Viewing offline content

Limited functionality available

Dismiss
Deloitte Middle East
  • Services

    What's New

    • Deloitte175

      Join us for a celebration of 175 years of making an impact that matters.

    • Building the Resilient Organization

      2021 Deloitte Global resilience report

    • 2020 Global Gender Impact Report

      A collection of Butterfly Effect stories highlighting how our Deloitte professionals are positively impacting the lives of women and girls around the world

    • Audit & Assurance

      • Assurance
    • Consulting

      • Strategy, Analytics and M&A
      • Customer and Marketing
      • Business Operations
      • Human Capital
      • Enterprise Technology & Performance
    • Financial Advisory

      • Mergers & Acquisitions
      • Forensic
      • Real Estate
      • Restructuring Services
    • Risk Advisory

      • Strategic & Reputation Risk
      • Regulatory Risk
      • Financial Risk
      • Operational Risk
      • Cyber Risk
    • Tax

      • Global Business Tax Services
      • Indirect Tax
      • Global Employer Services
    • Deloitte Private

      • Global Family Solutions
      • Family Office
    • Legal

  • Industries

    What's New

    • Deloitte perspectives

      Leadership perspectives from across the globe.

    • Deloitte Insights App

      Our thought leadership and Dow Jones news, now at your fingertips

    • Future of Mobility

      Learn how this new reality is coming together and what it will mean for you and your industry.

    • Consumer

      • Automotive
      • Consumer Products
      • Retail, Wholesale & Distribution
      • Transportation, Hospitality & Services
    • Energy, Resources & Industrials

      • Industrial Products & Construction
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil, Gas & Chemicals
      • Power, Utilities & Renewables
    • Financial Services

      • Banking & Capital Markets
      • Insurance
      • Investment Management
      • Real Estate
    • Government & Public Services

      • Civil Government
      • Defense, Security & Justice
      • Health & Social Care
      • International Donor Organizations
      • Transport
    • Life Sciences & Health Care

      • Health Care
      • Life Sciences
    • Technology, Media & Telecommunications

      • Technology
      • Telecommunications, Media & Entertainment
  • Insights

    Deloitte Insights

    What's New

    • Combating COVID-19 with resilience

    • Daily executive briefing

      Timely insights to inform your agenda.

    • Deloitte Insights app

      Get daily updates on your mobile device

    • By topic

      • AI & cognitive technologies
      • Analytics
      • Blockchain
      • Digital transformation
      • Diversity & inclusion
      • Economics
      • Human capital
      • Innovation
      • Leadership
      • Private companies
      • Risk management
      • Strategy
    • By sector

      • Automotive
      • Consumer products & retail
      • Financial services
      • Government & public services
      • Health care
      • Industrial products
      • Life sciences
      • Mining & metals
      • Oil, gas & chemicals
      • Power, utilities & renewables
      • Technology
      • Telecom, media & entertainment
      • Transportation & hospitality
    • Spotlight

      • Deloitte Insights Magazine
      • Climate and sustainability
      • Economic weekly update
      • Future of work
      • 2021 Human Capital Trends
      • 2021 Tech Trends
  • Careers

    What's New

    • Millennial Survey 2020

      Millennials and Gen Zs hold the key to creating a “better normal”

    • Candidate Profile

      After applying for a job in this country, you can access/update your candidate profile at any time.

    • Job Search

    • Students

    • Experienced Hires

    • Executives

    • Life at Deloitte

    • Alumni

  • XE-EN Location: XE-English  
  • Contact us
  • XE-EN Location: XE-English  
  • Contact us
    • Dashboard
    • Saved items
    • Content feed
    • Profile/Interests
    • Account settings

Welcome back

Still not a member? Join My Deloitte

Executive transitions: Your team is your brand

by Ajit Kambil
  • Save for later
  • Download
  • Share
    • Share on Facebook
    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Linkedin
    • Share by email
Deloitte Insights
  • By topic
    By topic
    By topic
    • AI & cognitive technologies
    • Analytics
    • Blockchain
    • Digital transformation
    • Diversity & inclusion
    • Economics
    • Human capital
    • Innovation
    • Leadership
    • Private companies
    • Risk management
    • Strategy
  • By sector
    By sector
    By sector
    • Automotive
    • Consumer products & retail
    • Financial services
    • Government & public services
    • Health care
    • Industrial products
    • Life sciences
    • Mining & metals
    • Oil, gas & chemicals
    • Power, utilities & renewables
    • Technology
    • Telecom, media & entertainment
    • Transportation & hospitality
  • Spotlight
    Spotlight
    Spotlight
    • Deloitte Insights Magazine
    • Climate and sustainability
    • Economic weekly update
    • Future of work
    • 2021 Human Capital Trends
    • 2021 Tech Trends
    • XE-EN Location: XE-English  
    • Contact us
      • Dashboard
      • Saved items
      • Content feed
      • Profile/Interests
      • Account settings
    10 November 2015

