Several years ago, I worked as a reporter for a public radio station in the Midwest. One day, while reporting a story about an emerging hi-tech company, I had a revelation about how companies think about themselves. While visiting the company to conduct interviews, I was struck first by the building itself.  The facility was big and spacious with high ceilings and lots of natural light.  There was a slide you could take from the second floor to the first, if you were feeling too whimsical to use the stairs.  There were wonderful paintings and sculptures throughout the facility. They had a restaurant (with a trained chef) on site, as well as a massage therapist and a hair dresser.  A dry cleaner stopped by daily to pick up and drop off laundry, and I was told that a nurse regularly visited the business in case anyone was feeling ill.

The skeptic in me thought, “Yeah… they have to provide all those services because they expect their employees to slave away 20 hours a day. They’re probably miserable.”

Once I started to conduct interviews, I was stunned by the positive attitude shared by employees and owners alike.   From the receptionist who greeted me to the CEO, everyone referred to the same basic ideas about what made their company successful and what they enjoyed about working there.  They all talked about the open culture, the mutual respect coworkers had for each other’s abilities, and the oddly plucky nature of how the company planned to grow. It was a disconcerting experience for me and at the time I wasn’t quite sure why.

Flash forward several years. I am no longer a reporter, although I haven’t lost my journalistic curiosity.  The question of how an organization creates and conveys its culture to all its stakeholders has continued to be a fascinating subject. So, it was a pleasant surprise to find myself doing some work for Parker LePla where they have made an art form out of coaxing the companies into identifying and implementing on what I now know is called Brand.

When the players at Parker LePla first described how they help companies identify and build their brands, the skeptic in me thought, “Yeah, right. How can outsiders tell insiders what their company is all about?”

Yesterday, I got a glimpse of how they do it.  I watched as five members of Parker LePla’s (now referred to PLP-ites) firm discussed their collective understanding of what they learned about a client through a series of interviews and surveys.  The group was quickly able to agree on five core themes that everyone within the organization expressed.  The PLP-ites then worked together to write a statement that not only expresses those themes but also contextualized them in terms of the client’s larger business environment.

I don’t recall any Kool-Aid being served at yesterday’s meeting, but I must have had a sip of something good.  It was amazing to hear how the PLP-ites riffed off of each other’s ideas as they worked toward the common goal of finding the appropriate expression of the client’s brand.

Now, I have no idea how the client will feel about the result of the work I witnessed, and I’m not just saying this because I’m hoping that my work with PLP continues, but it was really exciting to realize that an organization’s culture – any organization – can be discovered, analyzed and verbalized with the right set of objective minds working on discovering it.  For the firm that that thoroughly knows its brand, the benefits are tremendous – both internally and externally.  That is what I witnessed years ago when I interviewed people at that Midwestern hi-tech firm.  The company still exists, by the way. And continues to grow and develop and maintain its plucky culture.

-Shula Neuman

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