Thank you everyone. It's good to be with you today and thanks to the SOLV team for hosting another great Brand Discovery event. I think this is my first time out of the house in a week following a second big surgery. So thanks for not making it too awkward for me <laugh> to hobble up to the stand. I appreciate Tracey, your distinction of marketing and branding, and I hope that today I can share with you perhaps another way to think about branding in terms of a "two sides of the same coin" approach. And, let me give you some context about who Dairy West is. We are most commonly considered a marketing and promotion organization for the dairy industry. My team and I work for dairy farmers in Idaho and Utah. We're a team of about 21 strong across the two states, governed by a board of directors. Technically there are three boards of directors, but I won't bore you with all that governance. They're all farmer leaders in their own right.
My team and I are particularly motivated to do what we do every day because farmers really care deeply about feeding the world with safe and nutritious food. And to us, that's a really honorable goal. The fact that we get to support them is a real privilege. Our mission at Dairy West is to inspire trust in dairy farming and dairy products and to build demand for those products around the world. We aspire our vision is to establish the dairy industry as a positive change maker and our core values rest simply on trust action and stewardship for me, for my team, the fundamentals matter, they are really, really essential. And we believe in absolutely preserving, protecting and enhancing the assets that have been placed in our care by the farmers. So it's that foundation of mission, vision, and values that drives everything we do inside our culture and in terms of building our brand day in and day out. So the, the premise of my comments today are going to center on the point that brand is nothing, unless the internal culture of an organization reflects what the brand wants to be. In other words, your employee experience should look just like the customer experience. Okay.
Between culture and branding, it's at that point of alignment between culture and branding where ultimately strategy and strategy execution is most likely to succeed. And I believe that foundational to every leader's role is driving culture and brand. So let's start, let's start with being intentional about creating that alignment. Nice. We got a lot of winners in the room and, and let's like that. So let's start with being intentional about creating alignment between culture and brand. So I'm going to put leadership or the leader at the center of a graphic that you'll see build out. Intentional leaders run intentional businesses. Okay. Putting leadership at the center reinforces the responsibility to the organization, to the brand, to the people, to the board of directors in our case, in some cases it is the leader's responsibility.
The organizational narrative is also critically important. Okay. So the organizational narrative is the story that your employees rally around. It's why you matter. Tressa, you like to use the term "just cause" - it's an organization's just cause. It lays the groundwork for your culture and for everything you do. It's the purpose of your organization. The mission, the vision, the values.
A thriving narrative requires repetition. Okay. Needs to be communicated all the time. Culture is not a glitch on a screen. It's <laugh> rather, I would say a collection of behaviors that the people and processes in any organization allow or discourage. I like to say culture is what you tolerate, right? It's it's as much the unspoken as it is the words on the wall and culture drives the resulting brand, which we'll talk about next. Brand is not what you think it is. It's what everybody else is saying it is. It's what everybody else thinks about you. It is every touchpoint that you have both with your employees and your customers. Every touchpoint builds your brand, ultimately, and Tracey, you spoke to that very nicely and ultimately strategy and execution. You know, once you have these other pieces in place, strategy and execution are more likely to succeed because you have employees who believe in why you do what you do. They believe in building your brand for you
Intentionality. Yes, I knew that was coming <laugh>. This is really the foundation on which all of this lies and it's the very deliberative and purposeful nature of every decision put into building all of these elements. Building a brand is a lot of complex work. It doesn't happen overnight. And this shows, I think exactly why the interconnectedness is important. Intentionality really is sort of the simple thread to weave throughout. I like to think of the four, leadership, narrative, culture, and brand as the heart of an organization. And we know that heart is important. Simon Sinek, author and, you know, speaker that I'm sure you're all familiar with. He talks about how heart is what connects with buyers, buyers buy with their hearts and rationalize with their minds. So connecting with heart is important to any company's success. I think of some examples you know, Zappos, they don't sell handbags and shoes, they deliver happiness. Starbucks changes the world one cup at a time. You know, Campbell's soup is not food in a can it's real food that matters. And those companies that connect with heart tend to have very loyal brand followings.
There are a lot of examples out there of great companies that connect with heart. We all know them. There are also companies whose culture and brand are misaligned or at war with one another. And those companies (I'll get to some examples in a little bit) but they tend to face, undoubtedly reputational damage, and in a lot of cases negative financial impact. My friend and business leader of biology, Krisna Murphy with whom I've done a couple of leadership development courses often talks about companies who don't focus on building their heart. And he's got some great examples. The customer always finds out, either immediately or over time, the customer always knows. When your company has heart, your people can advocate for you, your board members, your customers, the public, and that's ultimately what you want. You talked about social capital, I mean advocacy. And I think Jessica's going to touch on that too.
