156: Denise Lee Yohn — Bringing Culture and Your Brand Together

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective, and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out Today said simply, culture is who you are inside the company and brand is who you are out to the world. Very simply enough for this. But when the two are aligned, there's real power. When they're misaligned and when you've done a bad job with them, there's a real disconnect. There can be some real breakdowns. Today's show is all about how to get the two in sync and how to get them right and the real power that comes from that. We'll share some great examples with a great author and expert in the world of brand and culture and getting the two together and working together. Listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host and scaling coach, Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is Denise Leon from nearby ME in San Francisco. She's been a speaker at our summits. She's written a couple of bestsellers on branding and culture. She's worked with clients ranging from, oh, I don't know, brands you might have heard of like Sony and Oakley and Burger King and Frito Lay. And she's been a speaker for corporate groups like Lexus and tedx and Facebook. And anyway, she's just been all over the place. She contributed Forbes to Fox Business Entrepreneur Harvard. She's been a commentator on Bloomberg, cnbc, and so on. I'm excited to have her. Her talk at our last summit was really well regarded and I missed most of it. I came in at the very tail end and Vern's like, you got to get her on the podcast. You got to get her stuff in front of our accelerators as well. And so, and I'd heard her speak at the time before, so I'm excited to get you on the show and talk about some of the stuff that I missed. And just because the background is an area that I'm super passionate about. So welcome to the show. Denise.

Denise. Great. Thanks, Bill.

Thanks. And you're in San Francisco today, which is just across from the bay from me. And you've been in all day. But it's been a gorgeous day out here today.

Yes, it has.

I was just in with one of our clients that has been doing just a fantastic job of aligning their culture to their brand values and what they say in the world and dealing with all the places where it's not. And it was really cool to see that kind of thing. And I think it's what we're going to get into today.

Great. Well, you'll have to tell us about that.

So I will. Before we get into that, let's talk about your. So how do you get interested in brand and culture? Give us some of your background so the listeners get to know you deeper than the accomplishments. I shouted out.

Sure. I have always been really passionate about brands. I think in part because I grew up in the age where Nike became a real powerhouse brand. And I was just fascinated by Nike not only as a consumer and love their products, but moreover, I was just fascinated at how they were able to create such a presence in the market and become so popular and everyone wanted their products. And I kind of carried that passion through to me, through to when I went to school. And then, you know, in my first few jobs I was developing, I think, the skills that were really needed for brand building. I served as a consumer research and analyst for Spiegel Catalogs, if you remember, if you're old enough to remember them. That was way back. I served as a product manager for Jack in the Box restaurants. And I also worked for a couple of advertising agencies developing creative communications and creative strategy skills. And then one day, Sony Electronics came knocking on my door, recruited me out of the corporate world, out of the. I should say out of the kind of foundational work that I had been doing. And appointed me as their first ever brand person, which was kind of unbelievable to me at the time that. So this was like late 1990s. Sony was just on fire at that point. Just really popular. People paid a super premium for our products because they thought they were the best quality and the best technology, best design. But I should say what I discovered is that Sony had built this tremendous brand without anyone really being in charge of it or anyone really stewarding it. And so my job was to help continue to strengthen and ensure that the Sony brand would remain valuable and powerful as competition increased. And so Actually, that was. I was at Sony for about five years and worked as much on internal brand alignment and engagement, you know, meaning getting everyone within the company on the same page about what the Sony brand stood for and how to reinforce and interpret it. I worked on that as much as external brand building and marketing efforts. And then for a variety of reasons, which I can tell you about over drinks sometime, I decided to quit and start my own business. And that was, wow, 15 years ago, long time ago. Yeah, I. So I started out on my own, consulting with companies, taking all of the skills and experiences and best practices that I'd developed at Sony in my previous jobs and you know, started helping companies develop and position their brands. And then most recently in the last three or four years, I really came to the realization that as I was working with my clients and as I was doing research on how brands grow and how brands become so powerful, that really brand building, you know, starts inside. And if you want to have a strong brand, you need to have strong brand led culture inside your organization. So that's what led me to my last book. It's called How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World's Greatest Companies. And it's all about how to integrate and align your brand and your culture. So that's me in a few minutes. Hopefully that's good enough for you.

