Associate: Indalo Business Consulting
The business rescue process was recently described as a triage process and that the real work, when it comes to the implementation of a turnaround strategy, comes in the immediate months following the implementation of the business rescue.
This is an important departure point for BRPS as it provides insight into the advise that needs to be given to the companies that we aim to save.
Rebuild your brand
One of the aspects of a distressed business that BRPs have to take stock of is the reputational damage that the company suffered in the lead up to the company being placed in distress.
Covid-19 is a unique situation in that some companies were put in distress because of their inability to trade during the Covid-19 lockdown. However, when it comes to the majority of companies that are currently in distress, Covid-19 is merely an accelerant of the distress that the company faced long before the pandemic. Issues such as poor leadership and financial mismanagement are often the main causes of distress and can cause major reputational damage to a brand. If these companies can be saved, and the causes of the company’s distress are appropriately addressed.
I recently read an article on entrepreneur.com which discusses this in extensive detail. The article points out that, for people today, authenticity matters and they demand it — authenticity that lives firmly at a brand’s core, not some manipulated baloney pulled out of thin air. People look to why a brand does what it does and the reason its product/service exists. If a brand has a core belief and people believe what it believes, they will more likely become loyalists.
Therefore, every brand today must uncover, or rediscover, its core belief. And they must look inside — not out — to find it.
Principle based
The article points out that it’s important to remind ourselves that this kind of authentic brand belief must be truly foundational; it must come from the principles of the business. Too often, brands confuse principles with practices. They think that certain practices can define their brand, like messaging, when, in reality, practices can be fluid and change, while principles are carved in stone.
Instill authenticity into your culture. But knowing that is only half the answer — it’s a great start — but if a brand can’t install that belief into its culture, it’ll only ever be a start. Every organization needs to know how to commit to it. It must install it into its DNA, commit it to muscle memory and become a conviction business. It must behave as its belief, make decisions because of its belief and hire, innovate and execute through its belief.
This goes beyond “marketing.” This is defining and installing the core principle of what your brand stands for. This is its mission and why it gets out of bed in the morning. Because it’s not only consumers that want to buy into what a brand believes. So do employees, stakeholders and stockholders. In fact, they must, because the behavior of a brand’s internal culture is the brand itself.
Photo By: riseabovethenoise.com
Talent, creativity and great execution
The article adds that there are constant factors that conspire to take a brand off its course. Therefore, instilling and maintaining that authenticity takes talent, creativity, great execution and a whole lot of persistence. To use James Dyson again, he didn’t simply cross his fingers and hope that the people he hired and worked with would get on board — he made it happen through the ways he communicated and the things he communicated with, including writing an employee book that stated his belief between its covers so that there could be no misinterpretation.
Unfortunately, there is no template for articulating and installing a company’s core belief. When it is done well, it can provide great success. This is something brands that have suffered major damage need to do, particularly if there is going to be a realignment in terms of leadership and the principles that will guide the company going forward. This is something South African Airways will need to seriously consider in the coming months.
Even if the company is not going through the rescue process, a company such as Eskom could benefit significantly from rebranding itself from a values point of view.
Charles Phiri is an Associate at Indalo Business Consulting
