Four days with a 4-year-old at Walt Disney World — the thought turned my blood to ice. I had visions of a thousand things I’d rather do… including eat glass. It had been almost 25 years since I’d last set foot in the Magic Kingdom, and although I had many fond memories of Disney World as a child, I also recalled standing in long lines for hours, baking in the hot summer sun.

The fact that Disney persuaded me to change my tune is impressive, but how the brand did it is the truly astonishing part. It all comes down to two things: the experience and intentionality.

Disney was able to take a potential brand detractor and turn me into a promoter — someone who is now singing its praises. Don’t think for a minute that any of this happened by chance. Disney is intentional about its message and the experience it creates for customers.

Here are a few culture lessons your brand can learn from the Disney experience:

Cast Your Team to Tell Your Story

Disney has built a strong storytelling culture. Staff members aren’t employees; they’re “cast members” who tell the Disney story through their roles. From actors portraying beloved characters to operations workers handling in-park logistics, employees execute the Disney vision flawlessly.

Cast members clearly take pride in being part of the Disney brand and understand how their daily activities support the company and enhance the customer experience.

To effectively tell your company’s story through your employees, you must have a clearly articulated value proposition and engage in an ongoing conversation with employees about how their daily work supports that value proposition.

Empower Employees to Paint Outside the Lines

Disney empowers cast members to reach outside their roles to proactively add to the customer experience whenever possible. As we entered the park, some custodial cast members welcomed us by using their brooms and buckets to paint Disney characters on the ground with water.

Suddenly, a fleeting moment in the warm Orlando sun became a special experience. It was invigorating to see that all cast members, regardless of their roles, had the opportunity to deliver joy to customers in their own unique ways.

Encourage your employees to go beyond their job descriptions and find creative ways to engage customers. This will allow your company to deliver exceptional experiences and create moments of delight at every turn.

Use Technology to Your Advantage

Another arrow in Disney’s quiver is the way it has embraced technology to create a seamless, customized experience. After reserving our trip, a welcome box arrived in the mail containing bracelets embedded with chips that allowed us to do everything from enter our hotel room to purchase food in the park.

To us, this technology was a convenience. But to Disney, it provided a treasure trove of data on my family’s behavior, allowing the company to refine its offerings in real time. In short, Disney’s ability to create a seamless customer experience through technology also allows it to maximize revenue.

Technology isn’t always the answer, but you should look for solutions that help you enhance the customer experience while automating whatever you can. This can reduce human error and create an experience that leaves customers in awe.

Surprise and Delight Your Customers

I can honestly say that Disney “delighted” me. The cast members were always engaged in activities that sent a clear, aligned message. They were overjoyed we were there, and they wanted to ensure that all of our needs were met. The company’s intentionality ensures that even the biggest Disney fans leave feeling like they’ve experienced something that exceeded their expectations.

Remember that I did not want to go to Disney World. I was dreading it. Yes, the visit changed my attitude, and yes, Disney even got me to promote the brand. But the coup de grâce was the fact that the experience was so exceptional that Disney secured my loyalty as a customer. We can’t wait to return.

Surprising and delighting your customers doesn’t have to include laser light shows or Peter Pan on a zip line. Just take a look at your customer experience, and ask your team to identify areas that could be enhanced. You’ll be surprised what your front-line folks have to say about how the experience can be improved.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Every touchpoint with your audience is an invitation to your brand experience. You set the stage for what they can expect, and if it’s appealing, they’ll agree to see what you have in store.

But when you develop a brand image before firmly establishing it within your organization, you create a potential disconnect between your internal culture and the face of your brand. When your brand promise doesn’t measure up to your audience’s expectations, you won’t just disappoint; you’ll also lose their trust and loyalty.

This misalignment is frustrating for employees, too. If they realize during onboarding that working in your organizational culture is nothing like their expectations, you’ll have dissatisfied employees, lower morale, and higher turnover rates.

Your brand experience needs consistency and reliability to win the trust and loyalty of every stakeholder. If your employees are sending mixed signals about what the brand is, current and future customers simply won’t buy in. To deliver on your brand promise at every level, you need to start from the inside out.

Turning Your Branding Inside Out

As my colleague and branding expert Mark Margolis puts it, inside-out branding is about aligning your internal culture with the way you want to be perceived so you fulfill your brand promise naturally. And when customers have faith in your brand, it will breed trust.

Disney is a great example of this. The brand is all about storytelling, and the deeper fans travel into its world, the more they become a part of the story. Unexpected experiences delight park guests, and new technologies are seamlessly incorporated into the old-fashioned storytelling foundation.

This wouldn’t be the case if every employee didn’t behave in a way that supported the storytelling experience, even in small details.

