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The principles in my book, What Great Brands Do:  The Seven Brand-Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest can be applied to employees, employee experience, and employee engagement. For example, in WGBD, I explain that Great Brands Avoid Selling Products.  Instead of simply focusing on selling products or services to customers, great brands […]

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It’s one thing to know there is a link between culture and performance – it’s another to prove it, much less to quantify and track it. In my new article on LinkedIn, Link Culture to Performance Through Metrics, I share about a report that provides tools and frameworks for culture measurement.  Enjoy! related: Assess Brand-Culture […]

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To change your strategy – your what – you need to change your how – your culture.  And you need to change your culture first – because your culture is what will ensure your organization is able to execute on your strategy. In my new Brand+Culture Series post on LinkedIn, I show how to use […]

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Social media influencers and AI platforms are changing the way we connect with customers; they are also changing the way we use brands. Today brands are not only marketing outputs and strategic inputs. They are – or at least they should be – cultural cornerstones. Here is why. related: Prepare Your Culture for a Recession […]

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If you’re struggling to build a cohesive company culture, you’re not alone.  Where and how people work varies so much now that culture-building seems more difficult than ever. Instead of trying to control or quash the different directions your culture seems to be headed, provide clarity and focus to the variations. In this Smartbrief on […]

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How do you build a great brand?  Ever since I wrote the book What Great Brands Do, I’ve been on a quest to discover and share answers to this question.  While all seven brand-building principles that I introduced in the book still are important and relevant today, the one that has risen to the top […]

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Now is the time to prepare your business for the recession.  In addition to the typical strategies of cost-cutting and cash flow management, add culture-building.  A healthy, effective, and resilient company culture can help you not just survive, but actually thrive during an economic downturn. In my new Smartbrief on Leadership video, I explain how […]

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently referred to Meta employees in a new way:  Metamates.  Is this a good idea?  Should you use a coined name to refer to your employees? The poll I fielded on LinkedIn yielded a definitive answer: It depends.  28% supported the practice of made-up names for employees; 32% voted against it; […]

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How aligned and integrated are your external brand identity and internal organizational culture? Does your organization have the right core values that it needs to cultivate your desired culture and achieve your brand vision? How big is the gap between your existing brand identity and the one you aspire to? In what specific ways are […]

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The problem at Amazon is not simply that its culture has gone awry; more importantly, it has become disconnected from the company’s brand. Amazon’s brand has always been grounded in its aspiration of becoming “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.”  And its leaders have used the organization’s core values, “Leadership Principles”, to guide the company in service […]