HR is Marketing; Marketing HR
In Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand, Mavericks at Work author Bill Taylor discusses the importance of “personal identification between employees and customers”.
Success is not just about marketing differently from other companies… It is also, and perhaps more important(ly), about caring more than other companies — about customers, about colleagues, about how the organization conducts itself in a world with endless opportunities to cut corners and compromise on values. (Emphasis mine.)
Taylor explains this giving two examples. One, a banking executive who is VP of both Marketing and Human Resources. Another, an insurance and financial-services company serving the U.S. military and their families, which trains its employees by putting them through “boot camp”.
You can’t be special, distinctive, and compelling in the marketplace unless you create something special, distinctive, and compelling in the workplace.
This starts by codifying your culture, aligning management, then the workforce, making personnel changes as necessary. Harsh, perhaps; but this is not hiring and firing to line someone’s pockets. It is hiring and firing to create the best possible team to best serve your clients, who alone determine your success.
Read Taylor’s entire post.
