Start the dialogue
Greer needed to convince his people that they could move forward with a new name in a way that would honor the history of the company.
“They have been used to the name they had for 25 or 30 years,” Greer says. “That has stood for something to them. You have to be willing to listen and take that information and be open-minded about the thoughts and recommendations they are providing to you.”
Greer began with a simple idea. He gathered employees together and put each company name that was a part of Transport Industries and its respective logo on a screen at the front of the room.
“We said, ‘Who are we?’” Greer says. “That was a reality check for the employees and the management of the company when you put all that up on one page and ask, ‘Who are we?’ How do you get everyone on the same page for that?”
Greer knew he had to have his employees on his side in order to make an identity change work. It was his job to convince everyone of its importance.
“The CEO has to clearly set the sense of urgency and the importance of why the business needs to do this,” Greer says. “The CEO really has to set the stage and play a very active role with the team. Make sure your strategy is clear about where you are going.”
People like to be part of a success. It was Greer’s job to sell employees that his plan would bring even greater success than they have achieved already.
“Everybody begins to understand the fact that this company is big and broad and diverse and capable of doing many things,” Greer says. “If you can get everybody marching in the same direction as far as who you are and where you’re headed, you can accomplish so much more.”
Greer enlisted the help of San Francisco-based brand marketing firm Landor Associates as well as Richard M. Metzler, former senior vice president of marketing at DHL, to help get things moving.
The goal was to get employees thinking about what the company stood for. Greer set up meetings in a variety of venues, from formal town-hall meetings to sit-downs in the lunchroom to impromptu chats in the break room.
The place isn’t as important as what is discussed and the attention you give to what is said. Greer’s participation in these discussions was critical.
“Provide the organization an opportunity to talk,” Greer says. “Some of the pushback I got from management, I think they were fearful somebody might say something that would make me look bad. That’s the wrong way to look at it. The more important thing to do is if there is something on people’s mind, provide an opportunity.”
Employees weren’t the only group Greer needed on his side.
“We went to the market, and we asked the customers that did business with us, ‘When you think of this company, what do you think of?’” Greer says.
Greer used Landor to conduct focus groups, which delved deeper into this quest for an identity.
“That was really the first step in the process to challenge the organization to answer the question, but more importantly, to conduct the research to help us formulate the answer,” Greer says of the efforts at communication.
As the process moved along, broad recommendations began to be made.
“We came up with 1,000 different options,” Greer says. “It validated that we had no brand equity. Only those who did business with us knew who we were. If we were truly going to position ourselves as one of the leaders in the industry, we were going to have to take action to rebrand and reposition ourselves in the market to get benefit from our scale.”
