Employees will pass through a series of phases in their pathway to understanding, committing to, and taking action on your brand. Each step in the pathway is critical to ensuring that buy-in is achieved.

Employee Pathway to Buy-in

1. Denial. The denial stage results from a lack of understanding about the business reality and branding as a viable strategy.
• Employees think: “I don’t understand what we’re trying to accomplish. This brand strategy is a flavor of the month. Stop wasting my time so that I can get my work done today. Or tomorrow. Or whenever I get to it since I define what success looks like because you have not.”
2. Resistance. This is caused by strong beliefs about obstacles that will prohibit successful execution of the brand strategy.
• Employees think: “Our company doesn’t have the right people or operational processes in place to really do the brand strategy — we won’t be able to keep the promises our leaders want to make.”
• “Since we’re doomed to fail because of the people we have, this branding initiative will only increase my workload. Ugh!”
3. Exploration. This signals a desire to learn more.
• Employees think: “Okay, the company might be onto something meaningful after all. What can I do to bring the brand to reality?”
4. Commitment. This is generated from the belief that change is desirable.
• Employees think: “Leadership seems pretty committed to this. They’re still talking about it. Wow! This might not be a flavor of the month after all. The leaders seem to be aligned around this cause.”

Leaders must be careful not to try to take employees from denial straight to commitment. The steps of resistance and exploration are important in helping employees make the brand personal and create meaning out of the brand-building process.

In helping employees down the pathway of buy-in, it’s important to acknowledge that “Rah Rah” kickoff events, T-shirts, mouse pads, and posters won’t be nearly enough. It will take more than a motivational speech or a training class to ensure that employees understand the power your brand can have in stimulating cultural transformation and business results.

Ok, I know, I've been gone for far too long. You probably thought I had faded into the brand bone-yard, like memorable brands of the past - Circuit City, Pets.com, Napster, Enron, Bear Sterns... Well, don't count me out so fast. I am back and stronger than ever.

The last month has been an absolute whirlwind, with one of my biggest life changing events being emergency surgery on my neck as the result of an unfortunate encounter with a chiropractor. If the term "neck" is ever used as a key message or to represent the brand of a chiropractor, turn around and run out the door. As my doctor told me shortly after my unfortunate experience, "never let a chiropractor touch your neck." I can guarantee I will live the rest of my life with those words etched in my mind (and so should you)!

Thankfully, I am feeling 100% better after the surgery and am more excited and energized about helping our clients and leaders manage their brand/culture.

Regardless of how I have been feeling , I am a constant sponge for soaking up good and poor brand/culture experiences. In my pain medicine induced existence over the last few months, one amazingly poor customer experience comes to mind.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once upon a time in an airport far far away...

6:00 a.m. Arrive Rochester International Airport for flight to Boston to speak to a group of industry leaders

6:15 a.m. I complete the security procedures and learn my US Air flight has been delayed with no information about how long the delay might be

6:20 a.m. I approach the check-in counter

6:20:25 a.m. As I approach the counter, I see a man behind the counter. He's leaning on the counter and just has that look like I should be ready to apologize for being a customer. I courageously continue to approach

6:21 a.m. Desiring to understand how long the delay might be, I open up my mouth and begin speaking (actual transcript)

    Me: "Good Morning, Sir. Can you tell me how long the flight to Boston is delayed?"

    Angry US Airways Gate Attendant: "Two Hours."

    Me (curious why flight might be delayed): "Do you know why the flight is delayed?"

    Angry US Air Gate Attendant (raised voice, annoyed, leaning on counter): ""THERE ARE LOTS OF FLIGHTS DELAYED. THIS PLANE COULD NOT GET IN LAST NIGHT BECAUSE OF WEATHER. ATLANTA IS DELAYED, WASHINGTON, BALTIMORE…(he continues listing off one after another, but meanwhile the departure monitor only shows two flights delayed).

    Me (calm, with a hint of sarcasm): "Thank you for yelling at me."

