ABSTRACT
A strategy document might give direction but culture determines what people feel able to do and be at work. Specifically in a BBE the culture should encourage the liberation of individual minds, creative collaboration in teams and enterprise-level learnacy. When we experience cultures that liberate minds as a consumer of the enterprise, our experience is often via the inferred signs, signifiers, myths, stories and legends, in other words, what we think the enterprise stands for. For example, people see Virgin as a challenger of other businesses, a consumer champion and the stories that surround it are often related to adventure via the stories that exist about its leader Sir Richard Branson. When we actually work for the enterprise, the culture is usually about the more obvious behaviour, any explicit values and control systems. If the enterprise is truly authentic there is no gap between how people see the enterprise from afar and how it is experienced on the ground. In other words, the external brand is the same as the employee brand. Motivation and brand loyalty arise when there is a happy marriage between external and internal views of the culture.