You know, my dad wrote a book and then I became an online publisher for this guy, a guru of small business marketing, J. Conrad Levinson, who wrote the book book Guerilla Marketing years ago. And I remember Jay slamming brand image and he was like, it should be brand identity. It's who you are, it's not who you want to be or pretend to be out in the world. And there is a consistency. And I'm struck as you share the story there, that there is a really similar process with companies that didn't start in formation with that just sort of stumbled through, whether it be a couple of years or a hundred years of doing work and finding their way in things. And in the background there is kind of a brand identity and whether they recognize it or not, or know it or have it accurately articulated. And then there's also company values and sometimes in the companies that you see that are totally going through a crisis or messed up, it's when we suddenly realize those two things are like disconnected, where they're, they're not consistent with each other.

Right, right. Well, you've actually said quite a few things that I would want to respond to. So let's first talk about brand image versus Brand identity. And what Levinson said really resonates with me, which is that your brand is not what you say, it's what you do and how you do it. And so yes, expressing your brand in very creative, compelling ways is important, important, but it needs to start with, yeah, what you stand for, what you believe, what your purpose and your values are. So, you know, so that's the first thing that I would say. The second thing is, you know, regarding companies that have a disconnect between their brand and their culture. Yes, we hear about the worst examples and you know, we can talk about, for example, like what happened at Wells Fargo a couple years ago. But I also want to be, make sure that even if you're not facing a crisis or even if there's not this like huge disconnect or divide between, you know, where you're, you're having very unhealthy, unethical, you know, cultural values within your organization that then lead you to a tremendous amount of risk or problems. That a disconnect between your brand and your culture of any kind of can lead you to not fulfilling on your promises. You know, at the end of the day, your customers expect you to deliver something based on what you are saying. And so if you're, if you're not operating in a way that enables you and your people to deliver on that, then that's, that's probably, that's, that's a, that's a huge disconnect in and of itself.

Yeah, well, anytime that there's something, right, we think of brand as like public facing. We think of culture as internal and that's maybe not what you would promote. But if we do think of that that way, if those two things are disconnected, just like for a human being, if who you are inside is not who you are out in the world, it's going to create a problem somewhere. It's inauthentic, there's some crisis and it becomes an integrity issue of some kind of.

Exactly.

I could share a lot of good examples of places and companies, clients that we've worked with that have done this. But why don't we dive in? You mentioned Wells Fargo when I did some work with Wells years ago and they had a terrific brand image, but they haven't been so good in the world lately. Tell us a little bit about how you see that.

