The cultural mask is the brand identity

Organisation culture is defined by the behaviour of its leaders, its people and the processes.

1. People—People are diverse. When they come into an organisation they bring, along with their technical competencies and skills, their individual behaviour with regards to leadership, team-work and communication ability.
2. Processes—Processes impact on how the employees carry out their activities. Either the processes aid daily work or they hinder and as a result be the source of a tremendous stress.
3. Business Purpose—Leaders need to clearly articulate the vision of the organisation or and what it is they need to do to ensure the organisation is sustainable.

A mix of these three creates the organisational culture. It also creates the brand experience.

From the culture emanates a set of behaviours that sets in place the brand identity. Of course there are core values and mission & vision statements which are often plastered all over the office. But its the behaviour from the culture that sets the tone of the brand identity. This is the 'cultural mask' that we often fail to notice ourselves wearing.

This mask impacts on the brand experience that's delivered.

In today’s globalized era organisations operate multi-cultural teams on virtual and physical basis. As an organisation reaches their brand to various parts of the globe, this cultural mask goes along as an image and identity.

The cultural mask is the brand experience that the brand users feel and respond to.

Physically this experience is represented through the logo, the employees and the contents being offered.

Interestingly, the brand experience is totally dependent on the value system that the organisation believes in and alignment of the value system with its employees.

Coming from different corners of the world, individually, we carry with us our own baggage of diverse cultural beliefs into work. Whilst most self-development books and managers’ guides tell us to operate, in what are possibly, two silos-- a personal self and a professional self-- in reality that’s a tough call!

Tough because we are governed by our emotions and our emotions come about due to the habits we have.

Habits are behaviours that we project every minute of the day.

Throw into this mix the impact of behaviour from the leaders and you end up having a pretty heady concoction!

The importance of behaviour from the leaders cannot be understated. What the leaders display, knowingly or unknowingly, sets the behavioural indicators for employees who then emulate the same. This has serious implications on the day-to-day functioning of an organisation, on the emotional (and physical health) of the employee, and finally on the organisation’s culture, brand image and reputation.

In developing culture leadership is a key lever!

Leadership can impact on the organisational culture positively or negatively. Depending on the industry sector and the organisations' position within that sector and its mission, leadership is the only critical element that will either build or destroy the organisation.

Sharing from my personal experience of having worked across industries, countries and multi-cultural teams, an effective work culture comes about from developing a collection of beliefs and the resulting behaviour from it.

These beliefs come about from processes and the organisational leadership. For example:

1. Monthly management meetings are used to track progress against strategy and is not a ‘work-in-progress’ managementupdate meeting.
2. The way senior management manages these processes i.e. the individuals own work-style personality that is expressed in the meeting is an indicator of the leadership at-work.

The processes impacted by the leadership style results in certain behaviours that directly impact employee motivation and engagement, and quality of work. Overtime this set of behaviours, becomes the unwritten norm for the organisation in terms of:

1. Interaction within colleagues –becomes the internal brand representation &
2. External interaction with stakeholders –becomes the external brand representation

This behavioural environment represents itself as the character of the organisation through staff and becomes the organisational culture.

Is culture important?

Immensely!

It’s important because it’s the work culture and the underlying behaviour that creates the user experience. If you’re looking into undertaking change then it’s the culture that allows you to know if the required changes can be brought about successfully. In leading a change management process the single most critical aspect of the change process is to have full comprehension of the organisational culture present.

Why is it important?

For two simple reasons:

1. It helps identify specific leadership behaviours and work group climates that benefit the organisation.
2. It helps in reviewing which processes are effective based on specific desired behaviours.

Lastly if a change management program is on the cards, undertaking specific behavioural changes prior to the implementation of the change management program, enables the organisation to re-train key executives on leadership style and processes.

This has a direct impact on doing things differently in order to get the planned results.

A word of caution--whilst training is one thing, enforcement or ensuring that employees use the new learning is another.

We human beings are creatures of habit and habit comes about through the discipline of continuous behaviours.

To bring about desired behaviours some amount of discomfort would have to be created through meticulous enforcement. As only through continuous enforcement will behaviour change. When behaviours change, habits are impacted upon. Once habits are changed, the brand experience delivered would be different.

With a long-term approach behavioural change impacting on the organisational culture in the form of positive brand reputation can be brought about.