Do employees serve their organizations brand, or just the organization?

“Brand” is such a loaded term.

One definition out there is your brand is what your customers say about your company behind your back.

Cute right?

Let’s put the brand definition discussion aside for a moment, and let’s talk about what your employees think, and how they influence your brand. Companies of all types and sizes collectively spend billions of dollars every year on enhancing and supporting their brand but really what good is that when your employees and representatives are unclear themselves.

In the nonprofit world I have seen a number of organizations that spend good money and a lot of time to generate mission, vision, and value statements, along with strategic plans and business plans. For the sake of argument let’s call these documents Brand Plans. These well meaning organizations finish the process and then put the new documents on a shelf somewhere and basically carry on the way they were.

Too often these important ideas are created by the senior management, boards, and consultants without enough thought about how it will translate down to the front line workers. The front line workers, paid and unpaid, rarely get to clearly understand the brand that the serve and in fact if your were to ask them I doubt that they would declare that they serve a brand at all. They work for an organization.

This disconnect between the big thoughts at the top and the day-to-day struggle on the front lines needs to be addressed in the planning and addressed at every stage of the implementation. An organizations front line workers are the face of the organization and do more to convey a brand than any advertising campaign could every accomplish.