Kristin Zhivago captured the concept well in an article that she wrote for Business Marketing. She said:

"A brand is not an icon, a slogan, or a mission statement. It is a promise — a promise your company can keep. First you find out, using research, what promises your customers want companies like yours to make and keep, using the products, processes and people in your company. Then you look at your competition and decide which promise would give you the best competitive advantage. This is the promise you make and keep in every marketing activity, every action, every corporate decision, and every customer interaction. You promote it internally and externally. The promise drives budgets and stops arguments. If everyone in the company knows what the promise is, and knows that they will be rewarded or punished depending on the personal commitment to the promise, politics and personal turf issues start to disappear."

Here are some of the most common problems that organizations encounter when trying to implement new brand management programs:

• Senior management is not focused on the brand
• Senior management has a short attention span — how do we garner their support and resources over time?
• Some senior leaders do not seem to be bought into the brand management concept at all
• The organization is highly fragmented and resistant to change
• The organization is internally focused
• The organization's culture does not reinforce the brand
• The organization's operations and systems do not support the brand
• The brand message is only one of many among all the corporate messages 

How do we shift people's focus from their functional "silos" to cross-functional ownership of the brand? To create the change required, all of the following must be addressed:

• Corporate mission and vision — are they congruent with the brand essence and promise?
• Business planning process — is it linked to the brand planning process?
  Corporate culture, values and behaviour — do they support the brand essence, promise and personality?
• Recruitment — are you screening people for delivery against the brand promise?
  Internal communication vehicles — are you using them to communicate brand positioning, strategies and priorities?
• Training and development — are you using these to increase understanding of brand positioning, strategies and priorities?
• Performance objectives (especially common objectives) — do they include brand objectives?
• Performance appraisal — do you provide feedback on how well individuals and groups are delivering against the brand promise?
• Rewards and recognition — do you reward and recognize people who have furthered important brand goals?
• Do you compensate people for achievement of brand objectives?
• Products and services — do they deliver against the brand promise?
• Operations, systems and logistics — do they support delivery of the brand promise?

Hey CEO!  Are you and your company ready to exit the Recession and move quickly into opportunity mode in 2010?  Are your people tired, burned out, worried, or uncommitted to the cause?  How is morale across the company?  How do production, revenue and the bottom line look relative to plan?  Look, we've all been through this before - and the one thing we've learned is that unless your people are committed to stepping up, supporting one another, and engaging in our various missions to win our markets - we're dead in the water.  If there was ever a time to look closely at your management teams, employee talent and overall health of your organisation - that time is NOW!  With Q4 in full swing, any significant changes to people, programs and performance need to be in action sooner than later to have the desired effect in Q1.

Take a quick and dirty survey of your management team and listen to what they have to say.  Stop employees in the car park and ask them how they think things are going lately.  Think about where you want to take your company and your people in the next 3 years and do a gap analysis in your head.  If your intuition is telling you that troubling challenges lie ahead - then the time to address your concerns is now.

If you need a fast, economical and effective approach to undersatanding your organisational health, and then sort out a path forward to cost effectively address those areas with the highest ROI - call me and I'll get you started quickly.  The time is now.  Opportunity is coming.

Listen to the financial news channels too much and they'll start sounding like mental patients in need of heavy medication.  One minute it's all coming back, the next it's all doom and gloom - and after that a string of useless theories posited by Nobel Prize winning economists who have never seen anything like this before.   Your guess is as good as theirs.

So what to do?  Re-invent, Re-vision, Re-engage and Re-energize your company from the inside out!  Morale as at an all-time low.  People are tired, holding on to their jobs for fear of becoming unemployed, hating that they are doing 10x their prior role compared to last year.  Why not inject some powerful, positive energy back into the system and get people involved in turning things around on your own? 

Yes, create your own turnaround.  Look at your products, your marketing, your services and your people.  Pretend like you're starting from scratch and re-create that small company feeling where everyone's efforts, thoughts and passions matter - every day.  Call it a 'psychological make-over' and challenge your people to re-invent themselves and their company - offer rewards and recognition for the best and most implementable ideas. 

Whatever you do - just don't forget about the hard grafters working the line because your chance to get them recommited t the cause is NOW! 

As CNBC and Bloomberg are rife with pivoting opinions from global CEO's about the state of the economy, it's important to remember that regardless of what business leaders think is happening today, the next six months is going to offer all of us the opportunity to reset our goals, mission, vision and market positions.  Once a direction is agreed, it will become immediately critical to address whether or not we have the right talent in place to deliver to the challenges facing us all; more skeptical markets, tighter price constraints, the need for fast and nimble delivery of goods and services, and a very entreprenuerial approach to how business gets done. 

What that might mean is that you need new talent to deliver faster, better results.  It also might very well mean you need to shift your internal talent around to get the results you require.  Doing this with a strategic HR approach where company targets and individual objectives and rewards for hitting those objectives are intelligently and transparently aligned is the essence of success. 

Further to that end, ramping up your internal communication efforts is essential to getting the word out that the status quo will no longer do.  It's time that everyone start to think like a business owner, making sure they are fully empowered and engaged in hitting targets fast, have the right people in place to do so, and keeping costs and barriers to success at a minimum. 

Is this the thinking you are doing in your company?  Let me know your thoughts.

Jeff