I just got back home to Rochester after a few speaking events in Maryland and Georgia. Facilitating these events with business leaders who are so pumped up to get started defining their brand and the customer experience they deliver reinforces my passion for helping others Achieve Brand Integrity.

So this week, I wanted to highlight one of the key points to Achieving Brand Integrity: If you're not managing behaviors you're not managing your brand!

I recently read a great interview on NewYorkTimes.com about Tony Hsieh. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know I've posted about Zappos and Tony Hsieh before. This latest interview highlights why Mr. Hseih started Zappos and how he has built and sustained such an amazing work culture that delivers on desired customer experiences. Zappos is definitely a company that understands the key point above. I highly recommend you head over and read the interview today.

The dreaded mission statement. It seems as if every company has one and yet nobody knows what it is or what it really means. Usually created in a corporate vacuum at an annual company retreat, mission statements are the philosophical smokescreen most companies place in front of employees and customers.

Got a company mission statement? Of course you do! If you walked through the office and asked most employees to recite two words of it, would they be able to? Of course not! Why should they be able to, it's meaningless to them.

I actually worked with a CEO who would stop employees impromptu in the hall and ask them to recite the mission. If they did it successfully, he would give them $20. This became old after a while. Some took time to memorize the mission, but most didn't even bother. Those who did take the time to memorize it still found it meaningless. Mission accomplished? I think not. I memorized some of the Periodic Table of Elements to make it through high school chemistry class, but lord knows, i can barely even spell chemistry.

Mission statements are often meaningless because they are not operationalized. Therefore very few, if any, employees actually know how to do the mission. Nice to know what it is. Much better to be able to do it.

Coming up with the mission statement is simple. There is a book by Jeffrey Abrahams called The Mission Statement Book: 301 Corporate Mission Statements from America's Top Companies. This book will cover all you need to know about mission statements. It has 400-plus pages of examples and insights. Reading it and drafting your company's mission statement will be easy. Getting your employees to buy into it and actually do it will be quite challenging.

We're all tired of the recession; however, according to the latest Towers Perrin Workplace Watch, employees especially are falling into recession fatigue. The study concludes that employees have the most negativity around potential career development opportunities.

Only fifty-seven percent of employees agree that their company offers opportunities for long-term professional development, a 16 percent drop since the beginning of 2009. Towers Perrin concludes that this drop is due to employees feeling less connected to the company they work for and also having less faith in leadership as a result of recessionary actions like layoffs and budget cuts.

Are the levels of engagement in your company falling as a result of this negative economic environment? Below are some ways leaders can combat fatigue:

• Let employees know when they are doing things that impact business results. Doing so helps them understand how their actions make a difference and, of course, makes them feel good. Consistently recognizing employees and sharing successes company-wide builds morale as well as spreads best practices.
• Openly communicate what your company thinks about professional development. Set expectations with employees in regards to how much growth they can look forward to and when. Even if it's not a reality right now, generating awareness will help ease employee's perspective about lack of growth opportunities.
• If your company has had to reduce or cut investments in continuing professional education or industry seminars and conferences at this time, communicating the why behind these actions will help employees see the reasoning and be more forgiving.

Focusing on managing employee expectations through communication and consistent acknowledgment will ease negativity and help rebuild trust as we work our way out of these trying times.

Well maybe not Pizza Hut exactly, but it's true that the lifetime value of a customer for a regular pizza place is around $8,000.

Lifetime value is a common phrase for describing how much a customer is worth to a company if the person remains loyal over the course of their life. Disney is one company that understands the importance of lifetime value. They estimate that customers, from the first walk through the entry gate, are worth up to $50,000 in lifetime value. Knowing this, Disney pays close attention to creating customers for life. They know that the greater the connection a customer feels to a company, the greater the loyalty and the greater probability for maximizing lifetime value. Disney creates connections with customers by orchestrating experiences at different points of interaction, which I’ve written about before (remember the white jumpsuit man?) because their experiences are simply amazing.

But you don't have to be Disney to care about lifetime value and deliver experiences that earn you customers for life. Think of a company you love doing business with. Now think about why you love it so much. Are they responsive to your inquiries? Do they treat you with respect and urgency every time you interact with them? These things may seem basic, but that's just the point. Being responsive and treating you with respect makes you feel valued. These are simple behaviors that if done consistently by a company’s employees, can create experiences the keep customers coming back and referring the company to others.

On the other hand, you could just learn to say goodbye to customers' potential lifetime value, as Seth Godin jokes about in his blog post.

