Sensible Branding

That truth is that you have to be flavour of the week, every week, every month, every year. You cannot rest on your laurels and assume that everything between you and your customers is fine.

You have to know. You have to work at it, believe it, and see it. You have to get your vision and values so engrained into your staff that it becomes a way of life - a culture that is so attuned to customer needs it affects the way they perform as a team and as individuals. It is a defined culture that has accountability built in, and can be articulated so that the newest recruit can be inducted not only into a job role, but also into the company culture. These values have to be displayed from top to bottom, and from company to staff as well as from staff to customers. It has to work holistically so that every experience is a great experience, at every level.

The second truth is that your reputation lies in YOUR hands. It is up to you, the business leader, to gather like-minded individuals to form your core team. Recruit people you know have the same values and integrity that you have (and must display). Don’t recruit solely on job role. Look for the right attitudes, because you can always train someone with the right attitude, but it’s much harder to train someone with a wrong attitude, and even more difficult these days to get rid of them. If you have people with wrong attitudes, find where they fit and can change, or find them an exit! Training people to excel is hard work, but worth every ounce of effort. You reap what you sow. Sow enthusiasm and you’ll eventually reap enthusiasm. Sow positivity and you’ll reap positivity. Sow into your staff and they will sow into your vision. But sow negativity by lack of encouragement or a poor attitude and you’ll reap a negative culture. That shouts lower customer and staff retention about as loudly as 10,000 vuvuzelas at a football match!

We have known business leaders that have embraced building a new positive, envisioned culture with initial enthusiasm. The staff wanted to buy in, but were wary. They have seen changes come and go. Why should this be any different to the last ‘new idea’? They have managed to get the staff excited with a new way of seeing the future. Although the business owners have outwardly embraced this methodology and promoted it to the staff, they haven’t grasped that it will be hard work as well. Nothing worth having comes easily.

Sadly, when the going gets tough, and they don’t see instantaneous improvements, they have given up, thinking it doesn’t work. In reality, they had not learned that vital truth – it reaping the rewards comes through continuous hard work. We live in a world of instant this and instant that - instant entertainment, instant coffee, instant rewards. But all hard work brings a reward if we persevere.

The pursuit of excellence is a daily exercise that brings huge benefits to those who persevere. We cannot do this for you. We can teach the principles we have learned, but we cannot make you do it. You have to catch the vision for yourself before anyone else in your organisation will buy into it.