifacts as “memory triggers” of your
desired culture and the daily behaviors you
expect from employees.
• Include “recipes”—general guidelines for
behavior that allow employees to exercise their
own judgment and apply their own creativity—in
your policies and procedures.
• Draw your employees into your policies and
procedures with an engaging handbook that is
produced with the same tone and attention to
detail as a communication tool created for
customers.
 CHAPTER 7

IGNITE YOUR TRANSFORMATION

Read this chapter to learn:

• Why brand-culture fusion depends on employee
brand engagement
• How to launch the fusion process through brand
engagement experiences and integrated
communications campaigns
• How to use brand toolkits to facilitate employees’
ongoing engagement with your desired culture
and brand

If your company employed over 77,000 people in over

twenty-seven locations and needed to execute a company-
wide, comprehensive training program, no one would fault
you for hiring an outside company or using an e-learning
platform to execute it. But the leadership at MGM Resorts
considered neither an adequate option when in 2010 they
set out to train their workforce as part of a wholesale brand
and culture transformation. They believed it was imperative
to meet with every single employee in person to truly
engage them and to achieve the high degree of consistency
in the desired brand and culture it wanted across all its
properties. Their ambitious training and engagement
agenda reflected the magnitude of the transformation they
set out to accomplish.
 MGM Resorts had adopted a strategy to reposition itself
from merely a casino company to a worldwide resort and
entertainment company. It was a bold move that involved
leveraging its brand and expertise to develop entertainment
venues and hotels that were not gaming-centric—such as
Bellagio, MGM Grand, and Skylofts—around the world. The
change was as much a strategic business investment as it
was a brand metamorphosis. Lilian Tomovich, the
company’s chief experience and marketing officer,
explained to me that the company wanted to transform
itself into “what we believed was at the core of our DNA:
entertainment.”1
While the company developed and acquired new
properties and initiated advertising campaigns to execute
the brand repositioning, its executives knew that they
couldn’t solely direct their efforts externally. Tomovich
recalled their thinking at the time: “We can’t tell a story to
Wall Street and consumers that we can’t deliver on and
employees can’t understand. If we’re going to reposition the
brand, we’re going to have to transform the way we do our
work and attack our culture to become more consumer-
centric.”2
Moreover, as a hospitality company, MGM Resorts realized
that its employees must be engaged in a culture that is
aligned and integrated with the company’s brand so they
are equipped and empowered to constantly provide
excellent customer service that delivers on the brand
promise. “MGM is in the experience business,” she noted.
“We work very hard to ensure we deliver amazing
experiences, but sometimes we miss, and that’s when we
need an incredibly strong culture and backbone to recover
and win back consumers.”3
As a result, Tomovich and her team initiated an internal
culture change effort that they called “We Are the Show.”
The goal was to engage employees—even by the name of
the initiative—with the idea that they played a role in
delivering a “show” to guests. Using the metaphor of a show
not only reinforced the company’s desired brand identity as
an entertainment brand but also helped seed the “SHOW”
acronym that summarized its desired culture: S for smile
and greet the guest; H for hear their story; O for own the
experience; and W for “Wow” the guest.4
Tomovich and her team kicked off the culture
transformation initiative with a summit for the company’s
top 7,000 leaders, where they explained why they were
embarking on the transformation and what it would take to
accomplish it. They also showed them how to train their
direct reports, cascading the desired culture throughout the
organization, so that after eight months, all 77,000
employees would be trained personally by their managers.
In these sessions, employees went through a custom
curriculum that engaged them with the attitudes and
behaviors that were consistent with the new desired culture.
For example, leaders used “Skillbuilder” templates to take
their employees through property- and department-specific
guidelines and expectations, such as “Be visible and
accessible to guests with open body language and friendly
facial expression.”5
Tomovich and her team also developed an internal
communications campaign that they launched in
conjunction with the initiative. The campaign included
posters that showed employees at work under the headline
“This Is My Stage,” regular news updates to leaders and
“daily team update” emails to generate enthusiasm across
the board, and signage specifically for display in “back of
house” areas. These communication efforts reached all
employees from all angles, thus creating “360 degree
integration” and contributing to the company’s culture
transformation.6
 As part of their training, leaders were given a leadership
playbook and an “engagement calendar” to help them plan
the content and timing of their initial training sessions with
their employees, as well as regular follow-up discussions.
Tomovich’s team also gave leaders an engagement toolkit
that included teaching aids, such as “SHOW cards” they
could use to facilitate discussions on the different elements
of the SHOW acronym and to reinforce their training on a
continuous basis. Even as I write this book, her team
continues to cultivate the desired culture by sending leaders
reminders of questions and topics they can review with their
employees.7
The all-encompassing approach to transforming the
company’s culture and brand was fueled, as Tomovich
explains, by the company’s “remarkable passion and
interest in changing the focus of employees.” MGM Resorts
has achieved its desired culture because it “continues to
have the same conversation; it’s not an afterthought,”
Tomovich clarifies. The leaders’ conviction in the brand-
culture connection, she believes, was the reason why the
company accomplished a successful internal
transformation.8 The company has also realized financial
gains from its efforts, reporting increased revenues, REVPAR
(a hospitality industry key metric), and net income in 2016.9
To change your brand and culture, you must engage your
employees just as rigorously as MGM Resorts has. You must
kick off your cultural and brand transformation efforts and
communicate them clearly and creatively—and you must
continuously keep these efforts alive thereafter. The key to
launching these efforts and to keeping the momentum going
is employee brand engagement—that is engaging your
employees with your brand deeply and completely. In this
chapter I will lay out three tactics for doing so, starting with
launching your journey to brand-culture fusion with
employee brand engagement experiences, continuing the
effort with internal communications campaigns, and
developing toolkits to facilitate ongoing employee
engagement with your desired culture and brand.
But first, what is employee brand engagement?

EMPLOYEE BRAND ENGAGEMENT CREATES CULTURE

CHANGE

Employee brand engagement is the process of immersing

your employees in your brand—what it stands for; why it’s
important; what it entails; and how they are to nurture,
reinforce, and interpret it—so that they form a meaningful
connection with it. As I explained in Chapter 2, employee
brand engagement involves personal and emotional
engagement with your brand (e.g., employees’ sense of
personal connection to your overarching purpose),
engagement with your brand in the day-to-day (e.g., their
belief that they are responsible for building your brand), and
engagement in your brand strategy (e.g., their
understanding of your brand’s target audiences and their
primary wants and needs). Essentially, employee brand
engagement involves engaging employees with their
emotions, actions, and intellect.
To be clear, employee brand engagement is different from
“employer branding” or “employment branding,” terms that
refer to an organization’s efforts to enhance its image to
attract and retain talented employees. It’s also more than
“internal marketing” or “invertising,” which describes when
an organization promotes its brand to employees as it would
to customers and expects them to “buy” the message its
leaders or marketing department are trying to “sell” to
them. Having an image as a good employer and trying to
make employees feel good about your brand is important,
but these alone won’t cultivate the mindset and behaviors
that contribute to your desired culture.
Your employees must internalize your brand. They must
understand what your brand strategy is and why it’s
important as well as how their work impacts brand
perceptions and, therefore, what is expected of them. That’s
what employee brand engagement is all about.
When you engage your employees with your brand
deeply and completely, you cultivate a culture that is so
intertwined with your brand that they become inseparable.
In their research on employee relationships, Dr. Lucy Gill-
Simmen and Professor Andreas Eisingerich at Imperial
College Business School in London found that employees
who show a strong relationship with the brand and strong
brand attachment are more likely to exhibit on-brand
behaviors than those who don’t. “The employee brand
relationship is an extremely complex process but one which
mirrors consumers’ relationships with the brand,” Gill-
Simmen told me. “When you can get your employees to
form a relationship with your brand through the benefits it
provides, you are onto a winner, since these employees do
extraordinary things for the brand in return.”10
But achieving employee brand engagement at this level is
pretty rare. A Journal of Brand Management paper shows
that four in ten employees struggle to describe their
organization’s brand or how they think customers feel their
organization is different from competitors.11 Brand
consultancy Tenet Partners reports that only 28 percent of
employees strongly agree that they know their company’s
brand values, and only one in five employees strongly agree
that company leaders communicate how employees should
live their company’s brand values.12
Even if your employees know your brand strategy, it is
not enough. As Gregg Lederman explains in Achieve Brand
Integrity, employees shouldn’t just understand your brand
and the behaviors required to deliver on it. They must be
committed to doing them, and then they must actually do
them. To get employees to “buy in,” he writes, “you need to
ensure that employees know how to take action and are
able to actually do it.”13 That’s where brand engagement
and the three tactics I describe in this chapter—brand
engagement experiences, internal communications
campaigns, and toolkits—come into play.

STAGE GREAT EMPLOYEE BRAND ENGAGEMENT

EXPERIENCES

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me

and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Learning and
engagement are, indeed, most effectively accomplished
when you involve people experientially. That’s why staging
experiences for your employees to engage personally and
interactively with your brand is crucial.
Employee brand engagement experiences are vibrant,
thoughtfully designed programs and initiatives created
either to launch a cultural or brand initiative or to
reinvigorate it after a period of time. When launching brand-
culture transformation efforts within your company, these
experiences can help you explain to all employees where
you’re taking the organization, why, and what role they play
in that transformation. Like the cascading training sessions
at MGM Resorts, which immersed all 77,000 employees in
the company’s new brand strategy and what would be
required of everyone to deliver on that new brand,
employee brand engagement experiences can activate the
attitude and behaviors that characterize your desired
culture.
Organizations with large numbers of frontline employees
who interact daily with customers are not the only ones who
benefit from employee brand engagement experiences.
Even companies where the majority of employees don’t
interface directly with customers can leverage these
experiences to fuel their cultural transformation.
San Diego–based Mitchell International, a $300 million
automotive insurance software company, designed a
remarkable brand engagement program to involve its
employees with “The Mitchell Way”—the company’s
mission, vision, brand promise, and brand beliefs (core
values). An explanation of The Mitchell Way had been
published and distributed to all employees, but the
company needed to “get it into everyone’s hearts and
minds,” Jennifer Forman, the company’s marketing leader,
told me. “We needed to educate them, to show how we all
work together to deliver on The Mitchell Way.” So Forman
and her team created “The Mitchell Way Day” to inspire and
galvanize Mitchell employees.14
The Mitchell Way Day, as its name suggests, was a one-
day event that included all sorts of activities dedicated to
engaging employees in the company’s desired culture and
brand. One of the most successful activities of The Mitchell
Way Day was the department exhibits. A few weeks prior to
the event, Forman’s group asked all department leaders to
enlist their people in creating science-fair-type exhibits
showing how their department had been inspired by the
company’s core values to positively impact customers. Even
after arming them with arts and crafts supplies and issuing
a call to be as creative as possible, Forman was still unsure
if the exercise would be effective at engaging the engineers
and developers who make up the majority of Mitchell’s
1,700-person workforce.
But on The Mitchell Way Day, when the groups revealed
their exhibits, she was “blown away” by their ingenuity and
creativity. The exhibits were colorful, fun, and innovative—
some even incorporated mechanical features to create
motion and interactivity. But most important, they delivered
on the assignment. One department’s exhibit used a golf
swing metaphor to exemplify how it implemented a
streamlined process for customers that aligned with the
company’s “simplicity” core value; another employed a
foosball game design to show the value “passion for
delivering results” (the employees’ department was
represented by the foosball team persistently moving the
ball toward a sales goal). Forman observed, “People really
do get engaged when you create opportunities to celebrate
what we do.”15
The Mitchell Way Day event also featured interactive
installations, some focusing on the core values, others
reinforcing other elements of The Mitchell Way. One
installation, for instance, allowed employees to adopt a
customer persona and listen to a day-in-the-life narrative of
that customer—a powerful way for employees to understand
their customers better and discover how to fulfill the
company purpose of empowering them. A fun-house mirror
display reminded employees about the importance of
customer perceptions—even potentially distorted ones—of
the Mitchell brand. And coffee stations that encouraged
employees to customize their drinks were set up to remind
everyone of the company’s core value of being “personal” in
the way they interacted with customers and each other.
Forman and her team also distributed kits to remote
offices to help them set up their own installations, sent
packages to employees who worked out of their home
offices, and set up a live stream for everyone to tune into
the CEO’s presentation at the event.16
While The Mitchell Way Day was a fun and energizing
experience, Forman made sure it was first and foremost a
learning one. To stage an experience that gets employees
involved with brand and culture, she explained, “You have to
begin with what you want people to walk away with and
then start framing the event.” While developing the event,
she and her team repeatedly asked themselves what
elements of the desired culture they wanted to cultivate and
carefully designed each activity and installation to be a
learning opportunity. “We were not just having an event to
have an event,” she said. They were moving people along
what she called “brand-culture indoctrination phases,” from
simply being aware of The Mitchell Way to being ready to
defend and promote it, and eventually to becoming a
passionate advocate for it.17
Follow-up surveys showed that Forman and her team
achieved the learning objective they set for The Mitchell
Way Day. The company has seen a marked increase in
employees’ belief that the company is delivering on its core
values and in their understanding of what delivering on the
company’s brand promise means.18

How to Create Multi-Dimensional Brand

Engagement Experiences

When launching a cultural transformation, you should stage

an employee brand engagement experience for every single
employee, either by bringing all employees together in one
venue for a single event or by holding sessions for separate
regions, departments, or groups over a period of time.
Either way, the experience should be multi-dimensional and
experiential and include a mixture of elements, such as a
presentation by company leadership, hands-on exercises,
facilitated discussions, distribution of tools and instructions,
and department- or role-specific content.
Hands-on exercises and facilitated discussions are best
conducted in small groups of eight to twenty people. If
you’re gathering a large group, consider setting up different
“stations” for different activities that employees rotate
through in smaller clusters, just as Mitchell did with its
installations.
The experiences should also be designed to meet your
specific learning objectives. As such, you might stage
different activities with different groups of employees. Here
are just a few examples of the activities I use for my clients
and the objectives I usually use them for:

Sprechen Sie brand? This exercise is helpful in

increasing understanding of what a brand is and why it’s
important in general. It’s particularly useful for engaging
employees who don’t see how they influence customers’
brand perceptions. Ask each participant to name their
favorite brand and explain why they like it. Write down
everyone’s contribution, share the list with all participants,
and facilitate a discussion about how these brands are liked
because of what they do for customers, such as producing
quality products, providing excellent customer service, or
enabling them to do something they hadn’t been able to
before. You might want to point out that rarely does
someone like a brand because of its logo or tagline. Ask
participants which attitudes and actions of the people inside
those companies they think might have resulted in the
brand being so well-liked or successful. After this discussion
about brands in general, you can then transition to talking
about your brand and what employees in various roles can
do to inspire your customers to consider it their favorite
brand.

Brand identity collage. This experience increases your

employees’ understanding of your brand identity. Launch a
photo scavenger hunt in which groups of employees take
pictures or look through magazines to find images that
embody the company’s brand identity—not just pictures of
products or the logo, but also of employees, customers,
artifacts, tools, physical spaces, etc. Instruct each group to
assemble a collage of the images and to use captions and
headlines to explain its interpretations of the brand to the
other groups. Then, to create one common understanding of
your brand among all groups, facilitate a discussion of the
collages to clarify what ideas and images align best with
your brand and why.

Funeral and birth. This experience helps to break ties

with your previous brand or culture and increase adoption of
the new one. Stage a mock funeral in which you put your
previous brand identity and/or core values into a grave. Ask
people to give brief eulogies about what everyone should
remember about them and why they need to change. Then
stage a mock baby shower in which you celebrate the
arrival of your new brand identity and/or core values. Ask
people to give toasts to celebrate what they like about them
and how they expect them to develop.

