Keith Gerson discovered a thing or two about leading a company while rocking on stage in a cover band.
“I’ve learned so much about the performer’s uncanny ability to connect with an audience,” says Gerson, a rocker by night and the president and chief operating officer of PuroClean by day. “A good leader definitely has that ability.”
Gerson’s performance-honed charisma has helped him unite 1,050 employees in 236 franchises under a single vision. He led the company, which provides emergency property damage restoration, through an assessment to define its brand.
But he didn’t stop there. Gerson continues to measure whether the PuroClean brand is living up to its promise.
“If I’m right that your brand is people’s perception of who you are, then basically a living brand is a pattern of behavior,” he says. “It’s not a stylistic veneer.”
As a result of the ongoing branding, PuroClean keeps growing. After reaching 2007 revenue of $51.2 million, the company grew 34 percent in 2008.
Smart Business spoke with Gerson about how to brand your company with a vision.
Gauge employees’ conceptions. One of the first things that I did when I came into the company was to take the organization through the complete assessment and definition of the brand and come out with an articulation of what that meant and then ensure that everybody gets on same page.
I started by going out with five questions to all of my employees. The five questions were basically:
- What is it about the culture that you think we should preserve and why?
- What is it about the culture that you think we should change and why?
- What do you hope I will do as your president?
- What are you afraid I’m going to do as the president?
- What advice do you have for me?
If you did nothing else, the answers to those questions could be the basis for the development of your strategic plan. But I took it a step further, and I shared the answers that I got from our entire system with my network leadership council. I had 10 franchisees, five of my executive team members and some outside experts that had industry experience or marketing experience.
Assemble a branding team. I identified people that I knew were influential within the network. We publish who our top performers are on a monthly basis on our intranet site … but that’s only part of it. You’re going to have people within your organization that are not necessarily your best performers but certainly have a lot to say.
This is just learned and observed by asking the questions, ‘Who do you respect? Who do you listen to within the organization?’
The other way is just watching where and how people interact. You can really see who people tend to gravitate toward.
