What makes a great business great? The kind of business that dominates its category, makes shareholders feel positive, and becomes the sort of place where employees actually want to work, rather than just turning up for the free fruit?
The instinctive answer is: “A great product.” Because that’s what customers interact with. But what’s behind that great product? A great team. A team who are responsible for shaping, delivering, innovating, selling. A team who are made up of very different types of people. And there’s the challenge. Each person will have different agendas, temperaments, work styles. And snack preferences. So just how do get them all moving and acting as one?
Why organisational unity is harder than ever
Organisational unity isn’t a new challenge. Getting people to work together towards a single goal has long been the aim for many, from military generals to politicians, from industrialists to corporate pioneers (we’re looking at you, Steve Jobs). Because when you get seamless collaboration right, the magic happens. When everyone is aligned behind a shared goal, decision-making becomes more efficient, collaboration strengthens, and innovation thrives. And most important of all, value is created.
And that’s what businesses want most of all. It’s just that, right now, it’s harder than ever.
- The post-pandemic hybrid chaos. In 2019, only 5% of us in the UK primarily worked from home. Now? Over 40% of workers do some sort of remote work and while hybrid work has many perks (no more waiting for delayed trains, wearing pyjama bottoms in meetings), it has also eroded the invisible glue that holds an organisation together. Goodbye, spontaneous informal interactions.
- Increasing business complexity. Once upon a time, a company generally made one thing and everyone in the business understood exactly what that was. Now? Businesses sell complex and multiple products, in multiple markets, to multiple audiences. Often using words like “mission-critical strategies” and “customer-centric ecosystems” which – let’s be honest – most employees would struggle to explain to their mates down the pub.
- Corporate restructuring. In the wake of private equity deals and post-Covid upheaval, many companies have merged, acquired, or been acquired. This means multiple teams, from different businesses, with different cultures, are suddenly expected to work together. Technically possible, but humans are humans, and there may just be a little friction on the way.
The power of a Brand Idea
Brand is used, fundamentally, to communicate your value and meaning to prospective clients and customers. At Keel, what we see is that too many businesses view it purely as an external tool.
This misses its power. A strong brand – delivered through a strong Brand Idea – isn’t just about how your organisation shows up to the outside world; it’s about how everything that goes on inside.
True organisational unity requires a Brand Idea. Why? Because the Brand Idea helps articulate the reason that your business exists in a way that every single person can understand – and act upon. It has the power to energise and excite people. It has the power to make them understand that there is a wider mission to create, build and deliver something for the world at large.
A strong Brand Idea doesn’t just live in external communications; it resonates internally too. When the story a company tells the world aligns with what its own people hear and experience, it creates real belief. Too often, employees are told one thing internally while seeing something entirely different externally. A truly powerful Brand Idea unites both – ensuring that what the business stands for is felt, understood, and acted upon by everyone, inside and out.
Take the well-known story of John F. Kennedy’s 1962 visit to NASA. When he stopped and asked one of the janitors what he was doing, the man replied: “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.”
There it is: a clear, well-communicated single-minded idea which has worked by connecting and motivating everyone – regardless of position. From the leadership to the frontline team, everyone can understand the organisation’s direction, values and goals.
How to make a Brand Idea actually work inside your business (not just on a PowerPoint slide)
At Keel, we partner with CEO’s, CMOs and leadership teams from small and nimble start-ups to the global behemoths to create compelling Brand Ideas that don’t just look good on the outside but have the power to drive internal engagement and alignment. We believe that when organisational unity starts from within, and when executed beautifully, Brand Ideas have the power to transform businesses.
Let’s take our client, Güntner, a world-leading heating and cooling manufacturer. With a presence spanning multiple regions and industries, a mix of blue-collar and white-collar employees and selling technically complex products, organisational unity is both a challenge and a necessity.
At the heart of Güntner is our single, unifying Brand Idea: Always a Solution Ahead. No matter who you are—an engineer on the factory floor, a marketing exec in an office in Singapore, or a sales manager in Brazil—everyone is contributing to the same thing: delivering progress. Whether designing advanced cooling systems or maintaining existing infrastructure, every Güntner employee understands that they are contributing to a larger mission of progress and innovation. They go from thinking “I make or sell air conditioning units” to “I help keep the world progressing efficiently and comfortably.” It gives people the ‘why’.
A new verbal and visual identity, content strategy, comms, campaign and employer value proposition work all help to embed this Brand Idea – Güntner become more unified, more organised and more aligned. The result is not only a stronger internal culture but a more cohesive and effective business.
And when people see themselves as part of something bigger? They work together, they innovate faster, and they build something greater than the sum of its parts, keeping the business leading the way ahead.
Bringing it all together
If you’re feeling your organisation needs more unity, take a step back and ask: does everyone know what we stand for? Do they know where we’re headed as a business? Do they know why we are different? Do they feel part of something? Or is your “brand” just a logo and colour palette that gets added to a PowerPoint deck with not much thought.
The strongest companies—like Güntner—don’t just have a brand. They have a Brand Idea. And they live it from the inside out.
And that? That’s how you go from a good business to a truly great one.
If you are seeking to unify your organisation through the power of a brand idea, then please get in touch with our Managing Director, Tom Poynter – tom@keel-london.com