by Lorraine Stewart Lockhart
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Executives and marketing leaders need to be intentional about managing company culture as a means to deliver the business agenda, create competitive advantage and increase brand value. This mission is critical in stressed economic times where the consequences of not doing so will undermine the business and one’s career.
Corporate culture is the intangible fabric that knits teams of people together across hierarchy, geography and lines of business, enabling them to work together effectively … or not. Cultural understanding between a company and its external suppliers is a key ingredient to sourcing the right partners and then creating high performance teams that get the job done.
The success and authenticity of how a brand is positioned in the marketplace and then fulfilled in the experiences of its customers is directly influenced by the culture of the company that produces it. Beyond the heritage of a brand, its foundational values and its personality, the culture of a brand should be articulated in a set of behaviors and actions that resonate with customers, employees and stakeholders. It is in this causal relationship between promised values and experienced values, that loyalty is cultivated. Loyalty to brand builds short term and long term business success.
Teams that share a common understanding of key values like clear and guiding philosophy, risk-taking, innovation, quality ,results-orientation and security, for example coupled with shared views of the importance for behaviors, like responsiveness, initiative, adaptability, decisiveness, teaming, are most effective.
Leadership is the ability to conceive and communicate a vision, inspire a response, mobilize resources and execute a plan of achievement.
Marketing leaders create impact by orchestrating teams of people to conceive, create and execute brands that mean something to those who purchase them, and accept them into their lives.
Rojek is uniquely qualified to help marketing leaders manage corporate culture to their advantage to build teams of people to connect the values of the company to the values of the people the company and its brands serves.