Well, you know, Wells Fargo has always had a very wholesome, kind of old fashioned image. You know, they've got this like Stagecoach logo and they, you know, had all the heartwarming ads during the Holidays, you know, showing the, the horses and the snowmen, working hard to get your packages on time, et cetera. And so I think that that's why it was such a surprise to people when thanks to a couple of whistleblowers, we found out what the organization was really like. You know, where it was uncovered that employees were opening up fake bank accounts and credit card accounts and customers names without their permission. And they were doing this because they were under some tremendous pressure from their bosses to hit these kind of impossible numbers. And so while, as I said, that kind of, you know, unethical behavior is just kind of bad in general, I think Wells Fargo has had to work doubly hard to regain its reputation, to regain its business. And I think it's still struggling today to do that because there was such this, this disconnect between what people thought about the company and what it was really like. So, you know, I think to your point, when I talk about brand and culture in this context, I am talking about your external brand identity and your internal corporate culture. And you really, you need to deliberately integrate and align the two in order to ensure that you don't have these disconnects. But more importantly, there are very positive benefits to doing so. The first is that when you fuse your brand and your culture, you increase your workforce alignment because people aren't wondering what is the right thing to do or following two, working at cross purposes, working at two different priorities. Everyone is aligned and therefore the quality of, of their work and the effectiveness of their, of their outcomes is that much greater. You also increase your competitive advantage and do so in a very sustainable way. Because when you are weaving together, when you create this mutually reinforcing relationship between how your organization thinks and acts on the inside and how it's experienced and perceived on the outside, you're creating this value for both your customers and your employees that is very difficult for competitors to rip off or undercut. I mean, competitors might be able to imitate what you do, but it's much more difficult for them to try to copy how you do it. And so that's another benefit you get from fusion brand culture fusion. Another one is that you pass customers test of brand authenticity. Customers are very skeptical and cynical and they have the, I always say they have the ability and the proclivity to find out if you really are on the inside, what you say you are on the outside. And so by fusing your brand and culture, you really are. And therefore, that's another check mark. And I think the last most powerful benefit of Fusing brand and culture together is that you get to your vision more quickly, more easily, more successfully, because you're able to recruit and retain people who believe in the role you want to play in the world and how you want to play it. And they are, they remain committed to that goal. So there are lots of benefits to fusing brand and culture. But I'm actually surprised to hear you say, Bill, that you actually work with a lot of companies to do that, do this, because in my experience, I'd say the vast majority don't. And so, like I said, I'm actually kind of curious to hear about some of your examples. I know this is supposed to be about me, but I'd love to hear your stories because what I often find is that companies will have a good culture, or maybe they have kind of this, you know, okay, culture, but, you know, a good culture is not enough. You know, in fact, in many ways, there's no real universal definition of a good culture. I mean, there's a certain baseline that you have to deliver upon, but really where your power comes from, how you take your business to the next level, is when you make your culture unique and when you integrate and align it with, specifically with the uniqueness of your brand.

Well, so lots of examples of small companies that most of us wouldn't have heard of come to mind, but let's take one that does, because I think many companies will know the company Rackspace, and it's one of our scaling up success stories. And the Rackspace founders were early small operating, hosting business way back when. And they came to the old, what was then the birthing giants program. They learned the Rockefeller habits from Vern Harnish and they went away and they develop their company values. And company values we're talking about here are, are the way that you really are, are expressive of and embodied richly mixed within your culture. Not platitudes or generic things written on a wall like the notorious company, to use another bad example, Enron, the energy trading company who, if you walked around their culture, it would have been like, first for you to win, somebody has to lose. And just competition is everything. And yet one of their company values was integrity, right? So when we work with companies, we're talking about the way you really are on your good days and like that. And you just never would have said that if you walked around their company, you'd have seen this competitive, highly driven company, maybe like Wells Fargo was, I, I didn't work well enough with them recently enough to see that, but they were like that. And so their culture was not about those kinds of things and was not who they presented themselves to be in the world. But in the case of Rackspace, their leading company value was fanatical support. And their number one brand promises fanatical support. So who they are to the world and who they are to themselves and what they celebrate, what they honor, the way they rewarded their employees, the kinds of things that they spent money on and invested in, was all embodied or led first with fanatical support. And there's four others in their mix there. But there. So there's a highly fused relationship, and they grew. They went through several periods of changes in technology, and they even transitioned to the Amazon led reality that we have today and managed to manage and provide those services where it wasn't their own servers, but the. The virtual hosting of that. And. And the founder sold it for over $8 billion. Well, that's a great example. Right. Of. Of somebody fusing that, creating a rich culture that you could see was definitely connected to things they wrote in the world and was consistent internally and externally to great reward to those folks. Yeah.

And you know, what I. What I appreciate about that example and what you said is that when you generic platitudes as your values, what happens is they become. Yes. They become like wallpaper. You know, I looked up what Wells Fargo's stated values were at the time when this crisis was revealed, and they were, get this, people as a competitive advantage, ethics, what's right for the customer, diversity, inclusion, and leadership. And you're like, okay, well, all those things are great, but every other company could say them. And so, you know, I think what happened in reality is that people started to make things up. They started to say, okay, well, here's actually what our goals are, what people are pushing us to do, what people say our priorities are. So we're going to embody other values. And so, you know, again, I think that it's. That's another argument for why. Why your values and your culture need to be unique. Because people, you know, your employees are just like customers. They're skeptical and they're cynical. And when you say things like, we value integrity, it's like, well, Dawson and everybody, you know, so. Yeah, I think that's a great example.

