The Making of Brand Leaders

Every Management student and future Business Manager would do well to study and understand more about how certain Organizations build brand leadership and keep growing. Some of the global brand names like Apple, Sony, Reebok, Nike, Samsung, and companies like Dell, IBM, HP, Xerox, GE, Motorola not to forget a host of other technology Companies such as Microsoft, Google, Sun Microsystems, Oracle etc have been trail blazers and continue to dominate global markets.

It is quite natural for you to wonder as to what makes these Organizations become leaders in their chosen market and more importantly grow the brand and grow the Organization too, over a long period of time.

The number of businesses that create a flutter in the market and then fade out within a couple of years is much higher than the businesses that grow from strength to strength.

It is quite true that these hugely successful Organizations do things differently than the rest of the businesses and hence they survive and grow. They stand out for being different in all aspects of their management style, their approach to the entire business including their product and service, management culture, Organizational culture, management and operational processes and systems etc.

The way they approach their human resource and talent pool as well as their business model would be distinctly different from the rest. More importantly the way they tune into their market, their market intelligence, their efforts to understand customer expectations and keep ahead of competition in terms of product innovation and by leveraging on technology and building a definite value proposition that is superior to competition makes them the brand leaders.

Organizations like Google, IBM etc are relatively young Organizations as compared to GE, Xerox and others. One thing that is very evident and common amongst all these leaders is their approach and culture to their human resource development. These Organizations pursue customer service, product innovation as the key drivers to their value proposition to their customers.

The entire Organizations in these cases, are sensitized and promote a culture that encourages entrepreneurial spirit and customer friendly attitude from each and every employee of their Organization.

These Organizations are known to recruit young talent and invest in them through customized training to mould them into the Organizational thinking style and belong to the culture of the Organization. At the same time, to promote product innovation, they encourage employees to experiment and think out of the box. For being daring and taking risks, employees are not punished but encouraged and supported.

Over a period of time, they develop training programs as well as a culture that is conducive to and one that attracts creative talent. With the right set of talent, product innovation and business strategy innovation starts happening automatically.

If you observe the attitude and thinking of the management of these successful Organizations, you will see that streak of breakthrough creativity, intelligence, dynamic leadership, entrepreneurial outlook, a thirst for excelling in their chosen field and clear set of values and principles that form part of the guiding philosophy and vision for their Organizations.

These leaders thrive on focusing and excelling in their chosen field. When it comes to their customers, they leave no stone unturned to ensure that their value proposition is consistently superior leaving the customers no choice but to allege their loyalty whole heartedly.