To build a brand from the inside out, I put leadership or leaders at the center. And why is that? Because leaders, craft stories, stories drive people, people drive culture and culture drives brand. At the end of the day, it starts with the leader and ends with the brand. In today's world, information's moving at the speed of phones. I think we can all agree, maybe faster. People expect transparency and I would argue that social media and technology are merely tools to hold us accountable. For that transparency in the food industry, we are under intense pressure to be very transparent, you know, between food ingredients, labeling country of origin, animal welfare practices, et cetera, we are pressured to be very open and we rise to that challenge. Every industry has its call for transparency. We're just one. Leaders have to be intentional about being transparent in the effort to build a brand.
And if your culture and brand are at war with each other, your employees know, and if your employees can't advocate for you, you've lost your first audience. You've lost your first brand loyalists. So that again, that's why leadership matters in this interconnected puzzle, Marty Newmeyer, the author of The Brand Gap, I think I said this earlier. I love his quote. "Brand isn't what you think it is or what you say it is. It's what they say it is." You know, brand is not a logo. It is not an identity guide. It is not your gut feeling. It is the gut feeling of everybody outside the room. It's built over time and in every touchpoint. Brand is a collection of stories. Remember I talked about the importance of narrative. It is the collection of stories that your customers tell each other and that your employees tell other people brand is your reputation, right, Tracey it's, the reputation we each build every day in every touchpoint. I would say, as leaders, it's our responsibility to shape manage and be very intentional with those stories.
And we all know companies whose brands don't align with their internal culture. In other words, companies who are saying here's who we wanna be, but they're not showing up that way. You know, there are tons of recent examples you know, during the pandemic, but think about the BP oil spill, United Airlines treatment of passengers and animals. Wells Fargo, created a bunch of fraudulent bank accounts, right? So that they could prove out their P and L in a way that wasn't full of integrity. And there are endless examples of poorly designed products, ill-planned partnerships, bad business decisions that all result in companies having to go into crisis mode. At the end of the day, those companies may survive. The leaders generally don't. Right, because again, it starts with the leader.
Okay. Turning back to the power of intention. <Laugh> I mentioned that intentionality is the very - thank you. Everyone's paying attention. That's a good sign. It's the discipline or the deliberative and purposefulness applied to every decision made. And in today's case, we're talking obviously about culture and brand. I would say intentionality is really important for leaders because everyone's watching the leader right from the minute we get out of the car in the parking lot to the moment we walk into the office, people are subconsciously asking themselves, you know, what mood is she in today? What decisions is he gonna make? What are the impacts of what's gonna happen today on me? And if, if we don't think about how we show up with intentionality, we are again, risking some of our biggest brand advocates, our employees. Being intentional about your culture is the key to alignment between culture and brand. It starts there. And I thought what I would do is share a few, just three of my own learnings since I've been a CEO and talk about how they relate to my time at Dairy West.
So I think we can all agree that there is often tension in the workplace. Does anybody work in a workplace with no tension? Zero tension? Yeah. Okay. Oh, Gordon, well, Gordon <laugh>, maybe you should get the prize.
You know, and the tension happens for a lot of different reasons. So I have strengths, characteristics, I guess that tend to keep me distracted from detail. Right. My team would tell you, I'm kind of the visionary. I like thinking about the future, but when I became a CEO nine years ago, I realized that there are a lot of people who rely on detail. <Laugh> okay, Casey, you've seen this. Yeah. Once I appreciated the power of clarity in the workplace, I knew I was onto something. I mean, it, I knew I had to ensure that clarity was paramount at Dairy West. And I work on it every day with my team. Now it may sound mundane, but my team and I established as part of building out clarity in the workplace, my team, and I established a very clear handbook, the policies, the procedures, the job descriptions, a role guide.
We did all this in the name of taking the guesswork out of people's jobs, right? The less they have to guess, the more we can unleash talent for team members to get their jobs done successfully. Those basic expectations, I would say, and there are many of my team members on the line, so they can debate this <laugh> if they'd like. But I would say that my team generally feels very appreciative that they have the kind of clarity they need so that they can go do their jobs and do them successfully and be creative, right. They can go use their energy to be creative. James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits, and I love his quote, "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." Creating clarity in systems at Dairy West is one of it is one of the things I am most proud of and hope to continue building upon. We've even to take clarity a step further, we've even operationalized our values. We've put actions and behaviors with each of our three core values, which again are trust action and stewardship. And so my colleagues understand how we all show up embracing those core values.
