How Conscious Is Your Company?

DIAGNOSTIC TOOL

Conscious organizations outperform their peers in almost every metric of performance, from profitability and valuation to customer and employee satisfaction.

The Conscious Capitalism framework enables these kinds of results through four disciplines: Higher Purpose, Conscious Culture, Conscious Leadership and Multi-Stakeholder Orientation.

Share this self-assessment with your leadership team to determine how conscious your organization is today and then contact us for ways to enhance or capitalize on your results.

Executive Forum: “A Better Way to Tell the Story of Your Intangible Assets"

PRESENTATION SLIDES

ExecutiveForum.org is a NYC-area organization of 400+ C-level executives that assist their peers in career transitions. BrandFoundations was invited to speak at the organization's November 2018 Leadership Conference before nearly 100 CEOs, CFOs, CMOs and CHROs. Our presentation explored intangible assets such as brand and culture, how they affect the performance and valuation of an organization, and the myriad threats arrayed against them in today’s hyper-networked and politicized environment. We then discussed the best practices for protecting and building resiliency into these assets and shared a framework for telling a better story about these intangibles.

Reputation Management in a Polarized Age

Webinar Slides

These slides are from a a webinar we conducted with Peppercomm on March 27, 2018 for the PR Society of America. Download our presentation to learn how communications professionals can prepare and manage crisis communications in a highly-politicized environment where employee misbehavior, social media activism, or a presidential tweet can instantly put your brand in the crosshairs.

How Would You Rate Your Employer Brand?

DIAGNOSTIC TOOL

The state of your employer brand is a powerful predictive tool. It serves as an early warning system for potential internal culture problems as well as a forward-looking indicator of what you can expect from your recruiting efforts. This simple diagnostic will allow you to quickly assess the health of your employer brand and how well prepared your organization is to manage it. 

Inside/Outside: Does Your Culture Measure Up to Your Brand? 

Webinar

While the late management guru Peter Drucker is most famous for saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” he also gave us this pearl of wisdom: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” And culture, as we know, is notoriously difficult to measure.  In this webinar, BrandFoundations and CultureTalk show how leaders can actually quantify and better shape their organization’s culture through the use of time-tested archetypes or “personalities"… and steer clear of the self-induced brand damage we’ve seen at Wells Fargo, United Airlines, Uber to name just a few. 

Purpose-Way-Impact

infographic

Let’s be honest: No one remembers their organization’s Vision, Mission or Value statements… not even leadership. It’s a tired old framework that dates back to the 1960s. Every company has a different definition of what these statements are and many have stopped using them entirely. But the important ideas behind them haven’t gone away, they just need a more intuitive, memorable and useful framework. We propose a powerful new alternative: the 3-stage rocket of Purpose-Way-Impact. Download our infographic to learn more about the framework and see examples of how it could be applied to a few notable brands. 

Do Your Brand and Culture Tell The Same Story?

Brand-CultuRe Archetype Assessment

Your leaders tell a story in their vision for the organization. Marketing translates it into websites and communications. HR conveys it in recruiting materials. But what story are people actually hearing and telling each other? Get on the same page, before an undiscovered disconnect becomes a major headline. BrandFoundations’ Brand-Culture Archetype Assessment can empirically measure your company’s “unwritten narrative,” allowing you to get ahead of potential behavioral problems, and enable more authentic marketing, more effective recruiting, and more inspired leadership. 

Is It Time to Update Your Brand Message?

Diagnostic Tool

Your brand message is the most important “take-home” story conveyed by your marketing and your employees. It’s the first and last thing customers and prospects hear, and it’s often the only thing they remember and share. If it’s out of date, you may be out of luck. Use this simple self-diagnostic tool to assess whether it’s time to refresh the most important message you can communicate.

How Healthy Is Your Culture?

Diagnostic tool

You could design the perfect strategy for success in your market but ultimately, it comes down to people: if your culture isn’t healthy – or if your staff is not aligned – even the best strategies will eventually fail. Culture is like a garden: Something will grow there. Whether it’s weeds or vegetables is up to you. Get a sense of what’s growing in your garden with this simple diagnostic tool. Share with other leaders to get their perspectives.

How Higher Purpose Will Drive Success in the Cannabis & Hemp Industries

WEBINAR

Join JP Laqueur from BrandFoundations and Jane Lauterback from The Purposeworks as they discuss the challenges associated with the cannabis and hemp industries. These industries are growing at a pace not seen since the dot.com era. Investor money is pouring in, M&A is accelerating, and a formerly underground industry is finally coming out of the shadows. But this rapid change is also creating massive internal culture challenges that threaten the industry and could lead to dot.com-like implosions. Discussed in the webinar: (1) breaking down the cultural challenges that could potentially derail the industry; (2) demonstrating how organizational "higher purpose" will overcome those barriers; and (3) exploring two tools you can use today to define and articulate your organization's purpose.

How Purpose Builds Healthier Culture and Stronger Brands

Keynote Slides

These slides are from a keynote address to the Rockland Business Women’s Network on April 18, 2018.  The topic was “higher purpose” and how it can build healthier cultures and stronger brands. The presentation explored the importance of businesses having a clearly stated purpose as well as the financial impacts of building an “on-purpose” brand.

Getting Culture Fit "Right" in Post-M&A Integration

Webinar

Join BrandFoundations and John Pancoast from Acquisition.Solutions as they explore the role that culture plays at every stage of the M&A process, review  two powerful tools that can be used to “de-risk” cultural integrations, and show how they could be applied to the ongoing Amazon-Whole Foods integration.

 Making it Real

Podcast

Listen as BrandFoundations joins the Bob and Tate from the "Making It Real" podcast to discuss how brand and culture differentiate products better than features do, how PWI is replacing Mission, Vision & Values, and why JP recommends "skewering sacred cows".

Which Brand/Culture Archetype Are You?

Infographic

Archetypes are character types and narratives we universally recognize. They are at the heart of every great brand - and every organization’s culture. Recognizing and consciously developing them is the first step in differentiating yourself from competitors, connecting deeply with customers, and motivating employees - all of whom have archetypes of their own.  This infographic introduces the 12 most common archetypes, what they’re all about, and some of our favorite brands that follow them. Which are you?

Building a Brand on Purpose

Webinar

Join BrandFoundations and iMillerPR in this short webinar recording as they discuss the challenges businesses face in trying to stand out in a crowded sea of sameness.  They will explore what it really means to be “different” and how that term has ceased to have meaning, why "branding” is not "marketing" and you need both, five best practices for “standing out" and how to implement them, and the impact a strong brand and culture can have on financial results.

The Value of Hidden Assets: How Brand & Culture Can Affect Exit Valuation

White Paper

Virtually every business owner, investor and CEO aims to maximize the value of their company.  To do so, they typically invest in those aspects of the business that are tangible and directly measurable: people, equipment, products, systems, etc. Far less attention is focused on nurturing the intangibles – like brand and culture – because they are harder to measure.  But by neglecting these areas of the business, leaders are missing out on two of biggest ways to drive exit valuation.

How Strong Is Your Company Purpose?

diagnostic tool

Your company purpose isn’t just to make money. It’s the deeper reason that customers buy from you and employees bring their best every day. Companies with a compelling, well-defined and widely understood purpose experience faster innovation and revenue growth, higher employee engagement, greater productivity, and less turnover. Simply put: purpose drives performance. How well-defined and understood is yours? Use this short diagnostic survey to find out. Have a cross-section of employees and leaders take the survey then average the responses for a snapshot.