The Break Room

THE PROBLEM

I’ve lost count of the number of companies I’ve worked with who have a poster in the office break room listing company values - “what we stand for” etc… I’ve also lost count of the number of those same companies where executives of all levels are tied up in cognitive dissonance as they struggle to live abstract, highfalutin’ mission statements while the evidence of their own eyes - their daily cultural experience within the organization - contradicts those statements again and again.

The reason for this disconnect? Corporate mission statements are a committee-based compromise where consensus is achieved through the choice of abstract concepts, ambiguous sentences and “you can’t hold me to this” nebulosity. Abstract language always makes it through the committee grinder because each phrase decided upon means something entirely different to each person in the room. Every participant gets to feel heard and walks away thinking they got their way in negotiations. Totally useless for actual implementation by the rank and file, but - you know, the C-suite is super excited to see where this new direction takes us!

So what to do? How do we build successful organizations and world-beating brands?

First - definitions.

In successful organizations, culture and brand are inseparable – intertwined like vines that carpet a stone façade. If the C-suite dreams of a successful brand with all the resulting benefits to the organization’s bottom line, then they must grow from seed a culture which nourishes and supports that brand. Brand goes beyond the vacuous utterances of break room posters – it lives in the actual experiences of employees, suppliers, customers, hell everyone who’s ever even just heard the name of your organization.

How do we build a better brand?

We have to stitch our brand values into the very fabric of the company. At Wee Beastie we call this process “Brand Actualization.” Brands are aspirational – they are the expressed desire of an organization to be what it wants to be. It’s as visceral as the self-actualization process we go through as squishy human beings with our forward-looking plans, dreams and life goals. When we undertake process in the workplace, we are building Culture. Culture is brand. Brand is Culture.

I’m sure you are aware that Costco is crushing it in the retail space right now. Many associate their success with their consistent culture and organizational values. For example, their overriding philosophy is “Do the right thing.” It’s more than just words on the website - the company has repeatedly raised hourly pay through multi-year wage increases for store workers in a way that has bucked the trend in our parlous post-COVID economy. Costco has gone beyond simply publishing values, they have sewn those values into the fabric of the company and made them tangible for every single team member.

So, how do we do this?

If your company values are to live beyond the poster in the break room, then we must first translate them from abstract into concrete language. The intangible must become specific. The nebulous must solidify into words that mean the same for everyone. For example, if the company is committed to empowerment, we must convert that abstraction into specific cases on how the empowerment is expressed:

- Our company will promote staff from within before hiring from outside.

- Our organization will commit real money to training for every team member.

- Our corporation will give every team member the opportunity to work in a different department for a period, to see where they can grow.

These are real, meaningful commitments that the staff can hold the company to. This requires C-suite vision and bravery, but that’s the only way to success. No cheat codes.

A good example is Salesforce’s 1-1-1 model of philanthropy. The company commits 1% of its equity, 1% of its product and 1% of employee time to improve local communities. This has led to more than $240 million in grants, 3 million+ service hours and support for 40,000 nonprofits in the last twenty-five years. The specificity of this, the practicality, goes beyond the all-too-common boardroom exhortation to “give back” as a concept, without real financial backing – as seen in most companies.

It’s a process of shifting from words to systems. If you can’t describe a value as a visible, observable action, then it cannot be lived. Breaking the abstract value down into concrete actions creates the chance for real movement, real progress towards culture objectives. As mentioned, this can be risky because the senior team might have chosen abstract, airy fairy language so they can commit to change without ever actually having to do anything to promote it. In this situation, we always encourage our clients to be subversive: Push from below to have the company stand up for what it professes to believe in. Be an agitator, make waves and build the kind of culture you, as a manager, actually want to be proud of.

In tandem with this initial “translation” process, you must audit all the ways your organization communicates brand, AKA the touchpoints. Every place where culture and brand interact with coworkers, suppliers and customers, stakeholders, stake throwers etc… These places are the points of leverage where you can start to push the organization towards its vision of a better future.

Once you have your translated your mission and values, and identified the brand/culture leverage points, then comes the fun part. Stakeholders must come together and brainstorm clever processes to embed these values into daily operations. To create a world-changing brand we must innovate and find smart ways to suffuse those new values throughout the organization in ways that lead to real, felt experience for everyone who interacts with the brand. We’ve found that giving rank and file team members agency in the building of these processes is a key step in engaging them in the overall mission of the company in a way that goes beyond lip service.

To be honest, this project is easiest pursued in an organization’s startup phase, where you and your team are architecting something from the ground up. That said, even established organizations can turn the oil tanker if they successfully translate words into actions. 

For example, in the early 2000s, LEGO nearly collapsed. This came after years of chasing innovation through complexity. In a huge turnaround, they recentered their core values on “creativity,” “quality” and particularly, “the builder experience” – but the success only came when these values were translated into concrete actions. They simplified the product system by reducing the number of unique parts, they brought in more play testing with children and they changed decision-making to align with how well models supported open-ended play, not just how popular they were with internal staff.

If you are not the CEO of your company, then at first it may feel impossible. How can those of us in the middle echelons of an organization create change when often we feel like the problem is just too hard even to grasp? That’s a common human conundrum. In our personal world we sometimes feel that the obstacles to success in life are insurmountable. But the truth is, amazing change can be effected by consistent, tiny, incremental changes. How do you eat an elephant? (if you really must, I guess…) one bite at a time. This is the way.

Once you have your desired changes, create the processes and metrics to sustain them. Large organizations thrive on OKRs, KPIs, dashboards and scorecards. We prefer to keep it more human and entrepreneurial: Give team members a list of responsibilities and requirements, a manual of steps to take in each job process, and a game to play when executing them. With shepherding and guidance, you can lead your team to the promised land.

Let’s recap this process of brand actualization:

- Translate your company mission statement values into real, actionable, meaningful instructions.

- Audit every brand/culture touchpoint – internally and externally.

- Brainstorm ways to redesign operations in small ways so the company can express its values.

- Create processes and metrics to sustain them.

With consistent tiny actions made regularly, you can turn that break room poster into an unstoppable force which will change the world. Now go do it!