Customer listening booth. This experience helps to

develop customer empathy and disperse knowledge of how
customers perceive your brand. Set up phone-booth-like
stations where employees listen to prerecorded interviews
with customers about their experiences with the brand.
After employees have visited the booths, facilitate a
discussion about their learnings and conduct a
brainstorming session to develop ideas for how to improve
the brand experience.

Game show. This experience helps to increase

knowledge of your brand strategy and target customers.
Hold a game-show-like contest in which teams or individuals
compete for prizes based on their speed and accuracy of
answering questions about the elements of your brand
strategy and target customer profiles.
 If it’s not possible to stage in-person experiences, today’s
technologies provide the capabilities for you to provide
brand engagement experiences that are just as immersive
and instructive—and sometimes even more. Consider how
Telenor, the Norwegian telecom company, relies on “The
Visionary,” an e-learning program, to successfully
accomplish its engagement goals. The program, as Nicholas
Ind describes in Living the Brand, was designed to develop
individual employees’ understanding of Telenor’s brand
vision and core values, “not just to inform employees about
the values, but rather to see the applicability of the
values.”19
The Visionary is a modular program comprising video
sequences that present various scenarios and choices for
employees to select from. With each selection, employees
demonstrate how they would change their behavior and
communications in each situation to align with the
company’s core values. Once they complete the program,
their selections are scored to show what impact they would
have on the brand and customers. “Not only does this
wrong way/right way approach encourage the user to learn
how to use a value in a specific instance,” Ind explains, “but
it makes the more generalizable point that seemingly non-
brand events have clear brand implications.”20
With a little creativity, you can create your own live or
digital experiences to launch your cultural transformation
and help employees connect with your brand, overarching
purpose, and core values in relevant and memorable ways.
You can also stage these experiences at different points on
your journey to refocus your people and reinvigorate your
cultural transformation efforts. Whenever they need
inspiration, your people become participants in your
company’s journey to brand-culture fusion through these
experiences.
 Whether you are designing your employee brand
engagement experience to launch your cultural
transformation or to reignite it, the goal should be the same:
to get your employees excited about your brand and to help
them identify the attitudes, decisions, and behaviors they
need to adopt to support your desired brand identity. A
great employee brand engagement experience is by
definition a discrete event, though, whereas cultural
transformation requires a sustained effort. To engage your
employees over a period of time, you should also put
together a communications campaign that convincingly
supports and continues your transformation.

CAREFULLY CRAFT COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGNS

In 2013, O2, a telecommunications business that is part of

Madrid-based Telefónica, was in the midst of transforming
from a mobile service provider to a digital
telecommunications brand. Like the leaders at MGM Resorts,
O2’s management knew that repositioning the company’s
brand required changing the customer experience, and that,
in turn, required changing their culture and engaging their
employees in the change. But they found that their
employees weren’t exactly clear on what being a digital
telecommunications brand entailed. So the company
launched an integrated employee brand engagement
communications campaign to increase employees’
understanding of digital telecom and O2’s motivation for
undertaking the transformation.21
The “Rally Cry” campaign, as O2 labeled it, centered on
the colloquialism “going for a 10 out of 10” with customers.
The campaign was kicked off with a high-energy event at
10:10 on April 10, 2014, which had been preceded by a
series of fun 10-themed videos featuring Telefónica’s board
members. At the lively event, which featured music and
games for the employees, more videos were shown to
communicate the brand vision and its targets. Afterwards,
the company released a Rally Cry special internal TV
program of “sofa chats” with senior leaders who discussed
the company’s digital telecom strategy and its results.22
The Rally Cry campaign also included a comprehensive
set of communications to continue momentum over time. To
allow employees to communicate with senior leaders as well
as with each other about the rebranding efforts, the team
behind the campaign created a company-wide social
networking group on Yammer. It also produced notice boards
that were put up in the back of its retail stores that showed
actual store performance numbers in relationship to the
company’s digital telecom goals. And it published a
dashboard on an ongoing basis that summarized activities
related to the rebranding initiative, and reported the results
from the campaign in weekly leadership team
presentations. 23

The communication efforts were an integral part of the

Rally Cry campaign, which succeeded in helping employees
understand what a digital telecom company is and why and
how O2 set out to become one. In a postcampaign survey,
92 percent of employees said they fully understood the
company strategy. The Rally Cry campaign communications
also increased engagement, with 88 percent of employees
reporting feeling more engaged with the business.24
These improved attitudes among employees sparked
innovations that advanced the company’s new digital
telecom brand identity. Across the company, employees
were “vying to create new ways to enable and engage our
customers with our digital assets,” according to an O2
report submitted for the 2016 Marketing Society Excellence
Awards. Employees at one store, for instance, introduced a
near-field communication-enabled kiosk for mobile
customers that allowed them to upload O2 apps on their
phones as soon as they bought them. “Rally Cry has been a
major success,” the O2 report concludes. “Our people were
fully engaged with the programme, and their actions
enabled us to exceed our targets 2 years running, leading to
increased customer engagement and customer retention.”25
O2’s brand transformation was not only successful
because it effectively engaged employees with a big event
—an experience—but also because it was supported and
extended through a comprehensive and continuous
communications campaign. In addition, the campaign was
carefully orchestrated with the same level of detail and
forethought as external communication campaigns are. This
thoughtful approach to employee communications,
however, is not common in most organizations.
If you’re honest, your organization probably has a
different—lower—standard for its internal communications
than it does for communications created for external
audiences. Most do. PR Week observes, “Employee
communications has never been viewed as a particularly
glamorous part of the communications industry. Staff are
often sidelined as an HR concern, in favour of customers,
investors or the media.”26 Colin Mitchell, a former executive
at advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, says that most
companies’ approach to the task of communicating with
employees is “so generic, so removed from the business’s
frontline realities, and, frankly, so dull.”27
But as the success of O2’s Rally Cry campaign
demonstrates, the same standards you use to communicate
with customers should apply to your employee
communications. After all, your goals—to get people’s
attention, appeal to and engage them, and prompt them to
action—are the same for both groups. If you’re trying to
cultivate employee brand engagement, upholding the same
high standards for your internal communications as your
external ones is even more important, since these employee
communications give you the chance to reinforce your
brand message by embodying your brand attributes and
personality.
Your employee brand engagement communications
should conform to the basics of all good external
communication:

• Be clear. Convey the information you want

employees to know and what you expect them to do
as a result without any jargon or nuance, which are
often confusing.
• Be explicit, even prescriptive. Don’t assume
people will interpret information in the same way.
• Be creative. Like customers, employees are human
beings, emotional creatures, so communications
must touch them emotionally. Design your
communications to inspire as well as teach.

Develop your employee brand engagement

communications as if you were running a marketing
communications campaign, as O2 did. First, target discrete
segments with discrete messages based on their needs and
your desired outcomes (e.g., managers might require a level
of detail about certain aspects of the initiative, the business,
or the results expected from these efforts that wouldn’t be
appropriate for other employees). Then, plan to reach each
audience and trigger desired actions at the right times in
the engagement process. For example, when you kick off
your cultural transformation initiative, you might simply
want to generate awareness and run communications that
preview your efforts, explain why you are moving toward
your desired culture, and what that will entail. With later
communications, you might drive employees to specific
actions like attending an event, signing up for a class, or
accessing a tool.
 Different people learn in different ways, so use multiple
communications methods and channels to engage more
people more effectively. Use videos to share stories, as O2
did with the 10-themed videos featuring board members.
Rely on emails to convey instructions (e.g., how to download
a tool or sign up to participate in a special event). Produce
high-quality banners, posters, and other large-format
signage to broadcast short messages about your brand or to
inspire employees to engage in the rebranding efforts, like
the employee posters at MGM Resorts. And leverage any
intranet or internal collaboration platforms to communicate
more informally about your brand and culture and to
encourage conversations, as O2 did with its dedicated Rally
Cry Yammer group.
Above all, employee brand engagement communications
should motivate employees at a personal level. In Brand
from the Inside, Libby Sartain and Mark Schumann observe
that companies should adopt a more audience-centric
posture when creating employee communications today.
“We must move from an emphasis on business saying what
it wants to say, to an emphasis on articulating what
employees . . . need to hear—the ‘What’s in it for me.’”28
You need to explain why your cultural transformation is
important to every employee—how it will help them do their
jobs; make their experience better; ensure the viability of
the company, which increases their job security; and so on.
Connecting the dots explicitly between each employee and
your brand is the crux of employee brand engagement—and
the key to culture transformation success. Mitchell, the
former Ogilvy executive, explains, “Failure to communicate
at a personal level can undermine the most sophisticated
and expensive rebranding campaign.”29

YOUR EMPLOYEE BRAND ENGAGEMENT

COMMUNICATIONS SHOULD BE:
 Clear
Explicit
Creative
Targeted
Multi-channel
Personal

DEVELOP TOOLKITS FOR ONGOING ENGAGEMENT

While staging interactive experiences and carefully crafting

high-quality employee communications campaigns can draw
attention to your cultural and brand transformation at
discrete periods of time, developing a “brand engagement
toolkit” is a powerful tactic to help your employees connect
with your desired brand on an ongoing, longer-term basis.
A brand engagement toolkit is a collection of materials
and tools that employees can access—likely through an
intranet portal or dedicated social networking site—and that
help them connect with the brand on three different levels:
their heads, hearts, and hands and feet.
To engage employees’ heads, for example, a toolkit might
contain flash cards or quizzes employees can self-administer
to test their own knowledge or use with others. Or they
might include “case studies” about situations employees
might encounter, including questions for them to answer or
discuss with their managers, or downloadable reports
(updated on a regular basis) with hard data and insights
about the brand, the brand strategy, and its related
business goals.
To engage employees’ hearts, a toolkit might contain
videos featuring customer stories or letters from customers
along with corresponding worksheets for employees to note
how the videos or letters inspire them to change their
attitudes and behaviors to improve the customer
experience. Or you might provide journals containing quotes
and brand- or customer-related images to encourage
employees to jot down their personal reflections of your
company’s culture or add their own quotes and images.
To engage employees’ hands and feet—their actions, that
is—a toolkit might contain decision guides, process
flowcharts, workbooks, or mobile apps containing role-
playing exercises or other activities that help them easily
align their decisions and actions with your desired culture.
The possibilities for your toolkit are endless and the tools
you include should be based on the specific needs of your
organization. But all effective toolkits share a common
element: they contain items that your people use to
accomplish a task or purpose. Messaging and other one-way
communications play a role in employee brand
engagement, but they are not tools. Effective employee
brand engagement tools are interactive and produce
outcomes however big or small.
Here are more examples:

• Workbooks containing quizzes, fill-in-the-blank

exercises, and sections for note taking to help
employees process information. Example: The
leadership playbooks that MGM Resorts distributed
during its leadership summit featured areas for
people to write in the dates they would train their
employees and their own ideas for how to engage
them.
• Note cards or other items for employees to
communicate or share with other employees.
Example: Brand Integrity, a culture consulting and
software firm, recommends setting up a system
where employees give “I Caught You” cards to
coworkers when they exhibit behaviors that are in
line with the desired culture or that support the brand
 identity. When a card is given to an employee, a copy
goes to his or her supervisor and recognition is given
to both the recipient and the recognizer.
• Digital games, polls, or activities to get employees to
interact with content or practice decision-making.
Example: Mortgage loan company Quicken Loans
deployed an online learning tool comprising
electronic flash cards, one for each of its core values,
and learning modules that engage users with the
flash cards in simple games like fill-in-the-blank and
matching terms and definitions.
• Displays or posters that employees use to express
their insights or post their progress. Example: When I
headed brand and strategy at Sony’s electronics
business unit, we developed an online bulletin board
and encouraged employees to post their insights
about and examples of the Sony brand in action.
People benefited from both sharing their ideas and
reading others’.

These toolkits serve as brand engagement references and

resources for employees over time. They can be deployed to
leaders and managers in advance of an employee
communications campaign or brand engagement
experience to preview what’s coming, they can be shared
with employees during these campaigns or experiences to
support them and collect feedback, and they can be used
afterward to continue the momentum and build on the
learning. The goal is to create a resource that your people
refer to regularly. That’s why employee brand engagement
toolkits should be designed to accommodate changes. You
should update the tools in it and add new ones regularly to
keep the content fresh and to prompt people to come back
to the toolkit often.
 A WORTHY INVESTMENT

If employee brand engagement sounds like a significant

undertaking, it is. Employee brand engagement
experiences, communication campaigns, and toolkits don’t
have to cost a lot of money*—but they do take time. MGM
Resorts’ Tomovich told me she and her team had started
working on their brand engagement efforts two years prior
to its launch and still considered themselves “knee-deep
into the journey.”30 A thorough employee brand
engagement program takes time to develop and implement
—and to see results.
But the investments are worth it. As Tomovich clearly
articulates, “Without aligning your culture to your brand,
you have no chance of winning the hearts and minds of
consumers. You will just have a hollow brand that can’t
deliver.”31
When launching the brand-culture fusion process,
consider how all three employee brand engagement tactics
—experiences, communications campaigns, and toolkits—
can be used in a combined, coordinated effort. But keep in
mind, these tactics are the means to an end. The true
measure of their effectiveness is when they’re no longer
needed. “You know it’s working when you no longer have
playbooks, templates, reminders, etc.,” Tomovich explained.
When employees start undertaking their own grassroots
approaches to support the desired culture, she said, you
know people are “on their way.”32

I have now covered all four strategies for infusing your

brand into your culture. If you think of your desired culture
as the vehicle that transports you from your existing state
to brand-culture fusion, I started Part 2 of this book
describing the engine of that vehicle—your organizational
design and operations. They are at the core of your efforts
and give you power. I then introduced the frame of the
vehicle, the main supporting structure for the culture—
employee experience. Then I showed how rituals, artifacts,
policies, and procedures express your desired culture,
essentially forming the design and features of the vehicle—
the sometimes small but distinctive aspects of it. And in this
chapter, I added the gas—employee brand engagement—to
propel your vehicle forward.
These are the essential strategies to nurture your desired
culture by aligning and integrating it with your brand
identity. They provide the path to achieve brand-culture
fusion if your culture is less developed or defined than your
brand, as I’ve found it is at most companies. But if your
culture is well established, you may achieve fusion by using
it to shape or reshape your brand. The next chapter shows
you how.

