Companies must design their internal experience to authentically embody their external image
Caleb Dean, Design Thinker and Consultant
In a world where industries are being disrupted left and right, having a strong external brand is no longer enough to compete. These days, companies must design their internal experience to authentically embody their external image.
That’s because, with greater access to information about how a company operates, why it claims to exist, and who works for it, the ability of any stakeholder to gauge brand authenticity—and inauthenticity—continues to grow. Take the example of Comcast, which, ironically, is in the business of connectivity. Yet there are countless documented cases of customers having an extremely painful experience when they attempt to connect with an actual person at the company. In short, connection is being sold externally, but the brand is not being embodied internally.
How does this happen? One reason is that most companies put too much emphasis on the external experience of their brand, and far too little on how their intended brand is experienced by their own employees and other internal stakeholders. In his book, Zag, author and brand expert Marty Neumeier defines brand as, ‘a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company’. This is an important framework when considering brand authenticity, as it implies that a brand is a personal experience that exists within all of those who interact with an organization—both internally and externally.
How many times have you heard someone say, ‘Company Z makes an amazing product—but I hear it’s a terrible company to work for’, or ‘I hear they treat their vendors horribly’? What is your gut reaction when you hear something like this about a company, more than once? Given the negativity bias—whereby things of a negative nature have a far greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than do neutral or positive things—it is very likely to stick with you.
I recently connected with the owners of a waste-management company, who had come to a critical realization: their employees who drive the trucks—and are out engaging with the community daily—are key brand ambassadors. In fact, among the entire team, these drivers have the highest frequency of interactions with external stakeholders. The challenge they faced was that these employees also had far fewer internal experiences that embodied the firm’s brand—and thus were less likely to authentically represent it.
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]