    Executive transitions: Your team is your brand Building a leadership brand with your team

    10 November 2015
    • Ajit Kambil United States
    • Save for later
    • Download
    • Share
      • Share on Facebook
      • Share on Twitter
      • Share on Linkedin
      • Share by email

    An inherited team can make or mar the brand of a new executive—and of the organization. Leaders would do well to give their teams a clear idea of the brand they want to establish and the team behaviors and characteristics that manifest this brand.

    Learn more

    Listen to the related podcast

    Explore the Executive Transitions collection

    When I help a C-level executive transition to a new leadership role, I often need to remind her that her team represents both her brand and the organization’s brand. Not giving your leadership team a clear idea of the brand you want to establish for your organization and the behaviors that manifest this brand can undermine your efforts and create confusion in your team.

    It is striking how few leaders clearly articulate the critical brand attributes they want their organization to manifest. If the organization’s brand is poor, fix it quickly; within six months to a year, the brand you inherit becomes yours. Every new CxO should, early during the transition, have conversations to define the go-forward brand, set the context with critical stakeholders, and drive behaviors and actions that make the brand a reality.

    Define the brand

    A first step to triangulating on a new brand is to interview existing stakeholders and customers and take an inventory of terms they would use to describe your existing organization. For instance, you may hear that finance is usually a naysayer to the business, it’s unable to support critical investments, or it can’t provide critical information or useful insights for critical decisions. Negative as well as positive descriptions offer opportunities to transform future interactions and reset the brand. In this instance, providing timely, insightful, and accurate information may become part of your desired brand.

    A second approach is to consider your goals for the organization. For example, CFOs often tell me they want to make finance an effective partner to the business. This may be the overarching goal. But as the brand defines how you are perceived in the delivery of the goal, you next need to ask yourself what terms you are likely to use in describing the delivery of this overarching goal. A CFO might say, “I want my finance folks to be trusted, confident, and insightful when being a partner to the business.” These descriptors are helpful in creating a brand statement.

    A third approach is to brainstorm with your team on how to define critical brand attributes. This approach, most importantly, involves your team in the brand definition process, enabling it to take ownership of the result. Engaging the team to frame brand attributes also expands the set of descriptors for the brand. For example, members of the team may add the need to be perceived as a fair and objective organization.

    Adding these descriptors, you could now frame the new desired brand: “The finance organization consistently delivers timely and accurate financial reports and insightful analyses to support business decision making and value creation. Finance is a confident and trusted partner to the business that is fair, objective, and transparent in its processes.”

    Set the context to manifest the brand

     A key responsibility of the new executive is to analyze and potentially reset the context of the brand in the company. This may require breaking prior patterns of the organization’s interactions with critical stakeholders and internal customers.

    For example, as a new group CIO, if you find a business leader has created a shadow IT organization in the business unit leveraging the cloud and other technologies—neither involving nor ignoring your staff in these initiatives—it could prove a challenge for your team in achieving its brand aspirations. The solution is to explore renegotiating your staff’s participation in this business unit’s IT-related initiatives. If unsuccessful, you have to decide whether to escalate the issue or to temporarily dial down services to this business unit while exceptionally serving other businesses that are more cooperative and enable brand development. Either way, you will have to renegotiate the environment.

    Drive behaviors to manifest the brand

    The brand is defined not by what you say but, rather, by what your organization’s key stakeholders observe. As you reset the context and receptivity of a new brand with key stakeholders, you will also need to ensure your team undertakes the behaviors and communications to manifest the new brand. They will also need to manage the behaviors that undermine the brand.

    Once your team has taken ownership to manifest a new brand, you may need to tackle redefining the visuals, shifting rewards and incentives, and role modeling to achieve your branding goals.

    In a business context, visual perception often trumps auditory and other perceptions. Computer support personnel dressed in business casual in a formal environment could convey the wrong impression. The casually dressed computer support guy may be brilliant at restoring a nonfunctioning computer, but when he arrives on the executive floor, he may contribute to the perception of a team without professional discipline. Similarly, logos, consistent visual identities, and formats of reports and presentations can all serve to emphasize professionalism and attention to detail.

