Building a culture to win

Brand strategy involves a natural tension. On the one hand, it needs to credibly reflect the organization of today. On the other, it must provide stretch and aspiration for who you seek to become. It’s a fine line to tread.

And the people best placed to see the gap between today’s reality and tomorrow’s ambition are your employees. They see the brand promise projected into the market. And they experience what it’s really like inside the business.

That gap isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Any brand worth its salt should drive change, both in how the market sees you and in how you operate internally: what you do, how you do it and, importantly, what you don’t do.

But it raises a bigger question: what happens after you define the ambition?

Across industries and geographies – and energy is no exception – we’re seeing organizations place less emphasis on the big-bang brand launch. Yes, it’s important. Yes, it creates excitement and energy. But it’s a moment in time.

The real question is what comes next.

How do you build the momentum that enable your people to deliver on the brand promise now out there for all to see?

Defining the culture to win

At Brandpie, we talk a lot about building a “culture to win”: creating the environment you need to deliver on your organizational vision and brand ambition.

That connection leads to more focused conversations about culture.

What behaviors do you really need in your business? What do you genuinely value? What aspects of today’s culture must you never lose? And what needs to change?

Another major shift we’re seeing is a growing appetite for cultures with a performance edge. This isn’t about losing what makes an organization unique. It’s about adding greater focus, prioritization and ownership.

And that should force hard questions and hard decisions.

Do you value speed over perfection? Do you have a culture of honest feedback, even when it’s difficult? Are people clear about what really matters and empowered to act accordingly?

Getting to the heart of what you need and value, and then codifying it, is essential. It’s no different from brand strategy. You define the idea at the center, and use it to shape everything around it.

Culture should work the same way.

From definition to action

We think about building a culture to win through two connected lenses: macro actions and micro actions. Both matter.

Macro actions are the bigger organizational shifts needed to deliver your vision and brand ambition: how you’re structured, how you reward people, the capabilities you build in leaders and the systems that support them.

These are the foundations that enable people to thrive. And increasingly, we’re seeing brand and people functions working much more closely together to create them.

Micro actions happen in the everyday experience of work.

What obstacles are getting in the way of your people delivering the experience your brand promises? Outdated systems. Fragmented information. Conflicting messages. Unclear processes. Unnecessary approvals.

These things create friction. And that friction ultimately affects the impact your people can have.

Building a culture to win is therefore as much about what you stop as what you add.

Ask yourself a simple question: what is stopping your people from doing brilliant work?

Is it a system? A process? A policy? A KPI? A lack of information? An approval they shouldn’t need?

Listen to the people experiencing that friction every day. Fix something. See what changes. Learn. Then scale what works.

It sounds simple. And that’s rather the point.

Culture change doesn’t always need another transformation program. Sometimes it needs someone to remove the thing making the right behavior unnecessarily difficult.

Making the ambition real

There’s a tendency to make culture change enormous. It doesn’t have to be.

As a starting point, we often ask three questions:

• Have you codified the culture you want to build, and is it aligned with your vision and brand?
• Have you listened to your people to understand specifically what is getting in the way of them doing great work?
• If you could remove one thing that would enable your people to do great work, what would it be?

That last question often unlocks the richest conversation because it forces you to start somewhere.

Then find the next blocker. And the next.

Culture isn’t a program that moves neatly from A to B. Like brand, it needs to be actively managed, continually shaped and constantly reinforced.

Get it right and your people don’t just see the change. They feel it.

And, crucially, they can deliver it.

Because the distance between brand ambition and business impact isn’t closed by the promise alone. It’s closed by the people who turn that promise into reality every day.