Leadership

Issue 1:

Brand is often associated with inspirational leaders - Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Phil Knight - people who have built culturally-significant brands that are recognised across the globe. I think this connection, between brand and massive success, is one of the reasons why - to the average leader of an SME - “brand” can seem like a remote concept that isn’t relevant to them.

But the reality is that the success of these inspirational, well-recognised leaders, is usually built on some simple concepts that every leader of a successful SME will recognise:
• a focus on the quality of your product or service
• recruiting the right team
• delivering a clear proposition
• an effective sales proces
• a strong financial model.

Steve Jobs said, “Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people”. Building a brand takes a team. It takes people with different skills, experience and knowledge. But every team needs a leader.

Your brand has the potential to drive your business success, but to fulfil that potential someone needs to take responsibility. Who is that person in your company?

Your brand needs a leader. It needs someone to give it life. It needs someone to turn it from an idea into a series of tasks and actions. It needs someone with the vision, ambition, courage and time, to take the lead and take the first step. Someone needs to start a conversation. You need to bring brand into your boardroom.

You may already be the “leader”: the managing director, CEO, senior partner, chief executive - the person who ultimately approves the decisions and signs the cheques. But you don’t have to be. 

You still have the opportunity to lead. You can still start the conversation.

• You may be the one who recognises the importance of your products and services on your customer relationships.

• You may be the one who appreciates how your team can give you a competitive advantage.

• You may be the one who understands how important the image you project through your marketing material is.

• You may be the one who sees the potential to develop a more effective sales process.

• You may be the one with insight to improve your financial performance.

Or you may be the one who simply sees there’s an opportunity to do things “better” - you just don’t know where to start.

The place to start is with a conversation, a conversation with other people responsible for leading your business. The people with the power to influence each of these functions:
• Operations
• Human Resources
• Marketing
• Sales
• Finance

This could be a boardroom full of directors, with one individual responsible for each role. Or there maybe just two of you, juggling all of them between you. It doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that you have a conversation. You need to talk about where you are now, and where you want to be in the future. When you agree your destination, you can begin to discuss how your brand can help you on that journey.

 

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If you want to know more about how these five functions work together, take a look at page 9 (right at the foot) of Brand in the Boardroom. You can find a copy here.

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If you would like to have a chat about what we have discussed in this post, please do get in touch.