Because your systems and procedures – ideally intended to reinforce those efforts - not only shape your operations, but also dictate your performance measures. These then dominate, shifting your focus and driving other behaviours that distort and dilute your brand-building efforts. This shift also partly explains why implementing strategy, generally, presents such a challenge.

All this is exacerbated by the reality that your brand is actually determined by your customer. No matter what efforts you put into building it, ultimately your brand is your customers’ perception of how well you meet their expectations. This means your brand is tested most when something goes wrong.

And things will go wrong! No matter how hard you try to provide perfect products and impeccable service you will encounter problems. As Robbie Burns said, “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley (awry).” There is an inevitability about it – particularly if you have a divide between your conscious and unconscious behaviours. Thus, rather than trying to promote an ideal of your brand, you would do better to shape an organisation where everyone is always focused on understanding customer needs and committed to meeting and exceeding their expectations.

Naturally you cannot do this unless everyone in the organisation is conscious of, and shares, that objective. Paradoxically, this means, putting your employees’ needs before your customers’ needs as it takes fulfilled, engaged, aware and responsive employees, to make exceptional service a universal standard. The Zealise ‘Every Individual Matters’ Model, provides the catalyst for achieving this.

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If you like what you have read contact me today to explore how my original thinking could help you break though logjams that are inhibiting your business or how my ‘Every Individual Matters’ Model could help you value your people and provide the catalyst to help you create an organic culture where everyone cares and the business becomes our business, embedding continuous improvement that engenders ‘love at work’ and transforms – and sustains – organic business performance.

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Bay Jordan

Bay is the founder and director of Zealise, and the creator of the ‘Every Individual Matters’ organizational culture model that helps transform organizational performance and bottom-line results. Bay is also the author of several books, including “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” and “The 7 Deadly Toxins of Employee Engagement” and, more recently, The Democracy Delusion: How to Restore True Democracy and Stop Being Duped.