Latest news with #KeenDecisionSystems
Forbes
a day ago
- Business
- Forbes
Beyond Perks—Why Conscious Culture Is A Scalable Business Strategy
Greg Dolan, CEO, Keen Decision Systems. In today's startup landscape, culture often gets reduced to surface-level perks: remote work options, wellness stipends and quarterly offsites. While those things have their place, they're not culture. They're benefits. And when the pressure's on, those perks won't protect your company from internal dysfunction or a surge of people leaving for greener pastures. When everyone is offering the same thing, how can you differentiate yourself? We believe real culture isn't what happens on the surface. Rather, it's the system under the surface. It's the logic, behaviors, rituals and decisions that persist, especially when things get hard. Culture is how your company responds to tension, change, conflict and opportunity. And it's either intentional or accidental. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, did your team band together and rally around a set of shared values or did your organization splinter and grow apart? Most companies don't consciously design culture. They inherit it, or worse, they drift into it. When we founded Keen in 2010, we decided that culture would not be an afterthought. Instead, it would be the operating system, informing everything we do. Smart organizations make culture a bedrock principle from the start. We codified our values from day one and tied them to how we hire, promote, give feedback and reward. In addition, we implemented a four-day workweek before it was cool. The goal was not to be trendy, but because we believe performance and rest are partners, not opposites. Startups are notoriously tough on people, so by valuing your employees, you can ensure that they're able to thrive while also building a strong organization. Additionally, we built a performance development system rooted in coaching, feedback and quarterly OKRs, instead of annual reviews that no one uses and where feedback is unclear. We separated accountability from fear, clarity from micromanagement and growth from burnout. We didn't add culture. We architected it and we're better as an organization because of it. The lie corporate America has told for too long is that culture is soft. Or secondary. Or HR's job. But we believe that culture is strategy, infrastructure and compounding value. If you want to build something that lasts, culture has to scale with your business model. You can't scale trust, performance and autonomy if your systems are still managing appearances instead of outcomes. As a result of our culture focus, we've experienced faster onboarding because people know who we are. Additionally, there's a greater alignment among teams because decisions are values-aligned and we've experienced lower churn because the workplace actually works for people. We've also created more resilient teams because they've been built in truth, not theater. In a world where startups are pressured to grow at all costs, the companies that build with intention and humanity on a strong cultural spine will likely outperform in the long term. They'll also attract the best people, retain their customers and scale sustainably. By putting culture at the forefront, you can create an organization that people want to work for. Beyond that, by practicing a culture rooted in self-awareness, trust and individual accountability, people can thrive both personally and professionally. Founders have an unfair advantage. You don't have 100 years of dysfunction to undo. You can design your operating system from day one. The question is: will you? Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Forbes
16-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Navigating Tariffs: How Brands Can Approach Budgets Wisely
Greg Dolan, CEO, Keen Decision Systems. The swirling headlines about tariffs are the new reality for brands. With concerns about costs rising and margins shrinking, the potential for budget cuts is looming on the horizon. As chief financial officers take a closer look at media spend and sales teams are asking for pricing relief, marketers are facing tremendous pressure. Instead of aimlessly guessing how to plan their budgets for the year ahead, marketing teams can use data to guide their decision-making. Below, we'll explore how brands can properly prepare themselves for potential tariffs and how they can retain their budgets through the uncertainty. You first need to understand how tariffs are likely to impact your brand's product category. Tariffs won't hit all categories equally, so you need to know where you stand and how far you can push your budget. For instance, demand for staple goods, like toilet paper and toothpaste, likely won't fall off the cliff, but pricing wars and brand differentiation could intensify. Instead of splurging for name-brand products, some consumers might opt for private labels or cheaper alternatives to offset price increases. On the other hand, discretionary goods like snacks, soft drinks and premium items may take a hit as cautious consumers pull back. A March survey by CivicScience found that if tariff-driven prices impact their favorite brands, many consumers will be less likely to continue purchasing them as normal. In fact, 23% of respondents said they'd buy from their favorite brand less often, and 44% said they'd choose a more affordable option altogether. Additionally, they reported being less likely to make big-ticket purchases, which could threaten the bottom line of premium brands. By understanding where your brand stands and how it could be impacted, you can then identify your brand's best path forward to maintain a steady customer pipeline. While it might be tempting to pull back on brand investments or go heavy on promotions, it's important to realize you shouldn't sacrifice your brand's future to survive the quarter. In my view, deep discounts now may train consumers to wait for deals later, which could potentially harm long-term gains for short-term profits. Additionally, cutting ad spend today can put brands at risk for becoming invisible in the future. Brand loyalty is already on the decline, with 63% of brands believing customers are less brand-loyal than five years ago, according to a Bloomreach and Emarketer survey of 154 marketing professionals (registration required for full report). So, cutting your budget during a time of shifting loyalty risks losing relevance with your existing customer base. Once trust and perception erode, it's extremely difficult to rebuild. To make more informed decisions about ad and marketing budgets, brands can use data to see how changes in spending could impact the brand. One tool many companies use is marketing mix modeling. (Full disclosure: My company provides this type of tool, as do many others.) For example, if a snack brand that imports certain ingredients from a region subject to higher tariffs is looking to offset rising costs, it could model the short- and long-term impacts to its bottom line to help identify the best path forward. Brands can use these models to simulate a range of tariff-driven scenarios, like adjusting pricing and demand elasticity over a 6-, 12- or 36-month period. By looking at these scenarios beforehand, marketers can react to tariffs with clarity, not just a gut instinct. However, it's important that leaders thinking of investing in a marketing mix modeling tool find the right one for their business. Consider factors such as cost, adaptability and the timeliness of the insights it can provide. Some tools can be expensive, lack flexibility and offer outdated reports, which could limit their usefulness for reacting quickly to any tariff changes. Ask about capabilities such as real-time reporting and using historical data for forecasting, as these can provide marketing teams with timely insights. If you're considering a tool that uses AI and machine learning, keep in mind that you will need as much of your brand's own time-series data as possible to maximize the tool's effectiveness. This can help teams create the most relevant marketing plan and allow for a more seamless process. If your brand lacks this dataset, consider whether the tools you're exploring are capable of leveraging previous analyses from similar companies, price elasticity studies and multi-touch attribution to create as accurate a plan as possible. Changing tariffs represent a new landscape for marketers. While supply chain issues have become more common in recent years, this current moment isn't business as usual. We're in a period of high-stakes decision-making. By understanding how tariffs could impact different categories, approaching ad budgets strategically and evaluating potential scenarios in advance, brands can successfully steer themselves through the uncertainty. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