Key Takeaways from This Chapter

• The key to launching your efforts to infuse your

culture with your brand identity—and to keeping
the momentum going—is employee brand
engagement.
• When you engage your employees with your
brand deeply and completely, you cultivate a
culture that is so intertwined with your brand that
they become inseparable.
• Stage experiences for your employees to engage
personally and interactively with your brand and
brand strategy.
• To involve employees with your brand, craft
internal communications campaigns that are as
inspired and coordinated as external ones.
• Use multi-dimensional brand engagement
toolkits to keep your employees engaged with
your desired culture and brand on an ongoing
basis.
• Brand engagement tactics are the means to an
end—the true measure of their effectiveness is
when they’re no longer needed.
 CHAPTER 8

BUILD YOUR BRAND FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Read this chapter to learn:

• How to use your overarching purpose to inspire
external brand actions that define or redefine
your brand
• How to leverage your existing internal values to
evolve your brand toward your desired brand
identity
• How to use your culture as a brand differentiator

Patagonia’s very first catalog didn’t look much like a

catalog—its first fourteen pages featured a manifesto about
“clean climbing,” an approach to rock climbing in which
climbers avoid permanently damaging rocks by using
special techniques and equipment such as hexes and
chocks. Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s founder, felt so
strongly about the need for clean climbing that he devoted
so much valuable real estate in his first catalog to advocate
for it and made chocks the cornerstone of his climbing
hardware start-up.1
That was back in 1972. In the years since, Chouinard has
often expressed his convictions about environmental issues
through his company. In the mid-1990s, for example, after
learning about the devastating effects of chemicals used in
growing cotton, he determined that Patagonia would use
only 100 percent organic cotton in its products. Doing so
required the company to drop some of its most successful
products because there wasn’t enough supply of organic
cotton. The company also had to rework its entire cotton
supply chain, which resulted in the tripling of cotton costs.2
Also in the mid-2000s, Patagonia started making clothing
out of recycled materials, and more recently it expanded its
emphasis on recycling with a program through which
customers can donate as well as buy used clothing.3
Today, Patagonia’s commitment to the environment
permeates its organizational culture. Its mission statement
reads, “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm,
use business to inspire and implement solutions to the
environmental crisis.” Most employees share Chouinard’s
values and are just as passionate about operationalizing
them. They’ve ensured the company’s business strategies
and operations are informed by its overarching purpose to
protect and preserve the environment.4
That purpose influences Patagonia’s brand identity too.
Die-hard Patagonia customers have always known about the
company’s sustainable business practices. But as the brand
has grown to appeal to a more mainstream consumer, the
company has intentionally leveraged its core values and
purpose to define its brand identity. “Patagonia has long
used its catalog and website as an editorial outlet for stories
from the outdoors, seeding its environmental agenda amid
the colorful, high-end fleece,” a 2014 Fast Company article
reported. “But over the last few years, the brand has
stepped up its efforts to draw a clearer line between its
goods and its overall mission.”5
Vice president of global marketing Joy Howard explains
that customers usually come to Patagonia for its products.
In the past, it would have taken them awhile to learn about
the company’s environmental consciousness. “As a
marketing team,” Howard said, “the task is very simple, and
that’s to make it easy for people to discover what the
company is all about, and make sure it’s not hidden and
tough to access. Because once they do know, they’re in.
They’re with us.”6 To help customers discover Patagonia’s
purpose, Howard and her team have created a thirty-minute
documentary extolling the virtues of long-lasting and used
clothing, “DamNation”—a film that urges the U.S.
government to tear down what Patagonia calls “deadbeat
dams”—and other content marketing pieces.7 As customers
are exposed to Patagonia’s environmental efforts and
philosophy, they understand the brand the way Chouinard
and his employees do.
Patagonia is an example of a company that has leveraged
its well-defined, deeply entrenched culture to shape its
brand identity. Its purpose and values are crystal clear—and
that clarity is expressed in its brand actions and
communications, so that how Patagonia works on the inside
perfectly mirrors how the brand is perceived in the outside.
If your culture is as deeply rooted as Patagonia’s, then
trying to change it to align with your desired brand identity
—as I’ve advocated in the previous four chapters—might be
a mistake. In most cases, your attempts won’t work. They
will likely result in only superficial changes that fade away
after awhile or are quickly abandoned when pressures from
outside forces cause your people to retrench. There is a
greater risk of this happening if your organization has
entrenched subcultures of people who don’t see the need to
change. Or your efforts to change might be too much of a
stretch for your employees—especially if many of them
have been with your company for a very long time—and
they just aren’t able to adopt the new mindset and
behaviors needed to support your brand identity.
In some situations, you’re actually better off allowing your
culture to lead your brand. If your convictions are so strong
that you are more committed to promoting your purpose
and values than achieving any particular business or brand
goal, then you should prioritize your culture as the driver of
your brand identity. Or if you operate in the public sector or
yours is an institution such as a science or faith-based
organization where a well-defined brand was not needed in
the past, you can shape a more authentic brand identity
through the inherent values of your people than through an
external or contrived aspiration. So long as your culture is
not fundamentally toxic or dysfunctional, you can use it to
shape your brand. Whatever the case, the goal remains the
same—achieve brand-culture fusion by infusing your culture
into your brand.
In this chapter I share examples from a handful of great
organizations that have produced brand-culture fusion this
way, so you learn three strategies for leveraging your
culture in your brand: how to use your overarching purpose
to inspire external brand actions, how to leverage your
existing internal values to evolve your brand toward your
desired brand identity, and how to apply your culture as a
brand differentiator.

PUT YOUR PURPOSE INTO ACTION

In 2005, GE’s former CEO Jeff Immelt pledged to the world

to “address challenges such as the need for cleaner, more
efficient sources of energy, reduced emissions and
abundant sources of clean water.” Fulfilling this pledge
would involve doubling the company’s investment in clean
technology R&D, doubling its revenues from products and
services that “provide significant and measurable
environmental performance advantages to customers,” and
changing its operations to reduce carbon emissions and
become more energy efficient.8
Dubbed “Ecomagination,” this new business strategy was
the company’s latest interpretation of its overarching
purpose: turning imaginative ideas into leading products
and services that help solve some of the world’s toughest
problems. In fact, the Ecomagination website explains the
initiative is a natural expression of GE’s culture: “Working to
solve some of the world’s biggest challenges has inspired
our thinking and driven our actions for more than 125 years.
And as a technology company, sustainability is embedded in
our culture and business strategy.”9 By emphasizing
technology solutions as the cornerstone of the strategy,
Immelt drew upon the organization’s inherent strengths and
focus on innovation.
The new strategy required the company to dramatically
step up its culture. Joel Makower, chairman and executive
editor of GreenBiz Group, described how GE “created a set
of internal standards for what constituted Ecomagination
products and revenue, and a score carding system, audited
by outsiders, to measure Ecomagination’s energy and
environmental improvement claims.”
But GE didn’t simply stop with culture changes, it also
transformed its operations. It introduced a range of new
products and services, including hybrid locomotives and
steam turbines. It shed many business units, including
appliances, media, and financial services, so that the
company would be “firmly entrenched in engines, power
generation, water systems, and other businesses that sync
with Ecomagination’s focus on efficiency and emissions
reductions. It even reduced its own emissions by installing
solar panels and switching to natural-gas fired power
instead of oil.”10
It also strategically used this purpose-driven business
strategy to shape external perceptions of the company.
Immelt and other executives have met regularly with
customers, analysts, and regulators to discuss
environmental strategies and to identify new opportunities
to produce eco-friendly solutions. GE also initiated the
“Ecomagination Innovation Challenge,” an open competition
that invited people to submit ideas to help “power the grid”
and “power the home.”11
In the first year of the initiative, the company spent $90
million on an Ecomagination public relations and advertising
campaign. In addition to broadcast and online ads, it
launched a microsite for the initiative that showcased
animated vignettes of the company’s first seventeen eco-
friendly products and created interactive online games to
build awareness of eco-products and their benefits, such as
saving money. The games, featuring life on a fictitious island
named “Geoterra,” engage visitors in activities that involve
GE products.12
These efforts have produced a new brand identity for GE.
In the past, the company had been plagued with a
reputation as “an environmental dinosaur from the
industrial revolution,” as Alexander Haldemann, CEO of
MetaDesign, wrote in Huffington Post. It couldn’t shake the
bad PR it had generated from reports that claimed the
company had polluted the Hudson River for decades and
that former CEO Jack Welch refused to clean it up.13 Today,
GE’s customer research shows that awareness of its
Ecomagination efforts is higher than anything else that GE is
currently working on.14 The company continually receives
awards recognizing its environmental contributions, such as
the Gold Asian Power Award,15 and Fortune recently named
it to its 2016 “Change the World” list.16
Haldemann observes, “By making massive, bold changes
in how they conducted business, GE reinvented a new brand
story rooted in green innovation, thereby shifting how the
world perceived them.”17 Deb Frodl, Ecomagination’s global
executive director, confirmed that the strategy’s external
appeal was deliberate. “Eco is always so much more than
just a traditional sustainability program where we’re focused
internally,” she said. “We are bringing technology to market
to help our customers be as productive as they possibly can.
That strategy has been key to our success. It allows us to
scale and win the hearts and minds of both consumers and
our customers.”18 The internal and external success of
Ecomagination has produced significant growth for GE. In
2015 the company reported that the initiative had
generated up to $160 billion dollars in revenue.19
If you find that your overarching purpose—or even a new
corporate priority or core strategy that is deeply connected
to your purpose—is not well known or valued by your
customers, you can use a similar approach to GE’s: infuse
your brand identity with your culture and purpose. To define
or re-define your brand in this way, you must connect the
dots between your motivations and your actions clearly for
customers and other stakeholders.
While advertising campaigns will help draw attention to
your efforts, other communications, such as videos, reports,
documentaries, and social media content, are more likely to
generate word-of-mouth. When people are talking about
your brand, the messages they share with each other about
it are usually far more influential than any message your
company issues. So enroll customers and engage
influencers to help spread the word about what you’re doing
internally, why, and what difference it makes. Whenever
possible, link to actual actions you’ve taken or tangible
outcomes you’ve produced—results are far more persuasive
than promises.
To be clear, I’m not advocating that you promote your
corporate social responsibility programs. Too many
companies engage in corporate philanthropy, participate in
charitable activities, or run cause marketing campaigns that
have nothing to do with their overarching purpose. These
efforts do little more than generate some short-lived
goodwill. The results don’t last because they fail to influence
customers in a significant and meaningful way. I’m talking
about living out your purpose so that it impacts everything
in your organization, including its brand identity.
And while the two companies highlighted in this chapter
so far have undertaken environmentally-related initiatives, I
am not suggesting that aligning and integrating your culture
and brand only works with a green-inspired purpose. Any
overarching purpose, core values, and culture that are
unique can be used to define an equally unique brand
identity. Many progressive organizations of all kinds, in fact,
are living out their purposes through substantive actions. By
doing so, they are defining their brands clearly and
distinctively. Consider, for example, how Starbucks’
purpose, to “inspire and nurture the human spirit—one
person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time,” has
influenced its brand identity by inspiring a unique customer
experience.
From the company’s inception, former CEO Howard
Schultz emphasized cultivating and preserving an
organizational culture that would fulfill the company’s
purpose—one characterized by core values such as
“creating a culture of warmth and belonging, where
everyone is welcome,” and “being present, connecting with
transparency, dignity, and respect.”20 The company has
designed a unique experience for its employees (including
offering them stock options, comprehensive health
insurance, reimbursement for education, and other
generous benefits) so they feel the purpose and values
personally. Starbucks even calls employees “partners” to
signal the human, personal relationship that it aims to
develop with them—a relationship in line with its purpose.
This purposeful culture has produced a differentiated
customer experience. “The feel of Starbucks stores isn’t
created merely by the layout and the décor,” explain
consultants from Strategy&. “It exists because the people
behind the counter understand how their work fits into a
common purpose, and recognize how to accomplish great
things together without needing to follow a script.” Culture
and strategy are so tightly woven at Starbucks that culture
is what most strongly influences how customers experience
the brand, they observe.21
Both GE and Starbucks are distinguished from other
companies because their external brand identity is the
result, at least in part, of actions motivated by an internal
drive.

LEVERAGE YOUR VALUES TO REDEFINE YOUR BRAND

There are many types of organizations that naturally have a

stronger organizational culture than brand identity. Think of
organizations in industrial, scientific, or other sectors like
education and non-profits, where brand power has not
historically been a driver of customer choice or business
performance. Conglomerates with a portfolio of brands also
sometimes develop a unified corporate culture, but not a
cohesive corporate brand identity. And small businesses are
often more concerned with their internal operations than
their external identity.
These organizations, however, would greatly benefit from
a clear and unique brand identity that helps them stand out
from competitors and clarify their value to customers and
other stakeholders. If any of the above describe your
situation, then you too can use your core values to develop
a compelling brand identity.
In Chapter 2, I laid out a process for determining your
desired culture by pinpointing your brand type and then
identifying the core values that correspond to it. But you can
do the opposite: you can use the core values of your
organization to identify the brand type(s) that would be
most compatible with them.
 The following are twenty-seven common organizational
values that I described earlier in the book, along with the
general brand type that each typically corresponds to. Find
the top three values that characterize your culture:

Core Value Description Corresponding

Brand Type

Accessibility People at your Value

company make
themselves easy to
understand and
engage with,
regardless of rank
or role.

Achievement People at your Performance

company focus on
the successful
attainment of goals
typically by effort,
courage, or skill.

Caring People at your Service

company
consistently
display kindness
and concern for
others.

Competition People at your Disruptive

company strive to
win or be more
 successful than
others.

Consistency People at your Performance

company adhere
steadfastly to the
same principles,
course, or form.

Continuous People at your Innovation

Improvement company engage
in ongoing efforts
to improve
products, services,
or processes.

Creativity People at your Style

company rely on
imagination or
foster original
ideas.

Design People at your Style

company focus on
the look, style, or
fashion of
everything they do
or produce.

Discernment People at your Style

company
emphasize using
acute judgment
and discretion.

Distinction People at your Luxury

 company like to
set it apart from
the competition
clearly and
deliberately.

Empathy People at your Service

company try to put
themselves in
other people’s
shoes—especially
those of other
employees and
customers.

Enjoyment People at your Experience

company go out of
their way to have
fun and seek out
delight.

Entertainment People at your Experience

company
emphasize
amusement or
celebration.

Excellence People at your Performance

company try to be
outstanding or to
meet the highest
standards.

Experimentation People at your Innovation

company
experiment with
 new methods and
approaches,
knowing some will
fail.

Fairness People at your Value

company go out of
their way to act
without bias or
partiality.

High People at your Conscious

Commitment company believe in
acting with intense
and ironclad
dedication to a
purpose.

Humility People at your Service

company believe in
adopting a modest
or low view of
one’s own
importance.

Inventiveness People at your Innovation

company like to
create new things
with imagination.

Originality People at your Experience

company
champion
independence,
creativity, and
fresh perspectives.
Pragmatism People at your Value
company deal with
things sensibly and
realistically and try
to find the most
practical way to do
things.

Purposefulness People at your Conscious

company pursue
its goals with
intention and
determination.

Risk-taking People at your Disruptive

company engage
in activities that
involve danger or
risk in order to
achieve a goal.

Sophistication People at your Luxury

company rely on
social or esthetic
standards to
discriminate
between options.

Standing Out People at your Disruptive

company attract
attention to it by
being particularly
noticeable or
different.

Status People at your Luxury

 company care
about the relative
social standing of
someone or
something.

Transparency People at your Conscious

company do things
openly and in a
straightforward
way.

As I explained previously, these are fairly broad and

common values, so the list probably doesn’t include the
precise core values of your organization. But your values
probably fit into some of these general ones.
Once you identify the brand type that corresponds to your
existing core values, use it as a springboard to develop a
unique and definitive brand identity. For example, a
university might determine its core values are represented
by achievement and excellence. Those values correspond to
the performance brand type, so it might consider
developing a brand identity based on dependable results. A
different university might recognize its core values are more
about continuously improving its curriculum and
experimenting with new teaching methods. Those values—
continuous improvement and experimentation—are
associated with the innovation brand type, so it might
develop a brand identity as an organization that is on the
cutting edge.

DEVELOPING YOUR BRAND IDENTITY

 Since your core values may point you only to a
general brand type, you must develop a specific
and unique brand identity. As you do so, keep in
mind that a strong brand is:

Meaningful—Your brand identity should be

relevant and compelling to a valuable customer
target.
Differentiating—Your brand identity should be
distinct from others in a way that customers
perceive is important.
Believable—Your brand identity should be
grounded in the natural and inherent strengths of
your product or service so that customers believe
you can deliver on it.
Transcendent—Your brand identity should convey
value beyond a specific product or service.
Sustainable—Your brand identity should be based
on an enduring purpose that enables you to
resonate with customers and compete now and in
the future.

