I am pretty big into branding. I don’t mean “branding” in the traditional sense of logos, and trademarks and the way we traditionally think about it. When I talk about branding I mean it in the sense that people inside and outside the organization are very clear about what we do, who we are, and what is important to us.

I read great quote years ago from a guy named Ken Matejka when he was describing Commitment-

“Commitment is the act of being physically, psychologically, and emotionally impelled. It means that people gladly give up other options.”

Ken Matejka, Why This Horse Won’t Drink, 1991

I mean you have to admit that when you read that and you see yourself as part of a group that shares a set of values and that you are that passionate about it sounds pretty compelling doesn’t it?

Because of the shared ownership I would think that this represents kind of a sustainable brand, doesn’t it. When you are that invested in something it isn’t a fad, it becomes part of you.

I talked about in my previous article the concept of congruency™, but I didn’t really talk about what congruency means or how me might build it into an organizational setting. I think it might be valuable for me to do that.

The principles of congruency include these five elements-

• Our view of the activity
• Our view of our ability to do the activity
• The relationship between the activity and our values
• Our commitment to do the “work”
• Our belief in the product or service

As you might suspect if an individual or group are aligned with all five, you have a pretty important “glue” that binds them to each other and the organizations values. This is an organization I would suspect is going to be very sustained over time. The reason it is going to sustain is that if it has created this “brand” not only with its employees, but with its stakeholders; including the customer base, shareholders, and communities it serves that is a pretty hard bond to break. That is what I mean by a real brand.

Most of the people I have met that are affiliated with sustainability in some fashion have elements of this congruency in their approach to doing business, but I wonder if they have built it into the fabric of their business. By that I mean is this a dialogue that you have with your customers and your employees. Beyond the mission statement and label “do our words match our music?”

Would our employees describe us as being consistent with our brand in terms of our relationship with them and with the world in general?

I got a chance the other night to watch an interview with Bill and Melinda Gates, you know the Microsoft People, the “evil empire”.

Perhaps they just have very good PR people, but I saw them as having morphed to a pretty sustainable organization. When I heard Melinda talking about her personal commitment to eradicating polio in the world, to ensuring that every child everywhere would have access to the vaccine they sounded pretty sustainable to me.

When I heard her say that the fact that she an Bill find that over a third of graduating seniors are not adequately prepared to go on to college and they find that unacceptable, that sounded like sustainability to me too. They are trying to impact the next generations in a powerful way.

I am not going to tell you that I see Microsoft as necessarily a leader in sustainability, but the Gates’ themselves are moving towards a pretty clear personal brand.

What is very interesting to me is that these people who are known for technology and “products” are very much taking on an approach that is grounded in relationships- at the end of the day they are investing in people…

So you might want to ask yourself – at the end of the day what is our brand? Do we connect it to our employees, our stakeholders, and our communities? Can our employees describe how we are improving the world for people, now and in the future?

When you can do that I would say that you have achieved sustainability and your brand, not your logo or your trademark really represent something far more than a symbol.

Build a brand, do it from the ground up and don’t try to “bolt it on”. You won’t find it very satisfying or very “sustainable” in the long term….

About the Author
Mark is an Associate Partner with Edwards Executive Search. He is the author of the internationally acknowledged book, Managing Whole People and has been a frequent contributor to Bank Marketing News, Best Thinking, and Small Business Edge.

He is a strategic partner with Debra Young and Tanya Westby, expert sourcers with Edwards Executive Search.  They both focus on the placement of key executives within clean technology organizations.