Table stakes.

Yes. Yes.

Well, one of the practices that we have, after we have done somebody's brand promises and their values and their purpose and big, hairy, audacious goal, we wrap those things into something that we call a manifesto. So it usually opens with purpose, goes into values, then brand Promises and the big hairy, audacious goal, and those elements together create a manifesto. And most of our companies will read it at the beginning of the daily huddle and team meetings and weekly team meetings. And then they'll just ask a couple people to reflect on or comment on whatever they noticed, heard, or whatever. And if a company has a value that maybe it's something around the world of ethics or integrity or something like that, and doing things right or as they were meant to be done, and they notice that they're not, then that becomes a subject of the meaning of the huddle and goes through the day. So there. And it becomes a crisis for them. If they can say that and then they're doing things inconsistent with it and somebody calls it out and then it's not an issue, then you can tell you have a problem. But if they call it out and it creates a crisis, then we've got a practice or tradition that's reinforcing the intentional culture of the company.

That's a great practice. And one of the things that I write about in my book Fusion, is that you need to deliberately create culture, changing employee experiences. You need to engage your employees in experiences that reinforce and nurture your unique culture and your unique core values. You can't just expect your culture just kind of happen. You know, you need to design experiences for your employees that really reinforce them. And so having a daily practice or having a regular practice, like what you're talking about is the exact kind of thing that, you know, I talk about in. In my book.

Yeah. So there is, first of all, sort of noticing, recognizing what is your own unique, very specific, special sauce is right. Who you are for the world, who you are for yourself, getting those things together and then bringing that to life, building traditions and touch points around, reinforcing it.

Sure. But I would also. I would say not. But I would say, and I would emphasize that, you know, culture can be cultivated in both the kind of small details as well as the big strategies and operations. And one of the things. Another thing that I write about in my book is that when you want to cultivate a specific kind of culture, the way you organize and design your organization is critical to establishing that culture. And the different processes that you establish, just the way that you operate as a company are also critical. So I think one of the things that one of the traps or common like missteps that I see business leaders take with culture building is that if they understand how important it is, they first turn to these kind of smaller tactics. And while I Believe that these daily rituals, artifacts, all these things that create these memorable moments and reinforce your culture are critical. And you can't just only do tactics. I think you need to think about strategically about your organization to say, well, hey, if this is the kind of culture we want, what groups within our organization need to work more closely together? And how could I facilitate that through a different org structure? Or what roles might we need to add in order to move us in a certain direction? Or what roles do we need to get rid of because they're holding us back? And then how are we operating as a company? Are we reinforcing our values in our policies and procedures? Procedures and the way that we run meetings and the way that we plan and budget, you know, all of these things, I think, are ways that a company can or a leader can reinforce their culture in their company.

So people sometimes ask me, what do you mean by corporate culture? What does business culture really mean? I say, well, what is your. What does your culture mean? When I think about culture, I think about holidays that we celebrate. What do we give time and energy to? What are our family gatherings? What are the traditions? What do we celebrate? What do we reward? What do we punish? What do we ostracize people for? What are our regular rituals, traditions, practices around a family, a community group, an extended family? When I look in that world, I say, what is it that I would create in my business environment? The same kinds of elements, obviously not centered around an ethnic group or a religion, but around something else, what the business stands for. Right? Is that what you mean?