    Leaders will have to be role models for the desired behaviors. If the goal is to be responsive to customers, leaders themselves need to demonstrate this trait. If the team is to be perceived as insightful, leaders need to show that they value insights from their staff and perhaps even generate valuable insights for their clients.

    Incentivize and reward

    Incentives and rewards are essential to reinforce the desired behaviors that represent the brand you want to create. Rewards can be varied—from recognition in newsletters of a job well done to smaller monetary awards. Implementing incentives and rewards will also require measurements to validate the incentives. For example, if you want to improve the brand in terms of responsiveness as a CIO, it is important to track the times to satisfactory problem resolution and strive to bring down the time. Complementing incentives and rewards with tangible measures of behaviors and desired outcomes enables you to track progress toward the consistent delivery of your organization’s brand promise.

     The takeaway: Your team becomes an expression of your brand—so explicitly express and co-create the brand you desire with your team. Triangulating from multiple perspectives on key desired brand attributes, ensuring key stakeholders are receptive to a brand reset, and aligning rewards and incentives and role modeling critical behaviors to manifest the target brand can more systematically help change perceptions of your organization.

    Credits

    Written by: Ajit Kambil

    Cover image by: Livia Cives

    Topics in this article

    Workplace culture , Leadership , Talent

    Deloitte Consulting

    Learn more
    Download Subscribe

    Related

    img Trending

    Interactive 3 days ago

    Ajit Kambil

    Ajit Kambil

    Deloitte LLP

    Ajit is the Global Research director of Deloitte LLP's CFO Program. He oversees the diverse research initiatives of the program in areas such as leadership, capital markets and risk and created CFO Insights, a biweekly publication serving more than thirty five thousand subscribers. Ajit also developed Deloitte’s Executive Transition Lab which helps CxOs make an efficient and effective transition into their new role. Prior to his role in the CFO Program, Ajit was the global director of Deloitte Research. He is widely published in leading business and technology journals on varied topics. An eCommerce pioneer and expert on market design, his book Making Markets: How to Profit from Online Auctions and Exchanges was published by Harvard Business School Press.

    • akambil@deloitte.com
    • +1 212 492 4286

    Share article highlights

    See something interesting? Simply select text and choose how to share it:

    Email a customized link that shows your highlighted text.
    Copy a customized link that shows your highlighted text.
    Copy your highlighted text.

    Executive transitions: Your team is your brand has been saved

    Executive transitions: Your team is your brand has been removed

    An Article Titled Executive transitions: Your team is your brand already exists in Saved items

     
    Forgot password

    OR

    Social login not available on Microsoft Edge browser at this time.

    Connect Accounts

    Connect your social accounts

    This is the first time you have logged in with a social network.

    You have previously logged in with a different account. To link your accounts, please re-authenticate.

    Log in with an existing social network:

    To connect with your existing account, please enter your password:

    OR

    Log in with an existing site account:

    To connect with your existing account, please enter your password:

    Forgot password

    Subscribe

    to receive more business insights, analysis, and perspectives from Deloitte Insights
    ✓ Link copied to clipboard
    • Contact us
    • Search Jobs
    • Submit RFP
    Follow Deloitte Insights:
    Global office directory Office locations
    XE-EN Location: XE-English  
    About Deloitte
    • Home
    • Newsroom
    • Middle East matters blog
    • Press releases
    • ME PoV magazine
    • Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability
    • Diversity and Inclusion
    • Middle East office locator
    • Global Office Directory
    • Press contacts
    • Contact Alumni team
    • Report an ethics complaint
    Services
    • Audit & Assurance
    • Consulting
    • Financial Advisory
    • Risk Advisory
    • Tax
    • Deloitte Private
    • Legal
    Industries
    • Consumer
    • Energy, Resources & Industrials
    • Financial Services
    • Government & Public Services
    • Life Sciences & Health Care
    • Technology, Media & Telecommunications
    Careers
    • Job Search
    • Students
    • Experienced Hires
    • Executives
    • Life at Deloitte
    • Alumni
    • About Deloitte
    • About Deloitte in the Middle East
    • Privacy
    • Terms of use
    • Cookies
    • Avature Privacy

    © 2021. See Terms of Use for more information.

    Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) does not provide services to clients. Please see About Deloitte to learn more about our global network of member firms.