My wife recently got a part time job in a well known retail chain. At the end of her third shift of "on the job" training, they gave her a company "employee manual" which she was asked to read.

After reading the document, my wife exclaimed "they don't care about me, they just care about making money out of me."

In the manual, the company went to great lengths to emphasize how important it is to provide quality and authentic service. It correctly talked about how much the company values the front line shop staff as being the most critical point of success for their stores.

After reading the document, my wife exclaimed "they don't care about me, they just care about making money out of me."

Intrigued, I read the document myself. Word for word it was very well written and the message was clear about how valuable the staff were. The problem my wife had, was not with the words. It was with the unwritten messages being clearly communicated.

The document was poorly photocopied and the graphics were the stick people you find in the basic version of Microsoft Word. Contrast this with the beautiful stores, glossy brochures and TV ads, it was easy to see why staff would conclude "Our company really cares about the customer, but when it comes to you the staff, it will cut every corner possible."

The natural question for this company is, will behaving like this affect the customer and ultimately sales? The answer is yes. Staff are biggest communicators of brand values and brand promises. If they don't they don't believe the brand, then they certainly won't be committed to it and live it.

This is the essence of internal alignment. It says that the way the company looks and acts on the outside, should be entirely consistent with the way it looks and acts on the inside.

Great brands create an emotional engagement with its target customers, and ultimately relationship and great relationships are based on trust. There is nothing that destroys trust quicker than saying one thing, and being another.

A challenge for all business is, "does your external communications line up with your internal values and behaviors? And are you what you say you are all the time?"

Neil Bull