Yes. And again, I would say, and that I think, you know, again, that the goal is to align and integrate your brand and culture in every aspect of your business. And so I actually recommend you start with your organizing and operating on brand, really taking a look at fundamentally as an organization, are we set up to achieve the kind of culture that we're looking for? And then you move into creating culture, changing employee experiences, and then you move into sweating the small stuff. And then you move into actual employee brand engagement where you really get. Get your employees to understand what is their role in interpreting and reinforcing the brand. I think that you. That if you start with kind of sweating the small stuff and thinking about maybe certain traditions or artifacts, you could end up just staying there the whole time as opposed to addressing a fundamental issue like we have a strategic alliance with another company that we should not have given what our culture is, or we have a department, or we have people working in silos and not working across departments. Because they are being incentivized or the performance goals of the company are set up to reward working independently as opposed to collaborating. I mean, it's those kind of bigger leadership strategic responsibilities that need to reinforce your culture as well.

You know, I worked briefly with a creative services company and this guy, the founder, CEO of the company, thought he was a cutting edge creative shop. Right. And like really thoughtful strategy and creative work. And as I got to know him, I realized that this was born of who he saw himself coming out of college. And yet when you looked around the business, what you saw was things in a haphazard way. Even the way that he managed himself and his grooming and that kind of thing, the way he wore his clothes was somewhat haphazard and expedient. If I was just choosing my own words. And I struggled. I stopped working with him because in my mind there was this disconnect and then it affected our communication as well. I think he was really great at being the production house. So if you did set direction with somebody else and then you needed just to churn out a bunch of different versions of this creative and content, they'd be your, they'd be your company. Right. Low cost content and creative production, but they weren't the place where you'd originate it. And there was nothing, you know, it was just. Everything was just expedient and, and, and funky and like all over that. And that for me really stood out as an example of we don't know who we are or we're not willing to accept who we are. And so we struggle to find success in the world and to keep our team engaged. Yeah.

And. Well, and you raise an important point, Bill, and that is that. But you need to take a sober assessment of who you are as an organization. You know, what your capabilities truly are and compare those to what your aspirations are. And one of the ways that you can do that assessment, you take that assessment is I actually have created an online tool, the Brand Culture Fusion assessment, which takes you through identifying, you know, what is your brand identity or the brand identity you aspire to, and then what are the values that you need to have to support those. And then is there a gap between those two. Right, I'm sorry. In between what your current values are and what the core values you need to support your brand identity is. And then it takes you through 35 different elements of your organization to identify where, where might those gaps exist. And so I think you need to start off with that kind of sober assessment before you can truly work on Your brand or your culture. You know, that's not to say that you can't change your brand or your culture over time. I mean, very deliberately with a lot of hard work and a lot of investment you can, but it's more likely that you're more likely to be successful and be able to achieve the kind of results you need in the short term as well as your long term vision. If you, if you select a brand identity and you, and you cultivate a culture that's aligned with that brand identity, that's very much what you are already, you know. Yeah, I always say that I want to be, you know, tall, beautiful and skinny and you know what, you know, that's a great vision. But you let's, let's work with what I am. Right. So I think everyone, you need to, to kind of know who you really are.

Yeah, I worked with a company, I'm going to not name this company, but for a number of years that saw that who they wanted to be in the world and who they were internally was a big disconnect. And so they said, okay, these are our future values that we're going to bring into being and this is clearly not who we are today, but they span at least five years and I, I've since stopped working with them. But going to work on retiring certain values in practice and bringing to life and celebrating and cultivating new values so that they could become a different company in the world, it was exhausting but really admirable to watch a company go through that self work over multiple years to be somebody that they were or a company that they were committed to being in the future.

And it does take that hard work. And I actually was just speaking to an organization two weeks ago that is very much in that same situation and they were about two and a half years into, you know, what would at least be, as you said, like a five plus year journey. But what was very encouraging about my work with them is that they understood that, you know, and that they were willing to do the work and they were also willing to take the time. You're not try to accelerate things too quickly where, where new practices or new values wouldn't be adopted, but to over time take everyone on the journey so that you ultimately end up take everyone on the journey. So ultimately they ended up where they wanted to be. And so I think that that's, I think an important point, Bill, is that, you know, you can be willing to do, to put in the hard work and the time. Just make sure you bring your people.

