Taking a Close Look at Your Business's Identity: Do You Know Who You Are?
The principles that motivate people today are different from the principles that motivated people of the previous generation.
People used to enjoy their work if they had a boss they liked and respected, while today’s workers are more interested in working with great colleagues. Today’s workers also have a focus that's more aligned with fulfilling a societal purpose rather than focusing on building a pension.
And today, power is gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it. Although positional leadership is still a powerful style of administering an organization, expertise is becoming a more valuable asset for setting the direction of a company to maintain its competitive edge.
To cultivate and maintain highly skilled talent in a business and to maintain a strong business identity, you need to continually assess the alignment between your company’s brand and culture. Your employees also need to embrace the company's overall mission and vision as put forward by you.
There are three critical and interrelated areas that are necessary to build a clear recognizable business identity. These include:
- Create a powerful strategic brand identity with a compelling message. This message should consistently communicate the company’s core values and goal of fulfilling a purpose greater than itself.
- Nurture high performance business systems. These should be capable of creating, communicating, and implementing work processes with efficiency, productivity, and accurate results.
- Cultivate a company culture that supports innovation. Today’s businesses succeed or fail because of their culture more so than their strategic plans. A company with workers who believe in the core values and mission of their organization are much more likely to help it maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
When hiring people to join your company, look for a link between their sense of passion for your industry and the culture that you have in place. In today’s market, more individuals are setting career goals based on their passions. Each job along their career path equips them with additional skill sets to help them reach these goals.
If your business environment is transparent and supportive, your employees will be more willing to effectively communicate with fellow workers to ensure that the company's core values, vision, and culture maintain their alignment.