In some cases, one or more of your core values might

lead you to the precise brand identity that is compelling and
valuable to your customers. This is the case at Argentinian
credit card provider Tarjeta Naranja. Its number one core
value is “happiness at work,” and the company truly tries
hard to help employees feel happy. Its employee
experience, which it calls “Joy for Your Day,” involves
activities and celebrations that promote the company’s
culture of happiness. It’s only natural that the company has
adopted a brand identity of happiness and promises
happiness in its customer service. Naranja president
Alejandro Asrin explains, “The essence of Naranja, our DNA,
is reflected in the joy of teamwork, with clear motivating
goals, so that employees are happy and, as a consequence,
they are able to provide services for people to be happy.”22
Unilever, the consumer goods company behind household
brands Dove, Lipton, and Surf, among others, shows how
some corporations look to their core values to sharpen their
corporate-wide brand identity. Responsibility is deeply
embedded in Unilever’s culture.23 William Lever, who
founded the company in the late nineteenth century, had
emphasized this core value by taking responsibility for the
well-being and security of his employees, building housing
for them adjacent to the company factory and offering them
fixed workweeks, paid holidays, and a health and safety
program (an unusual benefit at that time.)24 Shareholders
eventually pressured Lever to scale back some of his social
ambitions, but the company continued to live out its values
of responsibility, respect, and pioneering in various ways
through the years, such as establishing sustainable fisheries
and working with Greenpeace to remove HFC refrigerants
from its ice-cream freezers.
When CEO Paul Polman arrived at the company in 2009,
he brought with him the conviction that “the real purpose of
business has always been to come up with solutions that are
relevant to society, to make society better.”25 He restored
social and environmental responsibility as a company
priority and launched the “Unilever Sustainable Living Plan”
(USLP). The plan has three primary goals: “to improve the
health and well-being of more than one billion people
around the world; reduce the company’s environmental
impact by half; and enhance the livelihood of millions of
people while doubling revenues from $40 to $80 billion.”26
As a part of the USLP, Unilever reduced the amount of
saturated fat in its Flora and Becel margarine brands and
then used those brands to encourage customers to be
proactive about their heart health. It built its Lifebuoy soap
brand into a platform for teaching millions of people across
the globe how to stop the spread of disease simply by
washing their hands effectively. And it promotes the
development of young girls’ confidence through the Dove
Self-Esteem Fund, reinforcing that brand’s identity as an
advocate for women and their individual potential for being
and feeling beautiful.27
The core values that underpin the USLP guide the
strategy and tactics of Unilever products like Flora, Becel,
Dove, and more in a consistent and cohesive way,
sharpening Unilever’s corporate brand identity. During the
past few years, Unilever has even started to promote the
Unilever brand along with its product brands. Television ads
for some Unilever products close with motion graphics of
other Unilever product brand logos flying in to form the U in
the Unilever logo. The goal is for the U to become the “trust
mark of sustainable living,” explains chief marketing and
communications officer Keith Weed in a Fast Company
article. “The USLP is of course a way of doing business, but
it’s also the reason to believe, the differentiator ultimately
of the Unilever brand.”28
Unilever’s efforts appear to be working. “Since 2010,” the
Fast Company article reports, “the Unilever brand has gone
from being known mainly to discrete groups, such as
financial analysts, to being seen worldwide as a leader in
sustainable business.”29 Unilever’s corporate and product
brands are now perceived as forces for good. They “inspire
social innovation, encourage more sustainable behaviors,
and improve the lives of people loyal to those brands,”
observes Sustainable Brands.30 Through the USLP, Unilever
has leveraged its core values to evolve its brand identities.
If you want to elevate your core values to drivers of your
brand identity as Unilever has done, you must make them
salient to customers and other stakeholders. You must focus
on and perhaps increase your communications about your
values. You must show customers and stakeholders clear
proof that you are operating by your core values, whether
that’s retooling factories and making costly product
formulations, as Unilever has had to do, or making smaller
but similarly visible and tangible changes. And you must
ensure these values translate into benefits for your
customers—either directly through improvements to the
customer experience or more transcendentally through
alignment with their personal values.
Doing so is not always easy. “If you believe in something,
you have to fight for that and have the courage to take the
tougher decisions that come with it,” Polman argues. But he
also believes there’s a good reason to take this tack:
“Brands with a purpose and that are values-led over time
are going to be by definition more successful.”31

SHOWCASE YOUR CULTURE TO DIFFERENTIATE YOUR

BRAND

Companies in categories that are highly commoditized, like

airlines and fast food chains, or where it’s hard to discern
the difference between products offered by different brands,
such as professional service firms or banks, may find that
their organizational culture is more distinct or meaningful
than their brand. If that’s the case at your company, you
can use your culture to differentiate your brand. You can
show customers that your purpose and values are worthy of
their support when they’re choosing between seemingly
similar brands and that your culture helps you make a
better product or provide better service. Because people
increasingly care about the companies that make the
products and services they buy, doing so can be an effective
way to stand out in a sea of sameness or to connect with
customers on a different level.
 You can also leverage your culture to improve perceptions
of your brand if you believe that your external image or
identity is not accurate or complete—that is, your product or
company has more to offer than how it’s perceived in the
market. REI, the outdoor retailer, felt this way about its
brand. Although REI has become a popular purveyor of
outdoor apparel and gear by providing a great customer
experience, the company’s compelling culture (which is
rooted in its founders’ love of the outdoors and its co-op
business model, which pays out annual dividends to
employees and customers) was not widely known until
2015.
At that time, the company found itself looking for
sustainable ways to differentiate its brand as it faced tough
competition from Amazon and other specialty retailers. In an
interview for The Atlantic, company president and CEO Jerry
Stritzke explained, “There was an explicit decision that we
needed to do a better job telling people what we believed,
what we’re about.”32 The company did just that when it
decided to close its doors on Black Friday, the U.S. retail
industry’s biggest sale day. With this decision, the company
risked losing significant revenues and alienating shoppers,
but the move firmly reinforced its culture. Chief creative
officer Ben Steele explained he and his colleagues believe
“success is first and foremost about our 12,139 employees.”
So they decided, “We are going to pay them to spend the
day outside rather than pay them to spend time indoors.
That’s the truest expression of us as a co-op.”33
The company turned its decision to close on Black Friday
into the “#OptOutside” brand campaign, in which it also
encouraged customers to get out into the outdoors instead
of shopping indoors. Stritzke explained in the company’s
announcement, “Black Friday is a perfect time to remind
ourselves of the essential truth that life is richer, more
connected, and complete when you choose to spend it
outside. We’re closing our doors, paying our employees to
get out there, and inviting America to Opt Outside with us
because we love great gear, but we are even more
passionate about the experiences it unlocks.”34 The move
worked: by REI’s estimate, it got 1.4 million people to enjoy
the outdoors instead of going shopping that day.35
Now an annual tradition, closing on Black Friday and
running the Opt Outside campaign has clearly established a
differentiated position for REI, not just among other retailers
and sporting goods companies but also among lifestyle
brands in general. The effort increased the brand’s social
media impressions 7,000 percent; produced spikes in REI
sales, memberships, and employee applications36; and
sparked a movement of encouraging outdoor activity that is
supported by over 400 organizations, including state and
regional parks, nonprofits and community organizations
such as Nature Conservancy and Meetup, and companies
including Clif Bar and Sanuk.37
REI provides a powerful example of how launching a
campaign with a bold message rooted in your culture can
bring attention to your brand and set it apart. Oakley, the
maker of optics and other products popular among athletes
and extreme sports participants, faced a similar brand
challenge—increased pressure from new competitors—to
what REI did. But Oakley leveraged its culture in a different
approach: While REI promoted its organizational culture
through a campaign to differentiate its brand from others,
Oakley explained its culture and linked it to its products.
From its start, Oakley has operated with a “culture is
brand; brand is culture” mentality. The “Oakley Five,” the
company’s five core values—performance-obsessed,
authentic, innovative, humble, and passionate—have been
expressed in employees’ attitudes and their working style as
much as in the products they’ve made and commercialized.
In fact, the Oakley brand book states, “Oakley isn’t where
we work, it’s who we are,” and, “We are on the outside what
we are on the inside.”38
Because Oakley founder Jim Jannard and the company’s
other early leaders believed “Oakley is an idea,” as the
brand book says, they didn’t want to define the brand
beyond its core values.39 Brian Takumi, who has served as
the brand’s creative director and head of product creative,
explained to me, “They didn’t want the brand to be limited
to what the brand participated in. . . . They wanted license
to do what we wanted in an Oakley way.” As a result, the
brand was always “a moving target.”40
Despite its lack of definition, Oakley became a hugely
successful brand because the people who designed its
products were also users of them, so the products and
experiences they developed were highly relevant and
appealing to customers. “People from marketing, R&D,
engineering, manufacturing, sales—they all participated [in
sports],” Takumi says, so Oakley’s products “made
customers feel like we understood them.”41
From challenging industry-standard motorcycle grips to
producing eyeglass frames made with titanium, which had
previously been thought impossible, the company’s
designers and engineers had an insatiable desire to make
their products better for athletes—and a passion for taking
unconventional approaches. Even the sales and marketing
departments held themselves to doing things the way no
other company would. They once staged a triathlon for
owners and employees of their retail accounts to participate
in alongside the company’s sponsored athletes so they
could experience the products and brand firsthand. This
disruptive approach earned Oakley the respect and loyalty
of professional and amateur athletes alike.42
Oakley’s open-ended approach to its brand served the
company well for many years, but as the brand started to
expand its appeal and the company grew its retail presence,
the lack of brand definition turned out to be a problem.
Oakley needed to be clearer about how it was different from
other sports lifestyle brands like Nike and Red Bull (which
had started selling sunglasses in 2015), especially for the
new generation of younger customers who didn’t have years
of experience with the Oakley brand to draw upon to
appreciate it. Oakley also needed to change the way it
presented itself to customers, Takumi added. Previously it
had stoked “a cloak of mysteriousness” about the company,
but the market shifted and customers wanted brands to
relate with them, not just talk to them. “It was the first time
we had to take a step toward creating relationships and
talking more about what we’re about, not just about the
product and technology,” Takumi explained.43
To address these challenges, the company launched a
campaign entitled “Disruptive by Design” to tell the story of
the brand’s culture. Tom Cartmale, global brand
communications director at the time, told Adweek,
“Disruption has always been core to our DNA, and for the
first time, we are giving insight into our practices. It’s time
for our brand point of view to be better known.”44 Takumi
described the campaign as an opportunity to talk about the
company “being disruptive for a purpose, being authentic,
and getting back to the company’s brand-culture
connection.”45 He and his colleagues wanted to show that
the company’s willingness to break from convention and
develop products that shook up the industry was not just a
publicity-seeking ploy; rather, being disruptive was why the
company was founded in the first place and at the root of
the company’s culture—and of its superior products.
The ads highlighted Jannard and the company’s iconic
bunker-style headquarters in Southern California. New retail
displays included interactive videos that showed how the
craftsmanship of Oakley’s products distinguished them from
competitors’.46 And a partnership with Wired magazine
featured multimedia content that traced the company’s
history back to when Jannard started it, through its
invention of the eyeshade that revolutionized the sunglass
industry, and culminating in the 1,000 utility and design
patents it held at the time.47 The campaign used Oakley’s
culture of disruption to clarify its brand differentiation and
establish the basis for increased differentiation in the future.
Both promoting your culture as REI did with its
#OptOutside campaign and explaining it as Oakley did with
its Disruption by Design campaign are effective strategies
for successfully advancing the perceived differentiation of
your brand.* But for these strategies to work, of course,
your culture must be unique and remarkable in the first
place.

TRANSFORM YOUR BRAND AND CULTURE TOGETHER

It’s very difficult to redefine a brand—that’s why so many

attempts don’t work. The best way to set up your brand
transformation efforts for success is to root them in a truth
about your organization—your overarching purpose, core
values, or culture in general. This chapter has shown you
how some companies have successfully prompted a
reconsideration of their brands by doing so.
Infusing your culture into your brand takes time because
customer perceptions are usually harder to change than
employees’. It will also likely require you to invest heavily in
communications, marketing programs, and customer
experiences to draw attention to your internal efforts and
convince naturally skeptical customers that your culture
actually produces benefits that are real and valuable to
them. That’s why most of this book has focused on
achieving brand-culture fusion by infusing your brand into
your culture.
 But the two strategies aren’t as mutually exclusive as
they appear to be. As you work on cultivating your desired
culture, you can also leverage that culture externally. And as
you seek to re-define your brand, you can also build a
stronger brand-led culture internally. Your culture- and
brand-building efforts can and should be mutually
reinforcing. Brand-culture fusion is produced through the
seamless integration of the two, and that integration is
really an ongoing process.

Key Takeaways from This Chapter

• If your culture is well established, you can use it

to successfully define, or re-define, your brand
identity.
• To define your brand distinctively, live out your
overarching purpose through substantive actions
and clearly connect for customers and other
stakeholders the dots between your motivations
and your actions.
• If you want to leverage your core values to
position or strengthen your brand, you must be
firmly committed to them and demonstrate to
consumers how your organization is operating by
them.
• You can strengthen the differentiation of your
brand by explicitly promoting or explaining your
culture to customers.
 CONCLUSION

THE JOURNEY TO BRAND-CULTURE FUSION

In the early days of writing this manuscript, I met with a

friend for breakfast. When our conversation turned to
organizational culture, he told me, “You know, people want
to think their organizations are special and unique, but
they’re really not. Most cultures ladder up to the same basic
things: purpose, teamwork, and execution. As long as you
are working toward those, that’s what’s important.”
His comment shocked me so much, I almost choked on
my donut. Could this guy, whom I admired and respected in
large part because he had run hugely successful, nationally-
recognized culture initiatives at two different organizations,
be telling me that a good, generic culture was enough?
“Don’t you think organizations should be the same on the
inside as they are on the outside?” I asked him. “And if their
brands are distinct, then shouldn’t their cultures be too?”
He paused for a moment. “You know what?” he then said.
“I think I’m just setting a low bar because most workplaces
are so decidedly un-human today. Maybe organizations need
to operate first as a human culture before they can be a
distinct culture. And, right now, human is distinct.”
Now I understood his point.
For some organizations, a distinct culture that is fully
aligned with their brand may seem far out of reach. If you
find yourself in this situation, then it’s true you must first
right your ship before you can get it to sail. But to set your
sights on merely having a decent culture seems the surest
way to end up with only that. And most of the leaders I
know want more than to be good—they want to be great.
Most leaders tell me they work too hard and care too much
to settle for leading an organization where people put in a
decent day’s work, make a decent product, and get a
decent paycheck. They want to create an environment
where greatness happens. They’re trying to make a
meaningful, lasting difference in their own lives, in their
people’s lives, in the world. It’s the way they’re wired. I’m
guessing it’s the way you’re wired too.
For years, leaders at companies like Southwest, Amazon,
and Starbucks have been creating an environment for
greatness by doing something differently that’s put their
organizations at the top of the “most admired companies,”
“best brands,” and “great workplaces” lists. But they don’t
often talk about that “something” specifically in terms of
brand-culture fusion—that is, aligning and integrating their
brands and cultures. Sure, Southwest’s Herb Kelleher credits
the people at Southwest Airlines for its success, but he
doesn’t talk about the role that integrating EX and CX has
played in that success. Jeff Bezos at Amazon says his
organization is “customer-obsessed,” but he doesn’t
necessarily extol the unifying power of Amazon’s
overarching purpose and core values. Even when Howard
Schultz of Starbucks talks about how the most powerful and
enduring brands are built with the strength of the human
spirit, he doesn’t describe how he fused the Starbucks brand
and culture together.
In fact, leaders of companies that excel at aligning and
integrating their brands and cultures might not even be
aware they’re doing so. It’s simply the way they lead their
organizations. When I asked Mark Levy at Airbnb what
advice he would give leaders who want to fuse together
their brands and cultures, he struggled to answer. He told
me, “We don’t talk about it a lot, it just works. It’s very
natural, not forced. It’s just the amorphic, informal way we
work together.”1 In many of the interviews I conducted,
other leaders expressed similar sentiments. Brand-culture
fusion was so essential at their companies, it came
naturally. Ardine Williams told me brand and culture were
“inseparable” at Amazon.2 Lilian Tomovich at MGM Resorts
explained how “culture and brand became one synonymous
conversation because it was very clear at the most senior
levels of the organization that the two went hand in hand.”3
Ari Weinzweig at Zingerman’s described it as a matter of
fact: “Your brand really is your culture.”4
But the fact that these leaders don’t talk about brand-
culture fusion explicitly in the terms I’ve outlined in this
book doesn’t mean their companies don’t work hard at it.
Many described how they purposefully and explicitly wove
their brands and cultures together by taking deliberate
actions and adopting specific strategies—the very strategies
that I describe in this book. They are clearly intent on
powering their organizations by combining their brands and
cultures. They aren’t taking it for granted.
Neither should you. My hope is that FUSION has provided
the language and insight for understanding what brand-
culture fusion is and how to achieve it. And now that you
know what it is, do it. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.
No organization has a culture so strong that its leaders don’t
need to continue to build it. No brand has such market
power that makes it immune to competitive threats.
Culture and brand are only going to increase in
importance. As savvy employers increasingly use data and
analytics to pinpoint the skilled workers needed in their
organization, the war for talent is only going to escalate.
More companies will then have to offer more distinct and
sustainable cultures to attract and retain in-demand talent.
The need to unify and align diverse and dispersed
employees with a singular purpose and values is only going
to grow as companies continue to globalize, workforces
continue to diversify, and the pace of business continues to
accelerate. Brand power is only going to become more
important in the fight against commoditizing product
categories, shrinking attention spans, and consolidating
channels. And customers are only going to demand more
from the companies they do business with.
These trends suggest that culture and brand are going to
become even more critical than they already are today—and
if individually they are so vital, how much stronger might
they be if they are fused together? Get out in front of these
trends and your competitors by embarking on your journey
to brand-culture fusion today.
It is indeed a journey. As I’ve shown you in this book, you
start your journey to brand-culture fusion by laying the
foundation with an overarching purpose and core values
that set your destination and guide your organization. After
assessing your current state of fusion and where you need
to focus to achieve your desired state, you take up the
charge to lead your organization through this journey by
communicating clearly, walking the talk, and making people
decisions that align with your purpose and values.
You are then ready to put into motion the five strategies
that cultivate your desired culture, brand, or both:

• Organize your company and operate it on-brand—

implement an organizational design, optimize your
core operations, and work on brand touchpoints to
operationalize your desired culture.
• Create culture-changing employee experiences—
design employee experience (EX), involve your
employees in EX design, and integrate EX and
customer experience.
• Build culture through rituals, artifacts, policies, and
procedures—cultivate your desired culture in the
small, yet significant aspects of organizational life.
 • Kick-start your cultural transformation and keep the
momentum going through employee brand
engagement—stage brand engagement experiences,
run carefully crafted communications campaigns, and
develop and deploy brand engagement toolkits.
• Define or redefine your brand by leveraging your
culture—put your purpose into action, use your core
values to shape your brand identity, and differentiate
your brand through your culture.

As you work toward brand-culture fusion, you’ll need to

be patient, focused, relentless, and disciplined. You will be
addressing the fundamental drivers of brand and culture,
not their superficial appearances, so it’s hard work. Garry
Ridge, CEO of the WD-40 Company told me, “Building
culture is not simple or easy. Time is not your friend. It
depends on continuous, relentless, passionate execution.”5
Plus, you’re never really finished. “Culture takes budgeting,
resources, and time all year long. Culture is not something
that’s seasonal. It is not something you can ever stop,” says
Cheryl Hughey, managing director for culture at Southwest.6
Any culture change requires ongoing leadership because
culture depends on people and people change, forget, veer,
and turn over. Brand-culture fusion requires an even-longer-
standing commitment because as the market, your
competitors, and your customers’ needs and wants change,
so do the requirements for your brand and therefore your
culture. If you want to fully integrate and align your brand
and culture, you will need to constantly evolve both.
But the commitment is worth it. Whether you are starting
with a thriving culture or a broken one, whether your brand
is already strong or needs to become more powerful,
whether brand-culture fusion makes intuitive sense or is a
new concept for you, ask yourself if you aspire to greatness.
Do you want to align your organization with a single goal so
that it is not just productive and efficient but operates with
excellence? Do you want to future-proof your company by
creating value that is sustainable and inimitable? Do you
want to have a truly authentic brand? Do you want to
galvanize your people and move toward your vision?
If your answer is yes, then seize the opportunity to
become great. Engage the power of brand-culture fusion.
END NOTES
Introduction

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Chapter 1

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30 Collins and Porras, Built to Last, 76.
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33 Di Somma, Mark. “Developing a Powerful Brand
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37 Yates, Darin. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 18, 2017.
38 Peiken, Matt. “Crossroads Church and the Phenomenon
of Its Annual Christmas Show, ‘Awaited.’” Matt Peiken
Blog, December 11, 2014.
https://mattpeiken.com/features/crossroads-church-and-
the-phenomenon-of-its-annual-christmas-show-awaited/.
39 Crossroads Church. “Culture Guide.” January 2016.
40 Peiken, “Crossroads Church.”
41 Van Lee, Reggie, Lisa Fabish, and Nancy McGaw. “The
Value of Corporate Values.” strategy+business, May 23,
2005. https://www.strategy-business.com/article/05206?
gko=9c265.
42 Rhoades, Anne. Built on Values: Creating an Enviable
Culture that Outperforms the Competition. New York:
Jossey-Bass, 2011. 44.
43 WD-40 Company. “Our Values.” Accessed August 22,
2017. https://www.wd40company.com/who-we-are/our-
values/.
44 Google. “Ten Things We Know to Be True.” Accessed
August 22, 2017.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/philosophy.html.
45 Illumina. “Illumina Values.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
http://welcometo.illumina.com/newhire/IlluminaValues.as
px.
46 Gazelles International. “Core Purpose and Values.”
Accessed August 22, 2017.
http://gicoaches.com/purpose.
47 Ind, Nicholas. Living the Brand: How to Transform Every
Member of Your Organization into a Brand Champion.
London: Kogan Page Limited, 2008. 53.
48 Banco Supervielle. “Values.” Translated by Eduardo
Braun.
49 Supervielle, Patricio. Interview by Eduardo Braun. July 27,
2017.
50 Lencioni, Patrick M. “Make Your Values Mean Something.”
Harvard Business Review, July 2002.
https://hbr.org/2002/07/make-your-values-mean-
something.
51 De Chernatony, Leslie. From Brand Vision to Brand
Evaluation. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 2001. 104.
52 Vardi, Nathan. “The Best Stocks of 2010.” Forbes,
December 21, 2010.
https://www.forbes.com/2010/12/20/crocs-netflix-isilon-
business-wall-street-best-stocks-2010.html.
53 Sandoval, Greg. “Netflix’s Lost Year: The Inside Story of
the Price-Hike Train Wreck.” CNET, July 11, 2012.
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story-of-the-price-hike-train-wreck/.
54 Netflix. “Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility.”
Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/2-
Netflix_CultureFreedom_Responsibility2.
55 Sandoval, “Netflix’s Lost Year.”
56 de Chernatony, “Brand Vision.”
57 Jackson, Eric. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. May 3, 2017.
58 FedEx. “Purple Promise.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
http://www.fedex.com/purplepromise/docs/en/fedex_pp_b
 ooklet.pdf.
59 Crunchbase. “LinkedIn Acquisitions.” Accessed August
22, 2017.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/linkedin/acquis
itions.
60 Leverich, Nicole. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 11,
2017.
61 Williams, Ardine. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 14,
2017.
62 Miles, Bryan. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 20,
2017.
63 Drucker, Peter. The Five Most Important Questions You
Will Ever Ask about Your Organization. New York: Jossey-
Bass, 2008. xii.

Chapter 2

1 Branson, Richard. Screw Business as Usual. New York:

Portfolio, 2011.
2 Steven R. Covey. “Books.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-
habit2.php.
3 Rossman, John. The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles
Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company. North
Charleston: CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Platform, 2014. 87. Kindle.

Chapter 3

1 Marcial, Jean. “Ford Deserves More Respect on Wall

Street.” AOL.com, June 16, 2010.
https://www.aol.com/2010/06/16/ford-deserves-more-
respect-on-wall-street/.
2 Vlasic, Bill. “Ford Reports a Record $14.6 Billion Loss for
2008.” New York Times, January 29, 2009.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/business/30ford.htm
l?mcubz=3.
3 Holley, William H., William H. Ross, and Roger S. Wolters.
“The Labor Relations Process.” Boston: Cengage
Learning, 2016. 402.
4 O’Brien, Shauna. “The Complete History of Ford: Income,
Price & Dividends.” Dividend.com, January 19, 2015.
http://www.dividend.com/how-to-invest/the-complete-
history-of-ford-f/.
5 Isadore, Chris. “Big Three Automakers Post Big Gains.”
CNN Money, January 4, 2012.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/companies/auto_
sales/index.htm?iid=EL.
6 Hirsch, Jerry. “Ford Is Expected to Surpass GM in Sales This
Month.” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2011.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/25/business/la-fi-
ford-20110325.
7 Hoffman, Bryce G. American Icon: Alan Mulally and the
Fight to Save Ford Motor Company. New York: Crown
Business, 2012. 2157. Kindle.
8 Taylor, Alex III. “Can This Car Save Ford?” Fortune, April
22, 2008.
http://archive.fortune.com/2008/04/21/news/companies/s
aving_ford.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008042205.
9 Ibid.
10 Gray, Tyler. “How a Painting from 1925 Inspired Ford’s
Customer-Focused Future.” Fast Company, June 22, 2013.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3012809/how-a-painting-
from-1925-inspired-fords-customer-focused-future.
11 Hoffman, American Icon, 1886.
12 Taylor, “Can This Car Save Ford?”
13 Ibid.
14 Hoffman, American Icon, 1940.
15 Ibid., 6576.
16 Anonymous Source. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. April
22, 2017.
17 Ewing, Jack, and Graham Bowley. “The Engineering of
Volkswagen’s Aggressive Ambition.” New York Times,
December 13, 2015.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/business/the-
engineering-of-volkswagens-aggressive-ambition.html?
_r=0.
18 McGee, Patrick, and Robert Wright. “VW Management
Back in Scandal Spotlight.” Financial Times, March 3,
2016. https://www.ft.com/content/ef00293c-e0f1-11e5-
8d9b-e88a2a889797?mhq5j=e2.
19 Ellinghorst, Arndt. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. June 12,
2017.
20 Ibid.
21 Braun, Eduardo. People First Leadership: How the Best
Leaders Use Culture and Emotion to Drive
Unprecedented Results. Columbus: McGraw-Hill
Education, 2016. 1318. Kindle.
22 Ibid., 1834.
23 Estes, Ryan. “Winning with Culture: How Leadership
Drives Engagement & Performance.” Accessed August
22, 2017. http://offers.ryanestis.com/winning-with-
culture/.
24 Towers Perrin. “Towers Perrin Survey Finds Almost Half of
American Workers Doubt the Credibility of Employer
Communications.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/20728-Towers-
Perrin-Survey-Finds-Almost-Half-of-American-Workers-
Doubt-the-Credibility-of-Employer-Communications.
25 Martinez, Michael. “Does Ford have a communications
problem?” Automotive News, May 16, 2017.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20170516/BLOG06/170
519830/does-ford-have-a-communications-problem%3F.
26 Daimler, Melissa. “Listening Is an Overlooked Leadership
Tool.” Harvard Business Review, May 25, 2016.
https://hbr.org/2016/05/listening-is-an-overlooked-
leadership-tool.
27 Braun, People First Leadership, 1879.
28 Rhoades, Anne. Built on Values: Creating an Enviable
Culture that Outperforms the Competition. New York:
Jossey-Bass, 2011. 113.
29 Hoffman, Bryce G. American Icon: Alan Mulally and the
Fight to Save Ford Motor Company. New York: Crown
Business, 2012. 2185. Kindle.
30 Ibid., 2169.
31 Ryssdal, Kai, and Daisy Palacios. “How JCPenney
Changed When Marvin Ellison Became CEO.” NPR
Marketplace, November 22, 2016.
https://www.marketplace.org/2016/11/22/business/corner
-office/how-jcpenney-changed-when-marvin-ellison-
became-ceo.
32 Wahba, Phil. “The CEO Who’s Reinventing J.C. Penney.”
Fortune, February 24, 2016. http://fortune.com/j-c-
penney-reinvention/.
33 Aon Hewitt. “The Multiplier Effect: Insights into How
Senior Leaders Drive Employee Engagement Higher.”
Accessed August 22, 2017.
http://www.aon.com/attachments/thought-
leadership/Aon-Hewitt-White-paper_Engagement.pdf.
34 Serafeim, George, and Claudine Gartenberg. “The Type of
Purpose that Makes Companies More Profitable.” Harvard
Business Review, October 21, 2016.
https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-type-of-purpose-that-makes-
companies-more-profitable.
35 Ton, Zeynep, and Matthew Preble. “Quik Trip.” Harvard
Business School Publishing, June 23, 2011.
http://www.supplychainresearch.com/images/quik_trip.pd
f.
36 Bendapudi, Neeli, and Venkat Bendapudi. “Creating the
Living Brand.” Harvard Business Review, May 2005.
https://hbr.org/2005/05/creating-the-living-brand.
37 Rhoades, Built on Values, 55.
38 Welch, Jack, and Suzy Welch. “Goldman Sachs and a
Culture-Killing Lesson Being Ignored.” Fortune, April 12,
2012. http://fortune.com/2012/04/12/goldman-sachs-and-
a-culture-killing-lesson-being-ignored/.
39 Ibid.
40 Braun, People First Leadership, 293.