I like to say clarity is kindness. In fact, my team printed t-shirts for me, cuz it's that <laugh>, it's that common of a mantra that they hear. But I do think giving clarity has created a path to success for teammates that, you know, because they don't have to worry about other things. Providing clarity and thinking about that is not easy for me. I have to really be deliberate and put a lot of energy and thought into it. So again, that's where intentionality comes into place. It's putting the time and energy and effort into something that my tendencies would not naturally you know, be drawn to. I've also found that consistency is is important in the workplace. And I'll give you the example of consistency around communication. You know, I think we can all agree that communication's really important when it comes to times of uncertainty and challenge in the workplace.
And this pandemic was no doubt, a great test for all of us to examine how well we do in terms of communicating with our people. And for me, I was very I guess, concerned about making sure my team felt connected and making sure that they still felt that their relationships could be fostered in that sort of isolated environment when we had to go work remotely or work apart from one another. And so communication became important at the beginning, I did weekly communications to my team talking about the decisions that had to be made, why they had to be made, you know, how we were making them how we were basing where we were getting information, how we were basing decisions and that I think created if nothing else, at least a consistent platform for people to hear from the leader of the organization, eventually the frequency of those, you know, if I was still doing weekly updates to my team about the pandemic, I think they'd probably, you know, I'll leave me.
But the important point at Dairy West was that we were able to remain connected to the decision making on a regular basis in a normal business environment. And today we also apply consistency to all of the things we do with our team in terms of biweekly, internal , monthly staff meetings, twice a year, all team meetings, you know, giving that consistency allows people to understand when they have to show up, how they have to show up, what to expect when they show up. And maybe that's crossing back over to clarity a little, but that consistency has been appreciated by the team members who have reached out to me and on individual or personal level. I try very hard, and again, this takes a lot of intentionality. I try to show up consistently every day, you know, I don't want my team to wonder what mood I'm gonna be in, or who's gonna show up. It's always Karianne. She may be on crutches one day. <Laugh> but you know, I hope that I show up in a way that tells them that they have consistency in their leader.
And finally the third learning I wanted to share is just this idea of authenticity in leadership. I think it's important to humanize leadership and too often I've worked for people like this. They put on the armor, right? And it's just really hard to have a meaningful relationship with a leader who doesn't show up with a genuine and authentic self. You know, I want my team to give me their energy. I think if leaders, that's what we all want. We want people to give us their energy, at least while they're on the clock or, or at work and allowing for authentic relationships and allowing vulnerability to foster in the workplace goes a long way in motivating people to show up in that way as well. I also don't take myself too seriously. My team will certainly agree with that, I'm sure. And I think I would say that the, the brand that we develop at Dairy West and, and the you know, and our personality as a brand shows that I don't take myself too seriously nor expect others to
Authenticity again, is really hard for me, you know, I wanna show up and just be all business all the time. But I've learned that it's so critically important to healthy relationships in the workplace. And I want my team to see the most imperfect version of me because we're all imperfect, you know, perfection is not a goal that I think is achievable. So anyway I've shared one example of my authenticity recently is I've shared my journey in terms of this injury I'm dealing with with my team and just have been really open about what scares me and what motivates me through it. And I think they've appreciated that I am, I'm not made of, of metal or steel or, you know, we're not all invincible. Again, this stuff doesn't come easy to all of us as leaders. We just have to be really intentional about fostering it about harnessing it and bringing it to the workplace.
I think about leadership as a formula: it's leverage plus legacy, leverage being the impact that you have on others and legacy is what you'll leave behind in the end. Many of us have kind of a vision of this destination, right? We sort of know what we want, what that legacy looks like. And I would just challenge you all to think about being intentional. So that destination looks the way you want it. We're the only ones that can control that for ourselves. So think about that and think about the impact you're having day in and day out on others. It's easy to look at an organization with a healthy culture, with a strong brand and think that that stuff happens overnight. And it does not. It takes a lot of effort, energy time. But I think that's the challenge as leaders. What a beautiful challenge we get to rise up and do that. It's awesome. So I'd encourage you to think, think through how you want that destination to look and make it happen. So in summary, I would just share that I, I do believe that brand is built from the inside out. Absolutely. It starts with the leader and it starts with each of you.