Ask people how to develop a good corporate culture, and most of them will immediately suggest offering generous employee benefits, like they do at Starbucks, or letting people dress casually, as Southwest Airlines does. Rarely do people point to encouraging employees to disagree with their managers, as Amazon does, or firing top performers, as Jack Welch did at GE.
Why Your Company Culture Should Match Your Brand
Having a distinct corporate culture – not a copycat of another firm’s culture – is what allows great organizations to produce phenomenal results. Their leaders understand that a strong, differentiated company culture contributes to a strong, differentiated brand — and that an extraordinary brand can support and advance an extraordinary culture. When you think and operate in unique ways internally, you can produce the unique identity and image you desire externally. You need to have employees who understand and embrace the distinct ways you create value for customers, the points that differentiate your brand from the competition, and the unique personality that your company uses to express itself — and your employees must be empowered to interpret and reinforce these themselves. You achieve this by cultivating a clear, strong, and distinctive brand-led culture. With a single, unifying drive behind both your culture and your brand, you reap the benefits of a focused and aligned workforce. How you operate on the inside should be inextricably linked with how you want to be perceived on the outside.