Chapter 4

1 Cameron, Nadia. “How Uniting Employee and Customer

Experience Is Helping Adobe Disrupt.” CMO, June 8,
2017. https://www.cmo.com.au/article/620349/how-
uniting-people-customer-experience-helping-adobe-
disrupt/.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Kane, Gerald C. “Adobe Reinvents Its Customer
Experience.” MIT Sloan Management Review, May 3,
2016.
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/adobereinventsitscusto
merexperience.
5 Korn Ferry. “Korn Ferry Hay Group Global Study: Driving
Culture Change Key Leadership Priority.” Accessed
August 22, 2017. https://www.kornferry.com/press/korn-
ferry-hay-group-global-study-driving-culture-change-key-
leadership-priority/.
6 Van Lee, Reggie, Lisa Fabish, and Nancy McGaw. “The
Value of Corporate Values.” strategy+business, May 23,
2005. https://www.strategy-business.com/article/05206?
gko=9c265.
7 Ibid.
8 Summary of The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power
of Relationships to Achieve High Performance, by Jody
Gittell. Summaries.com, 2003.
https://www.theclci.com/resources/thesouthwestairlinesw
ay.pdf.
9 Ibid.
10 Corkindale, Gill. “The Importance of Organizational
Design and Structure.” Harvard Business Review,
February 11, 2011. https://hbr.org/2011/02/the-
importance-of-organization.
11 Neilson, Gary L., Jaime Estupiñán, and Bhushan Sethi.
“10 Principles of Organization Design.”
strategy+business, March 23, 2015.
https://www.strategy-business.com/article/00318?
gko=c7329.
12 Creswell, Julie. “The Incredible Shrinking Sears.” New
York Times, August 11, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/business/the-
incredible-shrinking-sears.html?mcubz=3&_r=0.
13 Frei, Frances X. “The Four Things a Service Business Must
Get Right.” Harvard Business Review, April 2008.
https://hbr.org/2008/04/the-four-things-a-service-
business-must-get-right.
14 Schmidt, Eric, and Jonathan Rosenberg. How Google
Works. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014. 602.
Kindle.
15 Morris, Donna. “Experience Matters.” Adobe Blog, May
17, 2016.
https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2016/05/experien
ce-matters.html.
16 McQueen, Nina. “InDay: Investing in Our Employees So
They Can Invest in Themselves.” LinkedIn Blog, July 29,
2015. https://blog.linkedin.com/2015/07/29/inday-
investing-in-our-employees-so-they-can-invest-in-
themselves.
17 Leverich, Nicole. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 11,
2017.
18 Lindeman, Jeff. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. May 4,
2017.
19 Barbour, Hilton. “HR versus Marketing—The Next C-Suite
Confrontation.” LinkedIn, May 11, 2017.
 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hr-versus-marketing-next-
c-suite-confrontation-hilton-barbour.
20 Magee, Tyler Laird. Organizational culture and brand: A
grounded theory assessment of employees’ enablement
to live the brand at a best place to work.” Doctor of
Business Administration (DBA). Paper 8.
http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/dba/8.
21 Ibid.
22 Banjo, Shelly. “J.C. Penney’s New Role Model: Home
Depot.” Bloomberg Gadfly, August 30, 2016.
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-08-30/j-
c-penney-turnaround-plan-looks-like-home-depot-s.
23 Howland, Daphne. “J.C. Penney Vows Change After
Customer Service Scores Plummet.” Retail Dive, March
16, 2016. http://www.retaildive.com/news/jc-penney-
vows-change-after-customer-service-scores-
plummet/415748/.
24 Manfio, Gilson Paulo, Leonardo Garnica, and Daniela
Diogenes. “Natura: An Innovative Company Leader in the
Brazilian Market of Cosmetics, Fragrances and Toiletries.”
Hélice, 2013.
https://www.triplehelixassociation.org/helice/volume-2-
2013/helice-issue-1/natura-innovative-company-leader-
brazilian-market-cosmetics-fragrances-toiletries.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Hashiba, Luciana. “Innovation in Well-Being—the
Creation of Sustainable Value at Natura.” Management
Innovation eXchange, May 18, 2012.
http://www.managementexchange.com/story/innovation-
in-well-being.
28 Ibid.
29 Manfio et al., “Natura.”
30 Bodine, Kerry, and Paul Hagan. ”The Customer
Experience Ecosystem.” Forrester, February 28, 2013.
 http://www.crmasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/The-
Customer-Experience-Ecosystem.pdf.
31 Ibid.
32 Lorsch, Jay W., and Emily McTague. “Culture Is Not the
Culprit.” Harvard Business Review, April 2016.
https://hbr.org/2016/04/culture-is-not-the-culprit.
Katzenbach, Jon, Carolin Oelschlegel, and James Thomas.
“10 Principles of Organizational Culture.”
strategy+business, February 15, 2016.
https://www.strategy-business.com/feature/10-Principles-
of-Organizational-Culture.
33 Sartain, Libby, and Brent Daily. Cracking the Culture
Code: The Key to High Performing Organizations. Boulder:
RoundPegg, 2013. 28.

Chapter 5

1 Levy, Mark. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 11, 2017.

2 Morgan, Jacob. “The Global Head of Employee Experience
at Airbnb on Why They Got Rid of Human Resources.”
Forbes, February 1, 2016.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2016/02/01/gl
obal-head-employee-experience-airbnb-rid-of-human-
resources.
3 Ibid.
4 Clune, Bronwen. “How Airbnb Is Building Its Culture
through Belonging.” CultureAmp.
https://blog.cultureamp.com/how-airbnb-is-building-its-
culture-through-belonging.
5 Airbnb. “Careers.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.airbnb.com/careers.
6 Clune, “How Airbnb Is Building Its Culture.”
7 Levy, interview.
8 Gallagher, Leigh. “Airbnb’s Profits to Top $3 Billion by
2020.” Fortune, February 14, 2017.
http://fortune.com/2017/02/15/airbnb-profits/.
9 Roderick, Leonie. “Airbnb Has the Strongest Brand
Advocates.” Marketing Week, December 16, 2016.
https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/12/16/airbnb-
strongest-brand-advocates/.
10 Chuck, Elizabeth. “Airbnb Rated the Best Place to Work,
Dethroning Google.” NBC News, February 13, 2017.
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/careers/airbnb-best-
place-work-year-glassdoor-rating-finds.
11 Meister, Jeanne. “The Employee Experience Is the Future
of Work: 10 HR Trends For 2017.” Forbes, January 5,
2017.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2017/01/05/t
he-employee-experience-is-the-future-of-work-10-hr-
trends-for-2017.
12 Deloitte. “2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends.”
Accessed July 12, 2017.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/human-
capital/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends.html.
13 Bersin, Josh, Jason Flynn, Art Mazor, and Veronica Melian.
“The Employee Experience: Culture, Engagement, and
Beyond.” Deloitte University Press, February 28, 2017.
https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/focus/human-
capital-trends/2017/improving-the-employee-experience-
culture-engagement.html.
14 Meister, Jeanne. “The Future of Work: Airbnb CHRO
Becomes Chief Employee Experience Officer.” Forbes,
July 21, 2015.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2015/07/21/t
he-future-of-work-airbnb-chro-becomes-chief-employee-
experinece-officer.
15 Morgan, Jacob. “The Global Head of Employee
Experience at Airbnb on Why They Got Rid of Human
Resources.” Forbes, February 1, 2016.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2016/02/01/gl
obal-head-employee-experience-airbnb-rid-of-human-
resources.
16 Bersin, Josh. “A New Market Is Born: Employee
Engagement, Feedback, and Culture Apps.” “Employee
Engagement: Market Review, Buyer’s Guide and Provider
Profiles.” Josh Bersin Blog, October 9, 2017.
https://joshbersin.com/2015/09/a-new-market-is-born-
employee-engagement-feedback-and-culture-apps/.
17 Mann, Annamarie, and Jim Harter. “The Worldwide
Employee Engagement Crisis.” Gallup, January 7, 2016.
http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/188033/worldwide
-employee-engagement-crisis.aspx.
18 Morgan, Jacob. “Why the Millions We Spend on Employee
Engagement Buy Us So Little.” Harvard Business Review,
March 10, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-the-millions-
we-spend-on-employee-engagement-buy-us-so-little.
19 Ibid.
20 Young, Heike. “Why Employee Experience and Company
Culture Matter to Your Marketing.” Salesforce Blog, March
29, 2017.
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/03/company-
culture-matters-to-marketing.html.
21 Deloitte. “Global Human Capital Trends 2016.” Accessed
June 8, 2017.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/human-
capital/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends-
2016.html.
22 Erickson, Tamara J., and Lynda Gratton. “What It Means
to Work Here.” Harvard Business Review, March 2007.
https://hbr.org/2007/03/what-it-means-to-work-here.
23 Martin, Graeme. “Driving Corporate Reputations from the
Inside: A Strategic Role and Strategic Dilemmas for HR?”
Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, July 2009.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44897940.
24 De Chernatony, Leslie. From Brand Vision to Brand
Evaluation. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 2001. 110.
25 NCR. “Our Shared Values.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.ncr.com/company/company-overview/our-
 shared-values.
26 Morgan, Jacob. “How This 30,000 Person Company
Designs Great Employee Experiences.” Forbes, October
6, 2015.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2015/10/06/h
ow-this-30000-person-company-designs-great-employee-
experiences/#9ebe4b575e2b.
27 Lamers, Josee. “Work Organisation and Innovation—Case
study: Rabobank, Netherlands.” European Foundation for
the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/intl/252.
28 Ibid.
29 Erickson, Tamara J., and Lynda Gratton. “What It Means
to Work Here.” Harvard Business Review, March 2007.
https://hbr.org/2007/03/what-it-means-to-work-here.
30 Ibid.
31 HubSpot. “Culture Code.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/216938/file-24940534-
pdf/docs/culturecode-v7-130320111259-phpapp02.pdf.
32 Steimer, Sarah. “HubSpot’s Katie Burke Cracks the
Company Culture Code.” Marketing News, March 1, 2017.
https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/
hubspots-katie-burke-cracks-the-culture-code.aspx.
33 Vanderbloemen, William. “How to Build Systems to
Improve Your Company’s Culture.” Forbes, March 12,
2017.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamvanderbloemen/201
7/03/12/how-to-build-systems-to-improve-your-
companys-culture.
34 Toister, Jeff. The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-
Step Guide to Getting Your Employees Obsessed with
Customer Service. San Diego: Toister Performance
Solutions, 2017. 129.
35 Sabin, Scott. Interviews by Denise Lee Yohn. August 31,
2017, and September 6, 2017.
36 Kane, Gerald C. “Adobe Reinvents Its Customer
Experience.” MIT Sloan Management Review, May 3,
2016.
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/adobereinventsitscusto
merexperience.
37 Valve. “Handbook for New Employees.” Accessed August
22, 2017.
www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowR
es.pdf.
38 Aarstol, Stephan. The Five-Hour Workday: Live
Differently, Unlock Productivity, and Find Happiness.
Austin: Lioncrest Publishing, 2016. 205.
39 Mafi, Nick. “What Went into Designing the Headquarters
of Tencent, Asia’s Most Valuable Company.” Architectural
Digest, September 20, 2016.
http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/designing-
headquarters-tencent-asias-most-valuable-company.
40 Steimer, Sarah. “HubSpot’s Katie Burke Cracks the
Company Culture Code.” Marketing News, March 1, 2017.
https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/
hubspots-katie-burke-cracks-the-culture-code.aspx.
41 Levy, Mark. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 11, 2017.
42 Young, Heike. “Why Employee Experience and Company
Culture Matter to Your Marketing.” Salesforce Blog, March
29, 2017.
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/03/company-
culture-matters-to-marketing.html.
43 Morgan, Jacob. The Employee Experience Advantage:
How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the
Workspaces They Want, the Tools They Need, and a
Culture They Can Celebrate. New York: Wiley, 2017. 179.
44 Ibid.
45 Roberge, Mark. “The Right Way to Use Compensation.”
Harvard Business Review, April 2015.
https://hbr.org/2015/04/the-right-way-to-use-
compensation-2.
46 Gleinicki, Annette Franz. “6 Tools to Create a Clear Line
of Sight to Customers.” CX-Journey, September 4, 2014.
http://www.cx-journey.com/2014/09/6-tools-to-create-
clear-line-of-sight.html.
47 Taylor, Bill. 2010. “Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand.”
Harvard Business Review, September 27, 2010.
https://hbr.org/2010/09/brand-is-culture-culture-is-br.
48 Levy, interview.
49 Markish, Julie. “How Airbnb Fosters Empathy for It’s
Customers.” Medallia.
https://blog.medallia.com/customer-experience/how-
airbnb-fosters-empathy-for-its-customers.
50 Walking, Adrian. “Medallia’s VP of Insights on the ‘Bigger
Picture’ for Customer Experience.” Argyle Journal, May
17, 2016. http://www.argylejournal.com/customer-
care/medallias-vp-of-insights-on-the-bigger-picture-for-
customer-experience/.

Chapter 6

1 Salesforce. “Salesforce Announces Fiscal 2017 Fourth

Quarter and Full Year Results.” February 28, 2017.
http://investor.salesforce.com/about-us/investor/investor-
news/investor-news-details/2017/Salesforce-Announces-
Fiscal-2017-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-
Results/default.aspx.
2 Salesforce. “Customer Success Stories.” Accessed August
22, 2017. https://www.salesforce.com/customer-success-
stories/.
3 Salesforce. “Salesforce Named #1 CRM Provider for Fourth
Consecutive Year” May 5, 2017.
https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-
releases/2017/05/170518.jsp.
4 Salesforce. “Recognition.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.salesforce.com/company/awards/company.js
p.
5 Zingerman’s. Zingerman’s Staff Guide. Ann Arbor: Dancing
Sandwiches.
6 Ewan, Beth. “Zingerman’s Boss Outlines Strategy of
‘Sharing Lavishly.’” Franchise Times, November 18, 2016.
http://www.franchisetimes.com/news/November-
2016/Zingermans-Boss-Outlines-Strategy-of-Sharing-
Lavishly/.
7 Zingerman’s. “Zingerman’s Community of Businesses.”
Accessed August 22, 2017.
http://www.zingermanscommunity.com/about-us/our-
businesses/.
8 Burlingham, Bo. “The Coolest Small Company in America.”
Inc., January 1, 2003.
https://www.inc.com/magazine/20030101/25036.html.
9 Zingerman’s. “About Us.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.zingermans.com/AboutUs.aspx.
10 Boutin, Sarah. “Behind the Scenes at Salesforce.com:
Our Aloha Spirit.” Salesforce Blog, July 28, 2014.
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2014/07/behind-the-
scenes-at-salesforcecom-our-aloha-spirit.html.
11 Ibid.
12 Martin, Jason. “‘That’s How We Do Things around Here’:
Organizational Culture (and Change) in Libraries.” In the
Library with the Lead Pipe, August 22, 2012.
http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2012/thats-
how-we-do-things-around-here/.
13 Boutin, “Behind the Scenes.”
14 Martin, “Organizational Culture (and Change).”
15 Guenzi, Paolo. “How Ritual Delivers Performance.”
Harvard Business Review, February 15, 2013.
https://hbr.org/2013/02/how-ritual-delivers-performanc.
16 Deal, Terrence, and Allan Kennedy. Corporate Cultures:
The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. New York: Basic
Books, 2000. 60.
17 Kerr, Michael. “Workplace Traditions and Rituals Build
Culture, Add Fun to the Workplace.” Humor at Work.
 Accessed August 22, 2017. http://mikekerr.com/free-
articles/humour-in-the-workplace-articles/humor-in-the-
workplace-helped-along-through-traditions-and-rituals/.
18 Bryant, Adam. “Matthew Prince of Cloudflare on the
Dangers of Fast Growth.” 2017. New York Times, August
11, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/business/corner-
office-matthew-prince-cloudflare.html?mcubz=3&_r=0.
19 Chevron. “2010 Annual Meeting Remarks by John S.
Watson.” May 26, 2010.
https://www.chevron.com/stories/2010-annual-
stockholders-meeting-remarks-by-john-swatson.
20 Miles, Bryan. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 10,
2017.
21 Martin, Elizabeth. “An Ode to Harvard Stadium.” Gentle
Giant Blog, December 30, 2016.
https://www.gentlegiant.com/ode-harvard-stadium/.
22 EO Global. “Flexing the Entrepreneurial Muscle.” Octane
Magazine, December 2013.
https://www.eonetwork.org/octane-magazine/december-
2013.
23 Gardner, Jeremiah, and Brant Cooper. Entrepreneur’s
Guide to the Lean Brand: How Brand Innovation Builds
Passion, Transforms Organizations and Creates Value.
San Diego: Market by Numbers, 2014. 1572.
24 Bucher, Amy. “What That Sign Says about Your Corporate
Culture.” Amy Bucher Blog, July 9, 2015.
http://www.amybucherphd.com/what-that-sign-says-
about-your-corporate-culture/.
25 Ibid.
26 Burkus, David. “How to Tell if Your Company Has a
Creative Culture.” Harvard Business Review, December 2,
2014. https://hbr.org/2014/12/how-to-tell-if-your-
company-has-a-creative-culture.
27 Hamilton, Heather. “The Legend of the Amazon Door
Desk.” Amazonian Blog, July 06, 2015.
 http://www.amazonianblog.com/2015/07/the-legend-of-
the-amazon-door-desk.html.
28 City Year. “Welcome to the Red Jacket Society.” Accessed
September 6, 2017.
http://www.redjacketsociety.org/about/.
29 Smith, Gillian. Interview with Denise Lee Yohn. Telephone
interview on August 31, 2017.
30 Conley, Chip. Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo
from Maslow. New York: Jossey-Bass, 2007. 65.
31 Lencioni, Patrick M. “Make Your Values Mean Something.”
Harvard Business Review, July 2002.
https://hbr.org/2002/07/make-your-values-mean-
something.
32 Smith, Gillian. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. August 31,
2017.
33 Zingerman’s, Zingerman’s Staff Guide, 9.
34 Ibid., 9.
35 Zingerman’s. “Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part
4: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the Power of Beliefs
in Business.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
http://www.zingermanspress.com/our-books/the-power-of-
beliefs-in-business.
36 Weinzweig, Ari. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 24,
2017.
37 Zingerman’s, Zingerman’s Staff Guide.
38 Weinzweig, interview.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Google. “Our Company.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/.
42 Alphabet. “2004 Founders’ IPO Letter.”
https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-
letter.html.
43 Flynn, Nancy. “Writing Effective Policies Using Written
Policy to Manage Behavior, Mitigate Risks, & Maximize
Compliance.” Policy Institute, April 20, 2011.
 http://www.epolicyinstitute.com/docs/Prevalent~WritingE
ffectivePolicy~WPf.pdf.
44 Conley, Peak, 96.
45 Kleinberg, Adam. “Why We Have a Burning Man Policy.”
Traction Blog, August 24, 2011.
https://www.tractionco.com/words/why-we-have-a-
burning-man-policy/.
46 The Motley Fool. “The Fool Rules!” Accessed August 22,
2017.
https://insidemotleyfool.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/fool
-rules-2012.pdf.
47 Weinzweig, Ari. A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the
Power of Beliefs in Business, Part 4. Ann Arbor, Michigan:
Zingerman’s Press, 2016. 472.
48 Ibid.
49 Griffin, Michael. How to Write a Policy Manual. Accessed
August 22, 2017.
http://www.templatezone.com/download-free-
ebook/office-policy-manual-reference-guide.pdf.

