BCAT Tool Aims to Address Brand-Culture Alignment

Ironically, a tool to help CEOs and other organizational leaders create an aligned organization came out of the practical process of getting technology teams to work together. As Al Cini, creator and CEO of the Brand and Culture Alignment Toolkit (BCAT), recalls, a dozen years of putting together teams to implement specific technology projects taught him that in almost all cases failure resulted not from technology but from people dysfunction. 

 

Many of the projects, he explains, involved people who would “almost rather be dead than advance the goals of the project…What made the difference was when people wanted to make it happen. As soon as people want to do the work, you don’t have to track their progress. It’s amazing the things people can do when they want to do it. And when they don’t want to do it, the best project tracking technology won’t help.” 

 

Cini “productized” the collective wisdom of those years of experience to create the BCAT survey platform and process to manage the alignment-building process he says he used successfully for years in broadcasting. BCAT is designed for almost any type of organization, large or small, including consultants and other channel partners seeking to bring a brand alignment process and toolkit to their clients. 

 

Cini says the BCAT alignment-building process can be used at the macro level to help an organization redefine its brand, or at the tactical level to engage a team to execute on any type of plan. It uses a consensus-building process based on helping the team visualize the organization or team as a single person or persona, “doing its best work on its best day to keep all of its promises and achieve all of its goals.” 

 

BCAT starts with an online survey taken by the team’s leaders and stakeholders to capture and analyze everyone’s perception of their shared brand and culture. BCAT then plots these survey responses graphically on a “Standard Model.” The next step, generally just one to two hours, includes a review and discussion of the results to arrive at the team’s Consensus Role Target: a “profile of their signature brand identity and an inventory of their culture’s shared values.” The final step, a half-day workshop, focuses on Personal Alignment Plans that “inspire and guide all participants to self-align and self-improve to better serve their team’s mission.” 

 

Cini says BCAT can be used for any organization or purpose to define brand or ideal persona against which all participants focus on common priorities while contributing their own unique strengths, or can be used to design any kind of performance-improvement effort “in a highly conclusive way.” Clients include organizations seeking to define or redefine their brands, as well as any type of department, team, or creative agency with a key new product or project, and those customers range in size to tiny to huge, covering every for-profit and not-for-profit industry.  “Our job is to help organizations or teams paint a picture of a common target,” Cini explains, “so that when everyone comes to work, they are focused on the same ideals with the desire to be the best they can be.” 

 

The company has developed a kit with a pricing model for consultants to bring to their clients, along with a certification and training program. 

 

For More Information:

getbcat.com – Brand and Culture Alignment Toolkit (BCAT) website.

getbcat.com/bcatv2 - a two-minute video overview of the BCAT process.

 

Contact: 

Al Cini

alcini@getbcat.com

(855) 999-BCAT (2228)