    Angry US Airways Gate Attendant: "YOU'RE WELCOME. I ANSWERED YOUR QUESTIONS, DIDN’T I?"

6:23 a.m. I walk away from the ticket counter with continued understanding of why US Airways is flirting with bankruptcy on a regular basis.

In thinking through how to effectively deal with poor performers in your organization, ask yourself these five important questions:

Are there people on your team who are not performing up to the expectations of the job?

• Over time, the poor performers ultimately hinder the productivity of even the best employees.

Are you walking the talk regarding your brand?

• Are your top performers listening to you preach about the brand and its values/benefits, only to witness poor performers getting by just as easily as before? Leaders who allow poor performers to ride the coattails of the strongest members of the team will ultimately lose credibility.
  

Are there members of your team whom you would not hire again if given the opportunity?

• If so, you are losing the war on poor performance. There are three ways to handle this situation:
• Inspire the individual to learn what it will take to become a great performer.
• Motivate the individual to try another position within the company where his/her energy and skill may be better suited.
• Terminate the individual who does not positively represent the company's brand and who does not have what it takes to live it in his/her daily work. Rarely do leaders fire someone and then say, "I wish I had kept him/her a little longer." In fact, most often they wonder why they didn't do it sooner.
  

Do your people know how they're doing?

• Great leaders don't allow employees to wonder. If they are doing great, these leaders let them know. If they are doing just okay, they let them know. And if performance is hindering progress, they let them know that, too. Leaders must care enough to confront performance, otherwise they risk losing the respect of their top performers.

Do you set realistic expectations for success and attach deadlines for success?

• When someone isn't performing as expected, you have to take the time, energy, and focus to redefine for that person what success looks like and establish a benchmark for accountability. Doing so will instill the urgency and focus required for the employee to have the greatest opportunity for success.
  

I've written before about what I called the "mass exodus of A-players." And it popped back in my head recently as I've been inundated with Google alerts for articles about hiring and firing as we move into economic recovery.

A current survey by Monster.com said that 79% of the workforce will seek new employment once the economy starts growing. That means that some of your employees may leave, but at the same time the pool of potential applicants will be growing.

So what are you going to do to ensure you keep your A-players as well as hire right-fit employees to replace those that leave?
The first part I've addressed a lot. To reiterate a few:

1. Investigate the reality of what employees are thinking/feeling
2. Ensure you set expectations and communicate with employees about how they should live the brand everyday
3. Recognize employees when they do it right

The latter piece, hiring right-fit employees, is not so difficult either if you ensure that the company brand is infused from the get-go. Here are three simple things you can do to better your chances of success:

1. Utilize a hiring template populated with questions tied to your company values and bullet points about what to look for in responses
2. Implement an employee referral program that rewards employees if the candidate gets the job
3. Tailor the job offer in a way that shows the candidate how the job will use his/her strengths to achieve (personal and professional) goals.

Essential characteristics of effective brand-building leaders include: strong beliefs around the brand, an ability to communicate those beliefs as part of a compelling vision for success, and the courage and energy to manage a culture transformation.

How can we forget the memorable scene in The Wizard of Oz when the Cowardly Lion is talking to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman doing his best to muster up any available courage:

Cowardly Lion: All right, I'll go in there for Dorothy. Wicked Witch or no Wicked Witch, guards or no guards, I'll tear them apart. I may not come out alive, but I'm going in there. There's only one thing I want you fellows to do.
Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow: What's that?
Cowardly Lion: Talk me out of it!

If as a leader you're running low on or never really had any courage, you may be in need of a trip to the Brand Wizard (wouldn't it be nice if there was such a magical being?). If you’re interested in making your brand THE business versus PART of the business then you’ll need a heck of a lot of courage to get it done. Leadership courage is absolutely critical to achieve any brand success!

Leadership needs courage to:

• Confront all levels of the organization with the business reality in order to help others understand the need for change.
• Reallocate resources to fuel the implementation of the brand strategy.
• Make difficult decisions to keep the brand-building momentum alive. In many cases, these are people-related decisions that are in the best interest of the company. It takes courage to make them.