Chapter 7

1 Tomovich, Lilian. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 19,

2017.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Tomovich, Lilian. “Building of an Iconic Brand from Inside
Out.” Medallia Experience Conference, April 2017.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Tomovich, interview.
9 MGM Resorts International. 2017. “MGM Resorts
International Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year
Financial and Operating Results.” February 16, 2017.
http://mgmresorts.investorroom.com/2017-02-16-MGM-
 Resorts-International-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-And-Full-
Year-Financial-And-Operating-Results-Announces-
Quarterly-Dividend.
10 Gill-Simmen, Lucy. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn.
September 6, 2017.
11 King, Ceridwyn, and Debra Ann Grace. “Internal
Branding: Exploring the Employee’s Perspective.” Journal
of Brand Management 15 (2008): 358–372.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247478547_Int
ernal_branding_Exploring_the_employee’s_perspective.
12 Tenet Partners. “Brand Culture at the Intersection of
Brand and HR.” March 28, 2017.
https://tenetpartners.com/about-us/news/2017-03-07-
brand-culture-webinar.html.
13 Ind, Nicholas. Living the Brand: How to Transform Every
Member of Your Organization into a Brand Champion.
London: Kogan Page Limited, 2008. 152.
14 Forman, Jennifer. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 19,
2017.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Mitchell International. “Internal Survey Results.” 2017.
19 Ind, Living the Brand, 120.
20 Ibid., 120.
21 Marketing Society Excellence Awards. “Mobilising the
Organisation: Employee Engagement.” February 5, 2016.
https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/theli
brary/Telefonica%20O2%20-
%20Rally%20Cry_Redacted.pdf.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Magee, Kate. “Why Employees Are More Important than
the CEO for a Company’s Reputation.” PR Week, April 26,
 2012. http://www.prweek.com/article/1128641/why-
employees-important-ceo-companys-reputation.
27 Mitchell, Colin. “Selling the Brand Inside.” Harvard
Business Review, January 2002.
https://hbr.org/2002/01/selling-the-brand-inside.
28 Sartain, Libby, and Mark Schumann. Brand from the
Inside: Eight Essentials to Emotionally Connect Your
Employees to Your Business. New York: Jossey-Bass,
2006. 197.
29 Mitchell, “Selling the Brand Inside.”
30 Tomovich, Lilian. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 19,
2017.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.

Chapter 8

1 Chouinard, Yvon. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education

of a Reluctant Businessman. New York: Penguin Group,
2005. 31.
2 Patagonia. “Supply Chain: The Footprint Chronicles®.”
Accessed August 22, 2017.
http://www.patagonia.com/20-years-of-organic-
cotton.html.
3 Patagonia. “Introducing the Common Threads Initiative—
Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle, Reimagine.” September
7, 2011.
https://www.patagonia.com/blog/2011/09/introducing-
the-common-threads-initiative/.
4 Patagonia. “Patagonia’s Mission Statement.” Accessed
August 22, 2017. http://www.patagonia.com/company-
info.html.
5 Beer, Jeff. “The Purpose-Driven Marketer: How Patagonia
Uses Storytelling to Turn Consumers into Activists.” Fast
Company, November 19, 2014.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3038557/the-purpose-
 driven-marketer-how-patagonia-uses-storytelling-to-turn-
consume.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 GE. “GE Launches Ecomagination to Develop
Environmental Technologies; Company-Wide Focus on
Addressing Pressing Challenges.” May 9, 2005.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/200505090056
63/en/GE-Launches-Ecomagination-Develop-
Environmental-Technologies-Company-Wide .
9 GE. Ecomagination. Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.ge.com/about-us/ecomagination.
10 Makower, Joel. “Ecomagination at 10: A Status Report.”
GreenBiz, May 11, 2015.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/ecomagination-10-
status-report.
11 Walsh, Bryan. “GE Picks Up the Slack on Green Tech.”
Time, June 24, 2011.
http://science.time.com/2011/06/24/ge-picks-up-the-
slack-on-green-tech/.
12 Khan, Mickey Alam. “GE Glows Green for Ecomagination
Campaign.” DM News, July 15, 2005.
http://www.dmnews.com/dataanalytics/ge-glows-green-
for-ecomagination-campaign/article/88080/.
13 Haldemann, Alex. “GE’s Ecomagination Turns 10: How a
Brand Can Be a Driver for Change.” Huffington Post,
September 16, 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-
alexander-haldemann/startup-slideshow-
test_b_7181672.html.
14 Ibid.
15 GE. “GE Wins EPC of the Year Award for Malakoff
Corporation’s 1,000-Megawatt Tanjung Bin Energy Power
Plant.” September 22, 2016.
http://www.genewsroom.com/press-releases/ge-wins-epc-
year-award-malakoff-corporation%E2%80%99s-1000-
megawatt-tanjung-bin-energy-power.
16 Scherer, Jasper. “How GE Is Changing the World.”
Fortune, August 19, 206.
http://fortune.com/2016/08/19/general-electric-change-
world/.
17 Haldemann, “Ecomagination Turns 10.”
18 Makower, “Ecomagination at 10.”
19 Hower, Mike. “GE Renews Ecomagination Initiative,
Commits $25B to CleanTech R&D by 2020.” March 4,
2014.
http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/clean
tech/mike_hower/ge_renews_ecomagination_initiative_co
mmits_25_b_clean_tech_rd_20.
20 Starbucks. Mission Statement. Accessed August 22,
2017. https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-
information/mission-statement.
21 Leinwand, Paul, and Varya Davidson. “How Starbucks’s
Culture Brings Its Strategy to Life.” Harvard Business
Review, December 30, 2016.
https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-starbuckss-culture-brings-its-
strategy-to-life.
22 Asrin, Alejandro. Interview by Eduardo Braun. August 25,
2017.
23 Confino, Joe. “Paul Polman: ‘The Power Is in the Hands of
the Consumers.’” The Guardian, November 21, 2011.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/unilever-ceo-paul-polman-interview.
24 Kaye, Leon. “Unilever: Profile of a Sustainable Brand
Leader, Part One.” Sustainable Brands, November 19,
2012.
http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/articl
es/unilever-profile-sustainable-brand-leader-part-one.
25 Walt, Vivienne. “Unilever CEO Paul Polman’s Plan to Save
the World.” Fortune, February 16, 2017.
http://fortune.com/2017/02/17/unilever-paul-polman-
responsibility-growth/.
26 Unilever. “Sustainable Living.” Accessed August 22,
2017. https://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/.
27 Unilever. “Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.” Progress
Report 2011. Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.unilever.com/Images/uslp-
unilever_sustainable_living_plan_progress_report_2011_tc
m13-387588_tcm244-409863_en.pdf.
28 Jack, Louise. “Why Unilever Is Betting Big on
Sustainability.” Fast Company, October 2, 2015.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3051498/why-unilever-is-
betting-big-on-sustainability.
29 Ibid.
30 Kaye, “Unilever.”
31 Confino, “ ‘The Power Is in the Hands of the Consumers.’”
32 Lam, Bourree. “How REI’s Co-op Retail Model Helps Its
Bottom Line.” The Atlantic, March 21, 2017.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/rei
-jerry-stritzke-interview/520278/.
33 Mark, Jason. “Get Out There: The Backstory of REI’s
#OptOutside Campaign.” Sierra, November 22, 2016.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/get-out-there-
backstory-rei-s-optoutside-campaign.
34 REI. “REI Closing Its Doors on Black Friday—Invites
Nation to OptOutside.” November 27, 2015.
http://newsroom.rei.com/news/corporate/rei-closing-its-
doors-on-black-friday-invites-nation-to-optoutside.htm.
35 Diaz, Ann-Christine. “REI’s ‘#OptOutside’ Returns for
2016 with Aims to Become a New American Tradition.”
AdAge, October 24, 2016.
http://adage.com/article/advertising/rei-s-optoutside-
2016-american-tradition/306431/.
36 Beer, Jeff. “How Values and Purpose Made REI’s
#OptOutside a Big Winner at Cannes.” Fast Company,
June 27, 2016.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3061312/how-values-and-
purpose-made-reis-optoutside-a-big-winner-at-cannes.
37 REI. 2015. “Thank You for Choosing to #OPTOUTSIDE
with Us.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://www.rei.com/blog/hike/thanks-for-choosing-to-
optoutside-with-us.
38 Oakley. “OakleyFive.”
39 Ibid.
40 Takumi, Brian. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 19,
2017.
41 Ibid.
42 Oakley. “OakleyFive.”
43 Takumi, interview.
44 Voigt, Joan. “Oakley Flaunts Its Culture in New Branding
Effort.” Adweek, February 28, 2014.
http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/oakley-flaunts-
its-culture-new-branding-effort-156014/.
45 Takumi, interview.
46 Voigt, “Oakley Flaunts Its Culture”
47 VisionMonday staff. “Oakley Launches ‘Disruptive by
Design’ Campaign.” Vision Monday, February 27, 2014.
http://www.visionmonday.com/business/suppliers/article/o
akley-launches-disruptive-by-design-campaign-outlines-
future-focus-1/.

Conclusion

1 Levy, Mark. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 11, 2017.

2 Williams, Ardine. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 14,
2017.
3 Tomovich, Lilian. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 19,
2017.
4 Weinzweig, Ari. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. July 24,
2017.
5 Ridge, Garry. Interview by Denise Lee Yohn. May 18, 2017.
6 Guinto, Joseph. “A Look at Southwest Airlines 50 Years
Later.” D Magazine, May 2017.
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-
ceo/2017/may/southwest-airlines-50-year-anniversary-
love-field-dallas/.
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Denise Lee Yohn is the go-to expert on brand-building for

national media outlets, an in-demand speaker and
consultant, and an influential writer.
A student of great brands and enduring organizations,
Denise is the author of the best-selling book What Great
Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that
Separate the Best from the Rest and the e-book
Extraordinary Experiences: What Great Retail and
Restaurant Brands Do.
News media including FOX Business TV, CNBC, The Wall
Street Journal, and NPR call on Denise when they want an
expert point of view on hot business issues. With her
expertise and inspiring approach, Denise has become an in-
demand keynote speaker, and she has addressed business
leaders around the world.
Denise challenges readers to think differently in her
regular contributions to Harvard Business Review and
Forbes, and she has been a sought-after writer for
publications including Fast Company, Entrepreneur,
Knowledge@Wharton, and Seeking Alpha, among others.
Denise initially cultivated her brand-building approaches
through several high-level positions in advertising and
client-side marketing. She served as lead strategist at
advertising agencies for Burger King and Land Rover and as
the marketing leader and analyst for Jack in the Box
restaurants and Spiegel catalogs. Denise went on to head
Sony Electronics Inc.’s first brand office, where she was the
vice president/general manager of brand and strategy and
garnered major corporate awards. Consulting clients have
included Target, Oakley, Dunkin’ Donuts, and other leading
companies.
Contact Denise at http://deniseleeyohn.com.
 INDEX

A
Aarstol, Stephan, 115
accessibility, 42, 171
achievement, 42, 171
action inconsistency, 22
Adobe, 75–76
Airbnb, 183
“#belonganywhere” brand campaign, 95–96
design of offices, 97–98
employee’s experience at, 96–100, 108, 112
“Ground Control” team of, 96, 98
purpose and core values, 97
talent department, 96
Amazon, 53, 132
market value, 8
Web Services, 26
workplace culture, xi–xiii
American Express, 33
American Management Association and Institute for
Corporate Productivity, 64
Andersson, Jörgen, 19
Apple, 11
artifacts, xxii, 41, 131–134
Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, 14, 17, 77
Asrin, Alejandro, 174
assessment of brand-culture fusion
brand type, 30–37
culture audit 39–41
current state of brand-culture fusion, 45–50
uniqueness, 52–53
values, 37–45
Audacity Group, 12
Autodesk, 6

B
Banco Supervielle, 20
Barbour, Hilton, 12, 84
B2B (business-to-business) companies, xxiv
Becker, Jan, 6
BELAY, 27, 129
Bellagio, 144
Benioff, Marc, 123
Bezos, Jeff, xii–xiii, xx, 29, 53, 183
BMW, 33
Booz Allen Hamilton, 14, 17, 77
brand
archetypes, 31
classifying, 31
day-to-day engagement with, 49–50
design, 140–141
differentiating, 176–180
engagement session, 65–66
engagement with company’s brand strategy, 50
identifying, 30–37
personal and emotional engagement with, 49
touchpoints, 88–92
types, 31–37
brand-building, xviii–xxi
“brand-as-business” management approach to, xix
brand-culture fusion, xv–xviii, 180–181, 186
assessment of current state of, 45–50
and authenticity of brands, xv
need for, xxiii–xxvi
strategies to achieve, xxii
Brand-Culture Fusion Assessment, 16, 30, 32, 52
brand identity, xii, 152, 164–165, 170
developing, 173
Brand Touchpoint Wheel, 78, 89–91
Branson, Richard, xiii, 6, 29
Braun, Eduardo, 61
Brown, Andrew, 25
Brown, Michael, 132
Bucher, Amy, 131
Buffer, xvii
Burke, Katie, 113, 116
Burkus, David, 132