Along with you, you, you talked about one more thing that I think is relevant. A company that some have regarded their, their culture. There was a New York Times expose on Amazon and, and I've had some interactions, other people have had some interactions with Amazon they didn't love in one domain, they loved in another. Talk to us about what's right about culture at Amazon. They're certainly killing it as a company. Right? Yeah.

And actually I actually talked about that in the summit because, you know, I think that, that the expose that the New York Times ran, what, you know, talked about the culture being bruising and relentless and they described the purposeful Darwinism, I think that was the actual term they used for how managers would treat their staff. And I think most people responded to that article thinking that there was such a toxic culture in Amazon and calling Jeff Bezos the CEO a workplace bully. But you know, what I thought was noteworthy is that first of all, I actually found the culture at Amazon it sounded exciting. You know, I'm, I'm definitely like a competitive, challenging, achievement oriented person. And so I love to work in environments where I'm being pushed and you know, even sometimes when it's hard and it hurts, but still, you know, kind of being pushed to excel and to achieve more than I ever thought possible. And I wasn't alone. You know, a lot of, of current Amazon employees wrote in responses in the company's defense and they said, you know what? I remember this one guy wrote an article on LinkedIn and he said, you know, not everyone is qualified to work here or we'll rise to the challenge. He said, not everyone gets into Harvard. Same principles apply. And in the summit, I said, I know that sounds really arrogant, but it's true. Amazon's culture isn't for everyone. Amazon's culture is frustrating, right, for a certain kind of person. It's right for Amazon as a brand. So, you know, they have these core values they call leadership principles. And they include things like think big and invent and simplify. And these are the principles, the values that drive the people who work in Amazon. And they are the same things that we as customers expect and have come to love Amazon for delivering on. You know, and so I think that that's, it's a example of how brand and culture are woven together so seamlessly at a company. Now I understand that, you know, there are consequences. You know, I think I'm very aware of the pressures that Amazon puts on. For example, you know, their, their suppliers, you know, they're the companies who sell on their platform. And so I'm not. I want to be careful not to excuse what may be poor business practices, but what I want to highlight is that there is no disconnect. You know, if, if, if we were to read about how Amazon's employees were being kind of cutthroat and really kind of pushing for results, I don't think anyone would be surprised. They'd be like, well, yeah, that's how they're able to deliver the kind of service that. That meets my expectations. So that's really the key point.

Well, in my last company, I did business with both Amazon and qvc, and I. And I really struggled to do business with Amazon as a business partner, and I really enjoyed doing business with qvc. And there were differences in the culture. One was a fit for us and one was not. I enjoy being a customer of Amazon today, and I have friends today who do great business with Amazon. And they're like, well, well, look, they're really powerful, they're really helpful. You have to do. They're inflexible. You're going to do business their way or the highway. And so they're like, but we found a way to make it work for us. And I don't have any. While it was challenging, I have respect for the consistency of that. If it didn't have enough value, then obviously they would have failed as a company. But clearly that's not happening. Right?

Right.

And I think when you're like, you can be unusual and different and not even easy necessarily be something. Another guy, Steve Jobs, Right. Was widely regarded as an asshole at times. Right. And really insensitive to people and with weird sort of personal names. But I know people that worked for him very closely, and they were like, you know, he demanded the best of us. And if you're having people perform at a very high level, consistent with something they're connected to, believe in, you can ask a lot of people, Right, Because. And there's this great letter. Let me see. I think I have it here. So Apple used to do this letter. I don't know if they still do it, but they had this letter to new hire employees. It starts, there's work and then there's your life. Life work. The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you'd never compromise on, that you'd sacrifice a weekend for. You could do that kind of work. At Apple, people don't come here to play it safe. They come here to learn to swim in the deep end. They want their work to Add up to something, something big, something that couldn't happen anywhere else. Welcome to Apple. Like, I read that. And we think about, like, company cultures, and the root of the word is cultural. Right. But if you create a positive cult that's of your design and against your highest principles and purpose, the why of your life and your work. That's kind of interesting.