All leaders want to leave consumers with a good feeling about their brand. Here are a few ways to adopt an inside-out branding approach and faithfully deliver on your brand promise:

1. Don’t leave things to chance. Every organization establishes an accepted way of doing things over time — a culture. But many workers can’t even define their company’s culture because it hasn’t been carefully created. This is especially problematic with employees who have customer-facing roles. You need to purposefully choose the culture your organization adopts. Being intentional about what you stand for, what is in bounds and what isn’t, and how you collectively want to be defined will help drive your strategy in the right direction.
2. Include others in the discussion. Culture is a function of group interaction, and you need to approach it this way. Sitting in a room with a small group of leaders will naturally create a culture with time, but it might not be the best fit for your company. Actively involve your staff in the process so everyone agrees on a collective culture.
3. Acknowledge that your culture may need to change. Your current corporate culture might be successful today, but that doesn’t mean it will continue to serve your company as it evolves over time. Continually assess your culture, along with your brand and strategy, and be ready to adapt when it makes sense for your brand message.
4. Ask for help. Culture is a complex and intangible part of your organization, which makes it a difficult concept to grasp. It’s OK to seek experts to help create a culture that drives performance, just as you would to develop a marketing or branding strategy.

Your branding efforts are building up consumer expectations about your company; don’t let them crash and burn. Make sure your company actually embodies the qualities and values you’re claiming — inside and out. If you truly practice what you preach, consumers won’t be able to help but trust your brand.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

In middle school, I always loved presentations that started, “Webster’s Dictionary defines X as blah, blah, blah.” It felt like we heard five of those a day.

I’m well out of middle school, but based on Merriam-Webster’s selection for the 2014 Word of the Year, I feel like it’s my turn to play the dictionary reference starter card.

Merriam-Webster selected “culture” as the word of the year due to the amount of web searches for terms like “organizational culture,” “culture of transparency,” “customer culture,” and even “celebrity culture.”

One significant way in which companies differentiate themselves and the way they do things is by developing a unique culture that helps them drive performance. The challenge is that organizational culture is extremely difficult for leaders to pinpoint, define, quantify, and understand at a level that they can actually manage. It may seem like a nebulous or fluffy concept to those who are used to managing via quantifiable data — and it’s even more challenging to identify aspects of an organization’s culture that, if proactively managed, will have a tangible, positive impact on performance.

But just because I don’t understand astrophysics doesn’t mean it’s not real or that it doesn’t impact my day-to-day life. The difference between astrophysics and culture is that you have the ability to influence your organization’s culture.

How Will You Define Your Company Culture?

While Merriam-Webster’s definition is great, I prefer a more organizational catchall explanation that people can understand quickly in their own work context: the way things get done around here.

This definition helps convey the idea that culture is something that touches nearly everything that happens — or doesn’t happen — in an organization. For a better understanding of “the way things get done” in your company, ask your employees to answer these four questions, then answer them yourself.

1. To what extent can every person in the organization clearly articulate why the company exists, where the company is going, and how it’s going to get there?

The most successful organizations have employees who are committed to the company mission and have a shared vision of the future. Facebook is a great example of this: All employees are brought in on the premise that the organization aims to make the world more open and connected, which only serves to galvanize the staff.

2. What information and skills do employees need to successfully do their jobs, and what structure will best help you achieve your organizational objectives?

Top-performing organizations have employees who feel ownership over their work,provide input on organizational decisions, and are empowered to advance in the company. Google is consistently mentioned as one of the best places to work for this reason.

The overwhelming majority of Google employees feel that they have a lot of responsibility within the organization and the autonomy to carry out those responsibilities. Google also has some of the most impressive employee training and educational perks around. In fact, 94 percent of Google employees feel that they receive the necessary training and support to advance in their careers.

3. To what extent does the organizational structure allow for decisions to be made efficiently and effectively, for silos to be naturally diminished, and for people to operate in accordance with the stated values and norms of the organization?

The best organizations are clear about what they stand for, what they say “yes” and “no” to, and how well they’re able to reach consensus among themselves.

Zappos is a great example of this. All employees — and most of the world, for that matter — know the company’s core values. These values have effectively guided employees’ behavior since the company’s inception, even though they weren’t codified until many years later.

4. To what extent does the company focus on the needs of external and internal stakeholders alike, and is the organization capable of adapting quickly to respond to shifting needs and demands?

High-performing organizations are able to effectively react to the marketplace and understand what consumers want most. Apple is famous for its uncanny ability toanticipate consumers’ needs, then build products that exceed their wildest expectations. To survive, your organization must be able to anticipate, understand, and respond to changing market conditions.

The degree to which your employees are aligned in their responses to the questions above will help you gauge the state of your organizational culture. Their answers will also provide a good road map for how you can improve.

What meaningful steps will you take to define your own company culture? What will your company do to ensure that your culture makes an impact for years to come?