Like the (not-so) Cowardly Lion, now you've got courage. You'll also need another powerful ingredient to drive sustainable brand-building: energy. So, take a long sip of the proverbial Red Bull and start sharing it with others.

Leadership needs energy to:

• Raise the expectations for performance and accountability. Leaders will need to demonstrate consistent focus on aligning the brand strategy and associated behaviors with individual job category behaviors. This energy starts at the top and permeates throughout the organization, infusing accountability in carrying out necessary performance evaluations and assessments. Keep in mind that people respect what you inspect. Have the courage, energy, and focus to consistently inspect.
• Recognize and reward employees who model the required behaviors and deliver the desired brand experiences. Again, leaders must keep the energy level up and stay focused on the art of finding success in others and sharing them throughout the company. 

The best brand-driven leaders in the world are rarely the smartest people in their company or have the most dominating personality, they just know how to muster the courage and tap into the energy necessary to build and sustain the brand.

In our recent Red Folder eZine, we asked the following question: Do your employees understand, commit to, and know how to take action on your brand? (In other words, do employees buy-in to the company brand?)
Here are the results:

Nearly half of respondents mentioned that they would like to find out if employees in their company are effectively living the brand.

The best way to find out if employees think, speak, and behave your company's brand is to evaluate/assess their performance of key behaviors that are directly tied to the brand and company goals/objectives. So how do you do that?

First, set clear expectations for all employees on what beliefs are required to represent your company’s brand/values. Then establish a set of basic, nonnegotiable behaviors for all employees to demonstrate that are tied to those beliefs.

Integrate the brand into performance systems such as behavior-based interviewing to select the best-fit employees; job-level behavioral expectations for onboarding, training, and providing feedback; and a proprietary recognition system for proactively capturing successes and acknowledging peers who demonstrate behaviors that enhance the work culture and improve the customer experience.

Then conduct regular behavior-based assessments to track employee engagement, productivity, and brand alignment across teams and departments in order to pinpoint strengths and areas of weaknesses.

At Brand Integrity, we use our Achieving Brand Integrity Assessment to measure how consistently a company's employees perform across what are called the Five Dimensions of Brand Integrity. Click here to read a post about the assessment.

Click here to take a complimentary Achieving Brand Integrity Assessment to uncover how well employees in your company understand, commit to, and take action on your brand.

I am quite familiar with the many Best Places to Work lists that exist today. Primarily because 56% my clients who are implementing with Brand Integrity, for at least a year, are on or have been on one of the lists before. We've learned as much from our clients as they have from us - it truly is a partnership.

One specific thing I have learned is how truly committed our clients are to building an employer brand. They recognize the importance a strong employer brand plays in the success of their company. Their focus on branding for employees is driving millions of dollars to their bottom-line each year.

Take Wegmans Food Markets, who has been a consistent top 10 Fortune Best Places to Work company since the list's inception. Wonder if an employer brand matters - think about the bottom-line impact when you have 50-60% less turnover than the industry average. If your not imagining lots of dollar signs, go get a glass of water, splash it on your face and wake-up.

Building an employer brand enhances the power of the positive. Said another way, it increases the upbeat energy in your company and propels employees, work teams, and leaders to accomplish remarkable results.

Having a company brand strategy and subsequent brand that employees find to be meaningful and relevant leads to:

Passion and sponsorship: The right employees, motivated by the same desirable outcomes, willingly head in the same direction as the company and as one another.

A positive work culture: Internal excitement is focused on embracing change, not fighting it.

Employee commitment: Employees understand how they fit into and have an impact on the company.

Customer loyalty: Because experiences are meaningful and stimulate incredible loyalty. This happens only when employees understand the benefits customers are looking for and the uniqueness with which your company can deliver those benefits. This allows employees to connect emotionally with the brand, optimizing their ability to delight customers.