They plan an initiative, often with drum rolls and fanfare.

The chief executive delivers the new perspective and people listen, try to believe in the idea, and make good faith efforts to “get on board.”

Soon, the initiative fizzles and everyone reverts to past practices, the way it had always been done.

The lessons drawn from these experiences are often that things can’t change, or that organizational development initiatives sound good but are not realistic.

Here is an alternative explanation.

It’s not enough for you, as the boss, to grasp the key strategic intentions of your company. It’s never sufficient for you to know it and then preach it to others.

What is required for organizations to change is for people to understand their interrelated roles in the game plan.

If they understand that the best outcome for the company is one that derives from shared thinking, they’ll be more likely to cooperate in making each other successful.

People need to understand the implications of your company’s key ideas.

Being able to recite the manta is not the same as achieving shared-thinking.

Too often, great mission statements, clever marketing campaigns, and well considered sales initiatives are sabotaged when the organization as a whole does not march in step with those messages.

When the people who are interfacing directly with the customers continue operating within their usual patterns, the messages become muddled.

When customers arrive with new expectations aroused by your brand promise, and find the people representing the company are not prepared to fulfill those new expectations, your credibility is lost and things go from bad to worse

This is a gap destined to keep you mired in mediocrity, far from optimized, and safe only if your competition is even more inept or your customers have no viable alternatives (two conditions that are becoming increasingly rare).

Misaligned functions within a company generate confusion about your company’s promises, and they breed skepticism about your ability to deliver any additional value that you wish to have associated with your brand.

There are three broad areas where stakeholders in the brand have to make sure that the brand promise is articulately, compellingly presented:

• To your workforce – the people who have to fulfill your promises

• To your customer base – the people who want what you promise

• The broad marketplace – the people you want to attract with your promises

A compelling story can stir passions and move people to action.

When the story is poorly articulated you run the risk of disappointed customers and loosing credibility.

In order to capture the power of your message, you need to have people involved in developing the story, and relating it to their situations.

This proves to be more effective than having them parrot your story.

Collaboration here naturally builds a shared perspective and people can begin to claim a share of ownership in the message.

It becomes our story and that is a reliable bridge connecting your company to your audiences.

Action Steps: Here’s a summary of what you’ll find in this subsection’s recommendations:

• Articulating your story

• Deciding on the brand promise

• Creating internal mind share

• Communicating your brand promise

• Hosting customer/consumer conversations

What do you do when you want to be sure that you and your audience communicate?

You don’t send out a broadcast message, but rather, you talk with them, usually face-to-face.

You don’t publish an ad, but instead, you engage in dialogue---speak and listen, give and take.

It is through straightforward, clear conversation that we can ensure that we have achieved a shared understanding of the sense of the message that we want to send. In short, you strive for an authentic conversation.

You must invite these conversations and you must start first at home.

Again, it is only through cross-functional, multilevel group conversations that the thinking of the group can become aligned.

Telling people what to think doesn’t work because people first interpret the words they hear through their own experiences, understandings and agendas.

Even when we listen in good faith, the opportunities for subtle misunderstandings are substantial, and we know that even a small misalignment of understanding left unattended over time or distance can create huge discrepancies.

If people are going to fulfill your promise accurately, they have to comprehend your intent.

If people are expected to work resourcefully to troubleshoot problems and overcome hurdles to satisfy customer expectations, they have to grasp the message deeply and thoroughly.

One option is to establish a series of work teams, meeting to clarify how they understand the brand promise and what they will need to do to fulfill its requirements for them on a day-to-day basis.

These discussions define the necessary relationships across internal boundaries, the need for ongoing collaboration to get the job done, and the information needed for timely decision-making at the workstations.

The brand story has much in common with Tichy’s (1993) “teachable point of view.” The reader might also check Shaw et al., (1998,) or Gabriel (2000) for other ideas.

If a common frame of reference has been achieved, the company is in a position to develop a strategy for taking its brand promise into the market.

However, just as the story developed in the company was made robust through conversations, the same implication holds for the broad marketplace as well.

Many companies strategies stagnate because they preach to, rather than converse with, their markets.

They set out to talk customers into wanting what is easy for the company to make rather than keeping abreast of the changing expectations of empowered customers (customers with options). It is insufficient to simply host focus groups.

Have you ever left a conversation and later thought of something you wished you had said?

A hit and run conversation isn’t as effective a vehicle for intimate collaboration and deep understanding as the connectedness that comes from an ongoing conversation.

The Internet offers one option for continuing the dialogue, as does listening in on public conversations on relevant Usenet newsgroups or other forums for communities of passion.

Companies can also train those representatives who speak with the customer to converse with, rather than speak at customers.

There is room for wide variations in form, but the substance for communicating your promise must be a series of ongoing conversations about your enterprise.