C
caring, 42, 171
Chernatony, Leslie de, 12, 105
Chevron, 129
Chouinard, Yvon, 163
City Year, xxv, 132–133
Cleveland Clinic, 81
Clio, 113–114
Cloudflare, 129
College Hunks Hauling Junk, 130
Collins, Jim, xiv, 9–11, 13
compensation experience, 115
competition, 42, 171
Conley, Chip, 133
conscious brands, 32, 34
consistency, 42, 171
The Container Store, 61
continuous improvement, 42, 171
Cooper, Brant, 131
core values, 13–24
congruence, achieving and sustaining, 21–24
customer perception of, 17–18
drafting, 20
 in hiring decisions, 69
identifying, 16–21, 42–44
importance of setting, 14
information from, 19
as operating instructions, 14
tangible benefits of, 14–15
uniqueness of, 16–17
Corkindale, Gill, 79
countercultures, 25
Covey, Stephen R., 45
creativity, 42, 171
Crossroads Church, 15
culture, xiii
as an antidote to threats, xiv
audit, 39, 41, 44
cultivating healthy, xxiii
healthy, significance of, xiv
culture-aligned operations, 86
culture-building, xviii–xxi
culture change, 77–78
customer experience (CX), 96, 100–101, 103, 107, 118–120
customers, xii

D
Deal, Terrence, 127
Denison, 37
design, 42, 171
desired culture, xxi–xxii, 16, 25, 27, 30, 38–39, 44, 48, 51–
52, 60, 62–64, 66–68, 70, 76, 78, 80–83, 85–86, 92–93,
101, 103, 107–108, 110–112, 116, 120, 123–124, 127–
128, 130–131, 134, 136–137, 141, 144–150, 157, 159,
161, 170, 181, 185
discernment, 42, 171
disruptive brands, 24, 31
distinct culture, 182
distinction, 42, 171
Dreamforce, 123
drivers of business, xiii–xv
Drucker, Peter, 27

E
Ecomagination, 166
Eisingerich, Andreas, 147
Ellinghorst, Arndt, 59
Ellison, Marvin, 86
empathy, 43, 171
employee brand engagement, 48–52, 146–148
communications campaigns, 154–158
experiences, 148–154
investments in, 160–161
toolkits for, 158–160
Employee Experience Architecture, 107
employee experience–customer experience integration, 47–
48, 52
employee experience (EX), 95
aligning and integrating brand and culture, 120
designing, 103–116
employee interactions, 106–109
employee segmentation, 103–106
integrating with customer experience (CX), 118–120
involving employees in designing, 116–118
prioritizing, 101–103
programs, 101
rules of, 99
three-category design model, 109–110
understanding, 98–99
vs employee engagement, 100
employee interactions, 106–109
employee policies and procedures, 40, 124, 134–140
employee segmentation, 103–106
employer branding, 147
employment branding, 147
engagement experience, 114
enhancing subcultures, 25
enjoyment, 43, 171
entertainment, 43, 171
Erickson, Tamara, 110, 112
EX, see employee experience (EX)
excellence, 43, 171
experience brands, 32, 35
experimentation, 43, 171

F
Facebook, 7–8, 13
fairness, 43, 171
FedEx, 25–26, 33
Ferry, Korn, 77
Fields, Mark, 65
Five Whys exercise, 9
Flynn, Nancy, 137
Ford, Henry, 8
Ford Motor Company
core values, 64–65
leadership actions at, 58–60
turnaround of, 55–58
Forman, Jennifer, 149–150
Franklin, Benjamin, 148
Frei, Frances X., 81
Friedman, Nick, 130
Frito-Lay, xiv
frozen middle, 67
fusion, xiii

G
Gardner, Jeremiah, 131
Gartenberg, Claudine, 67
Gazelles, 18
GE, 69, 166–168, 170
Gentle Giants, 130
Gill-Simmen, Lucy, 147
Gittell, Jody Hoffer, 79
Global Brand Leaders, 84
Google, 18–19, 81–82, 137
Gratton, Lynda, 110, 112
Great Recession of 2008, 55
Griffin, Michael, 140

H
Hagerty, 11
haka, 127
Hastings, Reed, 23
Hatfield, Tinker, 4
Hewitt, Aon, 66
high commitment, 43, 172
H&M, 19
Hoffman, 64–65
Howard, Joy, 164
HubSpot, 113, 116–117
Hughey, Cheryl, 185
Human Synergistics, 37
humility, 43, 172

I
IBM, 16
ideological inconsistency, 22
Illumina, 18
Immelt, Jeff, 166
inconsistencies, 22
Ind, Nicholas, 19
innovative brands, 32, 34
internal brand alignment, 48, 52
inventiveness, 43, 172

J
Jackson, Eric, 25
Jannard, Jim, 178–180
JCPenney, 65, 86
Jobs, Steve, 9
Johnson & Johnson, 8
Joie de Vivre, 133, 138
Journal of Brand Management, 147

K
Katzenbach, Jon, 93
Kelleher, Herb, xiv, 183
Kennedy, Allan, 127
Kerr, Michael, 128
Kleinberg, Adam, 139
Kmart, 80
Knight, Phil, 3, 5

L
Laird-Magee, Tyler, 84
Lambert, Eddie, 80
leadership
for achieving brand-culture fusion, 70–71
actions, 64–66
communication skills, 60–64
in decision-making, 68–70
diversity and inclusion (D&I) efforts, 67–68
for fostering culture, 58–60
hiring and firing decisions, 70
and level of engagement, 66–68
Lederman, Gregg, xvi, 148
Lencioni, Patrick, 21
Leverich, Nicole, 26, 82
Levy, Mark, 96, 117, 183
Lindeman, Jeff, 82–83
LinkedIn, 26, 82
Lorsch, Jay W., 93
lower-level management, 66–67
luxury brands, 32, 35

M
Makower, Joel, 166
Martin, Jason, 125
Meister, Jeanne, 100
MGM Grand, 144
MGM Resorts, 143–146, 148, 183
Michelman, Paul, xix
middle management, 66–67
Miles, Bryan, 27, 129
mission statement, 6–7
Mitchell International, 149
The Mitchell Way Day, 149–150
Morgan, Jacob, 101
Morris, Donna, 76, 82, 114
Morris, Steve, 13
Motley Fool, 139
Mulally, Alan, 56–58, 65
multi-dimensional brand engagement experiences, 151–154

N
Natura, 78, 86–87
NCR, 106
Netflix, 22–23
Nike, 3–4, 179
brand-culture fusion, 5
inspiration and innovation, 5, 8
“Just Do It” tagline, 4
mission and maxims, 4–5
nonprofit organizations, xxv–xxvi

O
O2, 154–157
Oakley, xiv, 178–180
OCAI, 37
office hours experience, 115
Ohana culture, 123, 125–126, 131
on-boarding experience, 113
operationalize culture, xxii, 67, 77–78
#OptOutside campaign, 177–178, 180
organizational culture, 27
artifacts, 131–134
identifying, 37–45
policies and procedures, aligning, 134–140
rites and rituals, 125–130
Organizational Culture Profile, 37
organizational design, 78–85
brand touchpoints, analysis of, 92
bridging culture-change efforts, 93
design principles, 79–80
goal of, 80–81
integrating and aligning culture and brand, 85–87
organizational roles, 82–85
organizational standards, 81–82
organizational structure, 81
organizational subcultures, 25
organizational values, common, 42–44, 171–172
organization’s hierarchy, 66–68
originality, 43, 172
orthogonal subcultures, 25
overarching purpose, 5–13, 95
crafting a meaningful statement, 11–13
pinpointing, 9–10

P
Palmisano, Sam, 16
Parker, Mark, 4
Patagonia, 163
brand identity, 164
environmental efforts and philosophy, 165
People First Leadership: How the Best Leaders Use Culture
and Emotion to Drive Unprecedented Results (Eduardo
Braun), xiii
performance brands, 32, 35
performance review experience, 114
Photoshop, 75
Plant With Purpose, xxvi, 114
Polman, Paul, 174, 176
Porras, Jerry I., 9–11, 13
pragmatism, 43, 172
Prince, Matthew, 129
purpose and values integration, 46–47, 52
“purpose-driven” company, 5
purposefulness, 43, 172

Q
Quicken Loans, 159
QuikTrip, 68

R
Rabobank Nederland, 110
“Rally Cry” campaign, 154–156
Random Corporate Serial Killer game, 9–10
recruiting experience, 113
Red Bull, 179
Red Jacket Society, 133
REI, 176–178
REVPAR, 146
Rhoades, Ann, 17, 64, 69
Built on Values, 69
Ridge, Garry, 185
RightNow, 88
risk-taking, 43, 172
rituals, xxii, 41, 47–48, 123–130
Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, 31, 113
role-based segments, 104
Rosenberg, Jonathan, 81
Rossman, John, 53

S
Sabin, Scott, 114
Saginaw, Paul, 134
Salesforce, 123–125, 131
San Diego Regional Airport Authority, 82–83
“Let’s Go” campaign, 83
Sartain, Libby, 157
Schmidt, Eric, 81
Schultz, Howard, 29, 169
Schumann, Mark, 157
Seabra, Antonio Luiz da Cunha, 86
Sears, 80
Serafeim, George, 67
service brands, 32, 34
SHOW acronym, 144–145
Siebel Systems, 133
Skylofts, 144
small businesses, xxv
Smith, Gillian, 132
Somma, Mark di, 12
Sony, xiv, 11, 88
sophistication, 44, 172
Southwest Airlines, 53, 64, 78–79
Southwest Airlines, culture of, xiv
Squarespace, 11
standard operating procedures (SOPs), 135–136
standing out, 44, 172
Starbucks, 29, 53, 169–170
start-ups, xvi–xvii, xxv
status, 44, 172
Stritzke, Jerry, 177
style brands, 32, 35
Supervielle, Patricio, 20
symbolic inconsistency, 22

T
Takumi, Brian, 178–179
Tarjeta Naranja, 173–174
Telefónica, 154
Telenor, 153
Tencent, 115–116
Tenet Partners, 147
Thematic Apperception “Test” (TAT), 10
Think. Feel. Do exercise, 10
Tindell, Kip, 61
Toister, Jeff, 114
Tome, Brian, 15
Tomovich, Lilian, 144–145, 160, 183
Tower, 115
Traction, 139
training experience, 113–114
transparency, 44, 172

U
Uber’s organizational culture, xvii–xviii
Umpqua, 84
unifying employees, 24–27
Unilever, 174–175
“Unilever Sustainable Living Plan” (USLP), 174–175
uniqueness of company, 52–53
USAA, 31

V
value brands, 32, 34
value congruence, 21–22
values, see core values; organizational values, common
Valve, 115
Vanderbloemen, William, 113
Vanderbloemen Search Group, 113
Virgin enterprise, 29
Volkswagen, 59–60

W
Ward, Jonathan, 116
WD-40 Company, 17, 185
Weinzweig, Ari, 134, 136
Welch, Jack, xiii, 61, 69
Welch, Suzy, 69
well-known brands, xvii
Williams, Ardine, 26, 183
workplace environment experience, 115–116

X
Xradia, 11

Y
Yates, Darin, 15
YouGov BrandIndex, 98

Z
Zappos, 11, 16, 18
Zingerman’s, 124–125, 134–135, 140–141, 184
Staff Guide, 135–136
ZingTrain, 135
Zuckerberg, Mark, 7–8, 13
* Some perks aren’t as effective at motivating employees as
they might seem. A study on millennials in the workplace by
Qualtrics, an experience research platform, found that free
food is one of least important elements of culture. “Catered
lunches might boost employee morale once in a while,”
Qualtrics CEO and founder Ryan Smith says, “but it’s a
losing strategy if you’re trying to help your employees feel
like they’re an integral part of a thriving organization.” And
Dennis Eusebio, design leader at Tuft & Needle, says that
perks can end up being like a “siren song.” They have
“diminishing returns,” he writes in Entrepreneur. Employees
find, he says, that “you simply don’t value a foosball table
as much the tenth time you’ve played as the first time.”
(Sources: Smith, Ryan. “Free Food Is a Poor Excuse for
Company Culture.” Fortune, June 10, 2015.
http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/ryan-smith-retaining-
employees/. Eusebio, Dennis. “Why Office Perks Are Traps,
Not Benefits.” Entrepreneur, February 16, 2017.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289056.) * At the time
of this writing, a new CEO at Uber has just been named. The
new leader faces the formidable challenge of repairing
Uber’s brand identity and culture. Doing so will require
balancing two potentially conflicting forces: restoring the
stability the company needs to regain the trust of
customers, employees, and other stakeholders, while
reinvigorating the bold and convention-breaking culture it
needs to fuel innovation and reclaim a leadership position. I
will continue to provide perspectives on Uber and other
companies in this book as new developments unfold. Go to
http://deniseleeyohn.com/fusion for my latest insights.
* The asterisk and corresponding footnote is based on Nike
cofounder Bill Bowerman’s belief that “everyone has a body
and is therefore a potential athlete” and expresses how
universal the company believes its mission is. (Source: Nike.
“Mission Statement.” Accessed August 22, 2017.
https://help-en-us.nike.com/app/answer/a_id/113.) * To keep
it simple in this book, I use “purpose” to refer to any one of
the three types of statements in the examples I discuss,
regardless of the term that the organization might use.
* Among the leaders who recognize the importance of
communication as a core leadership skill are Jack Welch,
former GE CEO, and Kip Tindell, chairman of the board and
cofounder of The Container Store. Welch defines a leader as
someone who is able to communicate successfully, while
Tindell goes so far as to say, “Communication and
leadership are really the same thing.” (Sources: Braun,
Eduardo. 2016. People First Leadership: How the Best
Leaders Use Culture and Emotion to Drive Unprecedented
Results. Columbus, Ohio: McGraw-Hill Education. Location
1815, Kindle. Tindell, Kip. 2014. Uncontainable: How
Passion, Commitment, and Conscious Capitalism Built a
Business Where Everyone Thrives. New York: Grand Central
Publishing. Page 138.)
* There is enough confusion between EX and employee
engagement that even two experts seem to offer conflicting
perspectives. Bruce Temkin, managing partner of the
customer experience firm Temkin Group, says organizations
should focus on employee engagement. “Employee
experience deals with how employees enjoy their job or
environment. It deals with making things fun and enjoyable.
Employee engagement deals with how committed
employees are to the mission of their organization.” But
Jacob Morgan, author of The Employee Experience
Advantage, believes that “engagement has been all about
the short-term cosmetic changes that organizations have
been trying to make to improve how they work.” He writes,
“If employee engagement is the short-term adrenaline shot,
then EX is the long-term redesign of the organization. It’s
focus is on the engine, not the paint and upholstery.”
(Sources: Temkin, Bruce. 2017. “Focus on Employee
Engagement, Not Employee Experience.” Experience
Matters, April 4, 2017.
https://experiencematters.blog/2017/04/20/focus-on-
employee-engagement-not-employee-experience. Morgan,
Jacob. 2017. The Employee Experience Advantage: How to
Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces
They Want, the Tools They Need, and a Culture They Can
Celebrate. New York: Wiley. Page 6.)
* In addition to their powerful culture-building impact, rituals
provide an additional benefit to an organization’s leaders.
Employee participation in them provides a gauge of the
culture. In Leading Teams, Guenzi and his coauthor describe
how Italian football manager Luigi Delneri uses a pregame
ritual as a “thermometer” to measure his team’s motivation
level. “Before the game begins we hold hands and shout ‘All
for one and one for all,’ ” Delneri says. “Even the way the
players shout tells you whether they are properly focused.”
(Source: Hackman, J. Richard. 2002. Leading Teams: Setting
the Stage for Great Performances. Brighton, Massachusetts.
Page 196.)
* Mitchell’s Forman, for example, assured me that she didn’t
have a big budget for The Mitchell Way Day; her team
redirected existing budget to do things “on the cheap.”
(Source: Mitchell, Jennifer. Interview with Denise Lee Yohn.
Telephone interview on July 19, 2017.)
* There are other ways to leverage your culture to
differentiate your brand. UPS promoted the color brown in
its advertising as a symbolic differentiator of its brand
because the color’s lack of flashiness aptly represented the
company’s culture of reliability and humility. And Zappos
showcased the generous and humorous attitude that
characterizes its culture by running ads using recordings of
actual customer service calls with its representatives
gracefully handling unusual customer demands.