Usually when we think about business problems, we think vertically. Why? Because we tend to organize business in silos.
For example, if sales numbers are lagging, then you check the sales silo. When product quality is suffering, you research the manufacturing silo. If employee productivity is down, then you engage the HR silo. When customer satisfaction drops, you call the customer service silo. And if a brand is losing its traction, then you must repaint the brand silo.
The heads of these vertical silos wring their hands and spin the same old wheels as they struggle to “fix” these pesky, recurring silo problems. However, when one steps back from the individual problems, he or she can start to see the horizontal business issue that underlies every one of those growth-slowing, profit-draining and management-vexing vertical problems.
That horizontal issue is the way people feel.
Most business problems share a common trait: They result from a lack of people’s interests in being solutions rather than problems. It occurs when customers do not care enough about your brand to buy your products. It occurs when employees do not care enough about their jobs to optimize your business. It encompasses all of the decisions, policies, procedures and practices that make it difficult–even demeaning–for people to do their jobs. More fundamentally, it is the lack of purpose and emotional resonance around what is being done and asked of people.
Businesses can address this underlying problem by transforming the way their brands reach out to people. By championing a strong purpose beyond profit, businesses can forge stronger, and more meaningful, connections with people. Once a shared purpose is coupled with a distinct emotional aura, affective companies find that people care more about their brands and do more for their businesses.
By addressing the horizontal business problem with new, emotionally-viable brand behavior, businesses are better equipped to solve inevitable vertical problems whenever they come up. Why this difference? Because people now care about your brand and are more likely to support its growth and help it thrive.