What you do can be copied — but not how you do it
Practicus wanted to put ‘clear air’ between its core interim management business and the change management consulting businesses that had organically grown from it. We were invited to help them create a new brand (United Outcomes, launched this week) and design the experience for their people and clients.
Branding is change. What made this project successful are the incredible similarities between change management and branding. During an early interview, Philip Munro, United Outcomes CEO said, “If you invest in communicating to a whole organisation the value of a transformation project — it’s much more likely to succeed.” This insight applies doubly to branding. It was a good fit from the start.
The ‘How’
We interviewed their people, network and clients in the UK, Hong Kong and Australia. It became clear early on that the ‘magic sauce’ in their business was not what they do but how they do it. They use a recognised and proven set of tools and services to deliver transformation, but the ’how’ is what sets them apart.
It became evident, everywhere, that United Outcomes (UO) are ‘people people’ — skilled, independent and experienced problem solvers. They don’t impose their culture, they adjust and align to their clients’ processes and values and create one team.
They build relationships that last beyond the project — clients often join them — and they practice ‘Business Karma’ which is basically a promise to anyone that works with them that they will give everything to a project to get it done.
We helped UO define their strengths — a delivery and people focus, generosity with knowledge and sensitivity to client cultures — in ways that emphasise how traditional consultancies are weak in these critical areas. More importantly, their strengths are what clients want. Modern organisations expect consultancy teams who work alongside them, to own the project but share the knowledge, to bring energy and personality and adaptability to different cultures — teams that get the job done.
“We want people to come in, work with us and make things happen” Daryl Wilkinson, DWC.
Amplify
We found that UO’s competitors were seen by clients as expensive, ruthlessly commercial, protective, we heard that the “A team sells and the B team delivers cookie cutter solutions”.
Where their competition is protective of intellectual property — UO is a values-driven organisation that believes, rightly so, that generosity and collaboration is the new normal for achieving outstanding results.
We amplified these principles to create a dynamic and compelling brand platform to build their business and their community. The name United Outcomes expresses their core beliefs.
Tested
We’ve named all kinds of businesses in many locations but we were still surprised at how crowded the consultancy space is and how long it took to find a name that a) everyone liked, b) reflected the positioning and c) was protectable in Europe, Asia and Australia.
Naming is tricky and it gets emotional. No one pays enough attention to a branding project until you say, “so you’ll answer the phone like this,” and then everyone has an opinion. We said we’d find a name in about six weeks and it ended up being three months.
Throughout the process UO challenged our thinking but they never doubted us (openly anyway). Which meant that we remained confident and focussed. We didn’t lose energy worrying about the relationship or our ability. And during the time it took to find a name we kept unearthing new ideas and stories and got to know each other better. The final brand story became stronger and richer.
An ‘operating system’
We worked closely with UO’s employee engagement team, designing and running events to identify behaviours that would drive their principles through their business –an operating system built on core values.
United Outcomes’ employee on-boarding, review and internal social events are all designed around the brand principles — unifying a diverse team and creating a sense of belonging and support. What they do can be copied but how they do it can’t.
When you take the time to bring people with you, ask for their input and demonstrate how it will help them achieve their goals they become champions for the new brand. If time and imagination is taken to illustrate how a brand improves contracts, staff retention, environments and new product development then a brand will power a business.
We created a client engagement roadmap — Align, review, share — around the United Outcomes principles. They are a relationship business. Solving problems together, allowing knowledge and experience to flow freely between their people and their clients, investing in and cherishing the differences of their global community is how they unlock value, avoid roadblocks and deliver.
Transform and deliver
Many organisations talk about their values but United Outcomes walk them — and it’s what their clients buy into. So we defined and amplified them. The name is an expression of their belief — we created the brand elements and language, designed employee and client on-boarding processes, project hand over ‘events’ -that all bring to life the values that set United Outcomes apart.
From the outset UO valued what we were doing and understood how to derive all the value from our work. They put their energy into building on our work, not knocking the corners off of it. In the process we learnt an enormous amount about how to drive new messages and behaviours into a business. We were transformed too.
The feedback from UO’s people, community and clients in every territory has been overwhelmingly positive. We do the work we do to make business and the people in them more successful and confident — that is the true motivation. This job was a pleasure.