Yeah, you know, it's. I wrote an article on my LinkedIn series, Brand Plus Culture, about our. About whether company culture should be like cults or not. Because I think that there was. There's been kind of this pushback, especially in light of. Of kind of what's been going on at Facebook where people are like, oh, you know, Facebook is so cultish. And that's what led them to kind of the problem. That's some of what led them to the problems they're having, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, I go back to what Jim Collins and Jerry Porras wrote about in Built to Last. The seminal text on how companies that last, you know, endure for decades, if not centuries and can continuously produce results is they have cultures that are like cults where, where some people are grab. Some people naturally gravitate towards them, and some people just have an aversion to them. And I think that those. That's the signal of a great culture is when someone clearly says, yes, I want to work in this kind of place, they get me and I get them.

Yeah, it's something you want to be part of. Well, we've covered a lot of stuff. What are some of the key steps or actions or things that you'd suggest to our listeners to focus on in aligning branded culture?

Right, right. Well, I think the first thing is that you do need to deliberately integrate and align brand and culture. It's critical to business performance, both all the positive value that, that we discussed as well as avoiding the dangerous disconnects that we talked about. I also think that you need to understand that culture doesn't just happen in terms of. You can't just say that this is the kind of culture you want and your people will get in line, but you actually have to go through steps like examining your organizational design, your operating processes, like creating culture, changing employee experiences, like sweating the small stuff, really, you know, do the work. Understand that culture building is a strategic leadership responsibility, not something that you can delegate or only do part time, but it's something as, as a business leader that needs to be your mission. And then probably the last thing I'd say is that, you know, you need to have a unique culture and unique core values, you need, you know, if you just have a better culture, someone or a good culture someone will come along and do it better than you.

Yeah.

So that's why you need a unique culture. Better is unsustainable, but unique is unstoppable.

Yeah. So it's maybe doesn't appeal to everyone, but it is something that not anybody else can take a piece of.

Exactly.

Yeah. Well, this is really great stuff. If you'd like more info on Denise Leon's work, is the assessment there on the website?

Yes. So my website, deniseleon.com is kind of the portal to everything. It includes the first chapter of Fusion that you can download for free. It also includes a link to the free brand Culture Fusion assessment that I talked about as well as other free resources, resources and materials. And then that's also where you can access my newsletter blog, find out all my social handles so we can interact with each other on social. It's just a great place to get every. All the information you need.

Yeah. So I'm going to spell it out again, but you should go and you should read the first chapter there if you've enjoyed this podcast and you should go do the assessment and it'll really begin to get you moving down the road there. And then if that's awesome, then and buy the book and continue the work and connect with Denise there. So, Denise Leon, we'll put the. The link actually in the show notes so you can find it, but it's Denise D E N I S E L E E Y O H n dot com. So there's the whole thing. If you're just listening and not. And you're. You're pausing and rewinding to type it in for yourself. But we'll put it in the show notes as well. I want to thank you so much for being on the show. Remind our listeners that every week we bring a new guru, a new author, a new subject, a new something to do with the world of scaling up. And we've got a good 160 or so those episodes online now. So you can go back and search something. You want to know more about culture, you want to know more about brand promises. You can listen to our episode with Bob Bloom. You can go into a whole world of things with people and in the world of cash and everything to do with the world of scaling, if we've got all that there. You can also get a copy of our book. Book for free, actually, the Scaling up book. Just pay the shipping and handling and we'll send you a copy for free. So all of that stuff is available there@scalingcoach.com so go to scalingcoach.com get that. Go to Denise Leon and get her first chapter and do her assessment. And thanks again for joining us Denise and we'll talk to everybody next week. Special thanks to the original growth guru Verne Harnish. This show was produced by Lucy Summers Audio production by Podfly Productions the audio editing by Albert Burge. The show notes are compiled by Ayn Codena and proofread by Tim McGowan. If you got some value out of the show, please share it like it, subscribe to it, pass it along to somebody else. Let us know the parts that you love. Drop us a line to info scalingcoach.com thanks again for listening and keep Scaling up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by alignment, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday. Com Bill G One more time aligntoday. Com Bill G that's aligntoday. Com Bill G Check it out and try it now.