Brand & Employee Promises – Don’t Fly Without a Wingman

While I may have a slight obsession with Top Gun: Maverick and understand that leaving your wingman in the sky can put your life at stake, my knowledge about flying fighter pilot jets is very limited. But where this idea and my experience meet is with the criticality of never leaving your wingman in business.

Successful businesses have a clearly articulated brand promise to their customers. A brand promise is a value or experience a company’s customers can expect to receive each time they interact with that company. The better a company is at delivering on that promise, the stronger the brand value is in the mind of the customer. At WCI, we are fully committed to our brand promise of “increasing throughput and optimizing value.”

What about internally? What is a brand promise to your people? I firmly believe that exceptional businesses have a well-defined brand promise to their people. A brand promise to your people is an experience they feel throughout their life cycle at your company. WCI’s brand promise to our team members is “to build a championship culture centered around caring, learning, and results that provides the benefits of a small family-owned company where each WCI’er is appreciated, able to make a difference and work as a team.”

Just like a wingman in the sky provides more capability and awareness, a similar thought can be tied to a customer and employee brand promise. By having both a customer and employee brand promise, you create the foundation on which strategy, investments, and people decisions are made – together and in support of one another. Not only is it essential to develop and define your company and people promises, it’s also critical to live these statements through intentional and consistent communication, recognition, and the investment in total compensation to team members.

Not only does WCI promote strategies and programs centered around our brand promise to our people, but our leaders and team members are also doing things organically on a daily basis to foster that brand promise and do their part in strengthening our championship culture.?Through innovative onboarding, continuous learning, cross-functional objectives, and leadership development programs, we continually reinvest and reward in alignment with our culture.

Companies that are thriving in today’s post-pandemic environment are those that are deeply entrenched in their brand promises. Whether you believe the brand promise to your customers is the leader and the brand promise to your people is the wingman or vice versa, the synergistic relationship between the two is essential to understand. Recognizing both are vital and necessary leads to clearer direction, focus, commitment, and intentionality to genuinely deliver on both. In the long run, this will positively impact your ability to attract and retain customers and top talent for your company.?

So the next time you find yourself in unfriendly business skies, check to make sure your internal and external brand promises aren’t flying in different directions. To learn more about WCI, our brand promises, and opportunities to join a championship caliber team, check out our careers page. Careers | World Class Industries