What experiences does your company stage to ensure repeat business and a strong unpaid marketing department? Have you defined the behaviors employees can deliver to build relationships with customers? How are you building lifetime value?

The winter is upon us, the days are shorter, and the holidays are quickly approaching. This time of year can be full of joy, but it can also be a time of stress as people are busy both professionally and personally.

Consequently, it's a great time for leaders to make sure their people feel valued for the work that they are doing. Especially during this hectic time of year, letting employees know the impact they are having on company success helps them see the importance of their work and eases feelings of being overwhelmed by tasks.

A strategic recognition program that ties employee behaviors to the company strategy is a great way to show appreciation and also share success/best practices across the organization. Unfortunately, many companies resort to reward and recognition programs that simply don’t work. Note that I reference these programs as reward first. These programs have a fundamentally flawed view of human behavior that focuses on the carrot and the stick. Well, what happens when the carrot is removed? The truth is every person in the company should be recognized, even if only a few are actually rewarded. To truly achieve both short- and long-term performance successes, companies should implement recognition (first) and reward (second) programs that make it easy for all employees to participate.

So why do reward programs fail? Most fail for at least one of three reasons:

1. They are too exclusive, leading to limited participation
2. They are difficult to manage (beyond sales incentive programs)
3. Too much focus is placed on financial targets at the exclusion of the right behaviors required to hit targets

Reward programs can work if they are driven by the spirit of recognition and are less focused on the reward. Here are some solutions to rejuvenate your recognition efforts, or to help guide a new initiative:

1. Make the recognition program about the company strategy and key objectives and provide detailed behaviors that employees should be doing. Don’t make it just about company or individual financial goals. Make sure employees understand the strategy, objectives, and behaviors; are committed to achieving them (true belief, not just lip service); and know how to take action to achieve results.
2. Ensure both employees and leaders focus on finding successes and sharing them with others. Individual successes that lead to company results are critical input for any recognition program.
3. Determine a reward that fits well with your culture. Money is the not the number one motivator for the majority of employees. While both cash and non-cash awards have a place in the employee compensation mix, it’s important to stress that cash can be an ineffective motivator. In most cases, it simply will not energize people to reach beyond their basic job requirements to achieve good results.
   

A peer-to-peer recognition program is the best investment you can make in your people. By peer-to-peer, I am referring to any employee recognizing the good work of others (behaviors in alignment with the brand strategy) up, down, and across the company. When done right, peer-to-peer recognition will focus on behavioral outcomes and not just end results. Employee behaviors that are powered by the brand strategy of the company should be what you encourage others to achieve. Behaviors are visible. Your coworkers can see if you are doing the right things. When they do, they should have a way to recognize you. If you don’t tie your recognition program to behaviors, witnessing activities worthy of recognition can become very subjective and ineffective.

Employees who look for and recognize the right behaviors being done by others typically understand the why behind the strategy. They get the company’s philosophies, brand values, and core beliefs. In most cases, these individuals have more of a passion for action: they are focused on doing. A sound peer-to-peer recognition program encourages employees to do the behaviors that bring the brand to life and helps a company highlight the behaviors and the impact employees have on business results.

Recognizing employees will not only help them to be successful, but will help those that work with them to benefit from their success rather than be impacted by their stress, not only during the holidays, but all year round!

My recent flight home on Continental was great, like it always is... Continental consistently delivers a good experience. This got me thinking about the importance of consistency and specifically about a time when my colleague, Patrick, and I were meeting with a prospective client.

During this meeting, we asked a lot of questions about the prospect's business, the current challenges he was facing, and the solutions he was considering. He asked us a lot of questions about our company, Brand Integrity, and organizational branding. After about an hour of this back and forth, he asked "If there is one thing that I need to take away from this meeting about brand-building, what would it be?"

Patrick and I looked at him a bit perplexed. His question seemed so simple to us. We were both shocked that we had not been asked it before. He pressed on, "What is the one thing that matters most to ensure a company can build its brand to drive profits? Is there one thing?"

Patrick and I looked at each other and back at the prospect. Then we each got a piece of paper and wrote that one thing down. Both of us passed our papers to the prospect and, sure enough, we had written not only the same idea, but the exact same word: consistency.

Consistency is so important to a strong, sustainable brand that I always tell clients and leaders "consistency is king." Consistency is so important, I had it personified with an image in my book. The king is a reminder that if you want to develop a strong brand for your company, then employees must be in a position to consistently deliver results for customers. Without consistency, your company won't be able to drive the experiences employees and customers want and will end up being another one of the masses rather than a "king" ahead of all the rest.