The problem is that the person in question doesn’t know that there is an open ended “You owe me” account building up out there until a bill is presented and not respected.

Often the two parties in this situation both feel offended and the relationship experiences a strain. Depending on the circumstances the strain might be large or small.

Now we want to explore the promises that you make to your customers – both implicitly and explicitly.

We also want to understand the expectations that your customers are developing – implicitly and explicitly – about your company’s products, services or capabilities.

Businesses who align their implicit behavior with their explicit promises and who work to align their customers’ expectations--- both implicit and explicit ---are the ones who keep old customers while gaining new ones.

Your people can’t ensure a promise if they don’t understand what it is, or what’s implied by it.

As was pointed out above, in order for a group to achieve a rich, shared understanding of an idea they need to have the opportunity to talk it through amongst themselves.

Conversation is a powerful way through which people working together clarify expectations, promises and commitments, both among themselves and between themselves and others.

However, it takes more than just some folks talking about the brand in the lunchroom, although informal conversations play a vital role in spreading shared ideas.

On a more formal level, it’s helpful for leaders to use the day-to-day activities of the company as the context for these conversations about brands and customers.

For the company to be most successful the people who do its work, who talk with its customers, and who fulfill its promises need to have a clear frame of reference for what’s involved.

It isn’t enough anymore to have a job description and keep your nose to the grindstone. People need to lift their gaze to see where they are going.

The need to talk together about how they’re doing what they’re doing if they’re expected to work together to fulfill the promises the company makes.

As the CEO, by introducing a framework for the workforce to use in those conversations, you can help your people put their primary focus on the most relevant issues.

You can use a simple business review process as the framework to help your people make connections between how they need to deliver their work, and what the customers are expecting when they purchase your products.

One way to start is to introduce the process to your executive team. You can start by helping them recognize how their interdependent roles are required to fulfill the promises inherent in your brand.

As that understanding is shared among them, they are then in a position to roll those expectations down through their organization to ensure extraordinary performance.

Those same managers can use their own performance criteria to build the capabilities required into their teams.

Eventually, it all folds into an organized effort to enact the business plan.

Emphasize dialogue and strategic listening as key conversational components in the conversations led by you as well as the ones led by them.

Strategic listening, as differentiated from listening in general, occurs when you listen to conversations with an ear on more than specific content.

It involves listening to implications of what’s said in the context of your company’s purpose.

These suggested dialogues strengthen the working relationships between the CEO and the executive team and between and among the team members themselves.

They also nurture the partnerships designed to enhance everyone’s thinking about the work.

Identifying key working relationships as thought partnerships creates opportunities for everyone to examine shared and individual thinking, understand how work products are passed across organizational boundaries, and engage in authentic conversations about the work.

Delivering On Promises:

Once you seize the initiative in regard to your brand, you can devise a game plan that allows you to redefine the game. Here are the steps:

• Taking Your Bearings

• Using Your Business Idea To Make Sense of Your Markets

• Powerfully Communicating Your Brand Promise

• Leading An Organization That’s Focused On Results

Taking Your Bearings:

Organizations, just like human beings, tend to look for patterns and operate from the perspective of past experiences.

This creates a challenge if you believe that what worked in the past is not necessarily what will work best moving forward.

For example, Michael Dertouzos, in his 1998 book, What Will Be, discusses pending technological breakthroughs and explores their impact on how we will conduct business in the future.

We all know that more change is coming.

With evolving and even disruptive technologies looming, you’ll have to discover many new ways for enacting your strategic intent.

Your company will face discontinuous changes as business evolves. Discontinuous changes are not just extrapolations of, or improvements on, the current process. Rather, they are game-changing innovations or variations.

The introduction of the CD to compete against audiotape cassettes is an example of such a discontinuous change. Companies must have the skills to adapt and adjust.

Working obsolete processes more effectively (or more cheaply) will not lead to success in such a competitive arena.

When considering the workforce, Dana Beth Ardi (2002) has captured today’s situation nicely. She believes that during the dot-com era, a change occurred. She wrote,

Talent flexed. Knowledge workers wanted to join communities, not companies. They were members of teams, not organizations.

They insisted on managing their own careers, in their best interests. They wanted flexibility in when they worked, how they dressed and what benefits they got. ‘Brand’ and ‘culture’ were the battle cries!

Cultural imperatives included flat organizations, open and honest communication, development of individual and team capabilities.

Building your brand communicated what your company stood for.

Brand also represented the individuals who were seen as the company’s real assets. Personal brand stood for your contributions to the team effort.

It was about building an emotional connection between people and the community/company.

It was about voices at the table, shared dreams and aspirations.