Repositioning Your Company Is The Catalyst To Growth & Building A Strong Culture
Culture is such an important concept for many reasons.
At a human level, it is based in traditions and principles permeating within a community in forms of: activities, rituals, religion, clothing, food, behaviors, and values—all used to bring like-minds together that feel a sense of belonging to something bigger, something communal.
In business, it is no different. Visions, values, behaviors, recognition, rewards are the ways CEOs/Founders try to permeate their curated cultural beliefs into their companies to attract, retain, and inspire employees and customers alike.
The problem is there are challenges in both versions stated above.
As people grow and evolve, their experiences build which impact their beliefs, their values, and and their motivations --and they make choices based on those whether to follow, modify, or rebel moving forward.
In business, it also can follow the same pattern: companies evolve, pivot, and learn.
Who they were when they first started is never where they end up. So the culture that was initially curated that attracted certain talent or customers to your company may no longer be a lynchpin that it was intended to be.
In fact, it could have quite the opposite result--where it becomes the reason that makes people feel unaligned to the business itself.
Why the jump?
When you first start in business, many times you are targeting multiple segments with multiple offers or features—with no clear niche or specialty in mind--the epitome of trying to find product/service market fit-- or as I like to call it, “throwing the spaghetti on the wall” phase.
Although there is traction in certain areas, for many founders who are in the building and scaling phase they focus on one key KPI: revenue.
Their head is down in the business, many times not realizing the implications it is having on their team and their culture in the process.
Growth from a founders perspective sometimes means:
Saying yes to new opportunities that do not fully play to the company’s strengths.
Saying yes to unideal clients, just to bring in revenue in the door.
Saying yes to current clients to modify or accelerate their needs, without understanding the overall implications operationally or otherwise.
All of these are common and normal behaviors within a company -- but if continued as the daily practice for too long-- their teams don’t feel heard or even worse, stop believing.
The ambiguity between the original vision and the challenges of executing on it over time can cause a real clash between the founders, executives, and their teams.
Culture was created on trust—and when trust is lost (even when it's out of the control of the creator), it not only diminishes the intention, it becomes the one thing that causes the most internal conflict and unalignment.
In the past, many CEOs/Founders did not always realize (or care to acknowledge) that this is happening behind the scenes, which (as you can imagine) had real implications on their growth, inviting and deepening a toxic culture, and at times leading to failure as a whole.
But in today’s environment that is no longer an option. Competition is fierce in many industries and the newer generations are seeking community, belonging, and a remarkable culture in the companies they work for.
So, what is the solution?
Acknowledgment & Empathy: Always remember that people want to be heard, seen and valued. With that in mind, the first step is acknowledging the problem at hand with your executive team and then with your employees. Your employees have been struggling without direction, having too many focuses, and stretched too thin for so long, so being an empathetic leader and thanking them for the ongoing support and feedback is a great place to start.
Share with them that you are using this time as an inflection point in the business. You see this moment as a real opportunity to work on the business and gain the strategic clarity the team seeks through a strong company positioning in the market and ultimately, the ability to co-create a culture that not only stands for the values of the company, but for all the people who support it.
2. Shift in Perspective: Second, you need to change your mindset and perspective on growth. Growth doesn’t mean trying to be everything to everyone at all times. Real growth actually occurs when you know where you play to your strengths and become much more intentional and focused in your business. Real growth means when you move from being seen as a commodity to being seen as an expert to your ideal client, not everyone. Real growth means saying no to opportunities that no longer serve you.
3. Repositioning Strategy: Third, invest time and commit to a strategic repositioning exercise—one that will help you identify your businesses’ direction with confidence by identifying our renewed vision, validating your niche and expert capabilities, and declaring your unique market positioning aligned to your company’s strengths and what the market actually desires.
This is one of the biggest missing strategic processes in business today and is the core reason I created the U.N.I.Q.U.E. Method™—to help guide CEOs/founders (like you) through a proven process to find your unique position in the market to become scalable, sustainable and sought-after. A repositioning exercise is not a marketing/branding exercise only--it is a strategic one to help you determine:
Who are you today? (evolved vision)
What do you do best? (core expert capabilities)
Who you no longer serve?(unideal clients)
Who do you do it best for, and (niche/ideal clients)
How you do it differently and better. (your unique transformation)
4. Internal Re-Alignment: With this level of clarity this process brings, it can become the catalyst you are seeking for the internal strategic alignment between the founder/CEO, executive team, and their employees and has the power to truly reinvigorate organizations and their culture. It can turn years of ambiguity into focus (without second guessing yourself).
Tactically, your marketing and sales efforts get clearer. Your ability to deliver on your customer promises and operations become more streamlined and consistent. Your ability to be seen as an expert in your industry increases. Your brand begins to represent who you actually are today. All creating a renewed sense of pride and excitement--that once was lost.
5. Develop an Employee Rally Cry (Cherry on Top): According to Harvard Business Review,” Changing company culture requires a movement, not a mandate. To build off of the momentum of the repositioning, create an internal movement to support the renewed vision that your employee can all rally around.
Tactically, it means to introduce a stretch metric / milestone goal that the entire company can rally around over a finite timeline that has a financial performance bonus attached to it. It should be a motivator for each division to rally around and play their part.
Every role -- internal and client facing-- has the ability to play a role in the established goal by looking at making their processes more efficient, communicating better with stakeholders, enhancing customer experience, becoming a brand ambassador, etc. Creating an employee rally cry is the lynchpin to rebuilding a strong culture post a repositioning---and one that I have seen many times create growth momentum
As the founder of a repositioning firm who has worked with 1000s of founder over the years, if you follow these five steps above, I can guarantee you it will not only revitalize your culture from within, but will give you the confidence to be seen as the expert that you are in the market that you serve. This very blueprint has resulted in helping 100s of companies enhance their brand authority, attract millions of dollars in revenue in the right opportunities, and achieve unmeasurable impact (and now it can do the same for you)!
If you are at an inflection point in your business, and you want to learn more about the repositioning process, download a copy of the overview of the U.N.I.Q.U.E. Method and the U.N.I.Q.U.E. CANVAS worksheet here.