This article originally appeared on Forbes

[starbox id=”Dustin Schneider,Chris Cancialosi”]

Guest Article Written by Dr. Tracy Brower

We talk a lot about balance. Work-life balance, balancing our time, balancing our commitments, and balancing our priorities. But what if we have it all wrong, and the paradigm of balance has actually been getting in our way?

Why Balance Doesn’t Work

Balance connotes a zero-sum game. In a world of balance, there is never enough to go around and the balancing game is precarious. We’re making trade-offs between work, family, community, hobbies, sleep, and ourselves.

In the balance paradigm, work and life are separated. But when you really think about it, work is a part of a full life and all work is intrinsically valuable. People choose to work. The Lottery Study (Paulsen, 2008) proves it: In a longitudinal study starting in 1995 and spanning 7 countries, a vast majority (93% – 59% depending on the country, gender, or year of the study) of people say that if they won the lottery, they would still work. They would contribute somehow. They would express their talents. They would do something that matters to the broader community.

Abundance is an Alternative

An alternative way to think about work-life is through the lens of abundance. When we think differently, we open the door to new possibilities, creative solutions, more meaning, and work-life fulfillment.

In a culture of abundance, there is enough to go around. There is plenty of time, choice, challenge, opportunity, meaning, and engagement. You can feel a culture of abundance. People are energized. People are connecting. People are learning. People are doing their best work. And people are fulfilled in both their work and the rest of their lives.

Sounds like nirvana, right? So, how do we begin to create an organizational culture of abundance?

Creating a Culture of Abundance

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today, and the same is true for planting seeds toward a culture of abundance. While nothing it as easy as ‘5 simple steps’, here are the 5 starting points to plant the seeds.

1. Make Work Matter

We want to build cathedrals, not just lay bricks. In fact, multiple studies across generations, professions, and cultures have shown that people will trade off salary for a job that has meaning. We want to be part of something bigger. We want our work to matter. And specifically, we want our work to matter to the community around us. An example of this was that my friends boss gave a newer employee the fantastic responsibility of finding the office a new business energy provider, all done without pressure and did it to help build a community. He did a great job and found the company some wonderful savings through a website similar to Usave.

How do you make work matter? Leaders can articulate a vision and be clear about how team members’ work contributes to the bigger picture and to others. Individuals can clarify what they love and what they’re good at and seek roles that are aligned with their own core passions.

2. Make Relationships Matter

We are wired for belonging. In fact, when we have positive social experiences, we receive a hit of the brain chemical oxytocin, and we feel the happiness in the pleasure center of our brain. This makes us seek out positive social relationships. In addition, having at least one good friend at work is the number one thing that makes us stay at a job.

We are social creatures and work is fundamentally social. In the work environment, leaders can encourage positive relationships between team members, and individuals can reach out actively and support teammates. Creating relationships through social time, and through working together on tasks all contribute to an environment in which our social selves thrive.

3. Make Each Moment Matter

In our always-on world where distractions and multitasking are the norms, focus is a gift. The Chinese have a concept of ‘listening with a virtuous heart’ whose symbol has elements of the ear, the eyes, the heart, you, me, and undivided attention. When we give someone the gift of our attention, we contribute to an abundant culture where people feel heard and feel like they matter.

One study (Rath & Harter, 2014) found that the most engaged employees were those who had a leader who paid attention to them and focused on their strengths. The less engaged group had bosses who criticized them. The least engaged team members were the ones who were ignored by their leaders or their co-workers. The lessons: listen, share, offer support and respect.

4. Make Choices Matter

A culture of fulfillment and abundance is also characterized by choice. When leaders and organizational practices allow people – as much as possible – to have a say in where they work, when they work, with whom they work, on what they work, and how they work – employees tend to be more engaged. This new level of choice is predicated on performance, and with more choice comes accountability, for sure.

Leaders can provide flexibility for employees, trust them to do a good job, and hold them accountable. Employees can recommend ideas for flexibility and perform brilliantly within the framework of those increased choices.

5. Keep Growing

A sense of fulfillment also comes from new opportunities. When we’re curious, interested, and challenged, we tend to feel more fulfilled. There’s a spillover effect as well. Research demonstrates that when we have a sense of doing something meaningful outside of work, we tend to have a greater sense of meaning within the boundaries of work as well.

Leaders can offer options for development and ever-increasing challenge in the tasks they assign. Individuals can think broadly about what energizes them – within the work environment and outside of it.

Planting Trees

Rather than the limits of work-life balance, work-life abundance is a paradigm that leads toward more engagement, more energy, and a more fulfilling organizational culture. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today. Let’s begin!

Written by Tracy Brower

Dr. Tracy Brower is the author of Bring Work to Life by Bringing Life to Work: A Guide for Leaders and Organizations which provides new perspectives on work-life balance and how to create abundance and fulfillment in work-life. Find out more about Tracy at www.tracybrower.com, or connect with her on Twitter: @tracybrower108.