When Your Brand Says “People-First” but Your Culture Says Differently

Steve Saah's June 30, 2025, article in CPA Practice Advisor itemized a list of boss moves CPA firms can make when preparing for the future. Yes, technology was mentioned—but the main focus of the article was about alignment.

I was so impressed to see another practitioner highlight the importance of ensuring that team development, hiring and internal pipelines, external brand, and human-centric tech are all headed in the same direction.

Employees Are Listening

Because I come from a marketing + coaching standpoint, these typically siloed arenas (tech + people strategy + brand) are very obviously connected. And here's what I see: the cognitive dissonance that employees live with when external brand stands for "X" and the daily internal reality is "Y" is a material risk to any firm's future.

In my experience, employees see and know more than you think. Leaders may dismiss messaging, positioning statements, logos, slogans, and the like as "just marketing." But guess who is also listening? Your employees! If there’s no clear link between what’s happening internally and what’s being said externally, that disconnect creates a host of problems.

When Brand and Internal Tech Stack Disagree

For example, here are some things people are probably thinking when there’s misalignment between brand and internal technology investment:

“We’re expected to deliver world-class service, but our CRM doesn’t even let us easily lookup publicly available information on our clients."

“We’re telling the world we’re innovative, but we’re using eleven-year-old software.”

“We’re promising white-glove service, but I can’t even find the right customer file without memorizing our file tree, logging into two different systems, and sometimes making a phone call to IT.”

IMPORTANT: This is NOT IT's Fault!

This is in no way a dig at those crucial people responsible for technical support and development. I know that IT departments are working with limited budget and executive directives like any other team. They usually have too many things to do, their work is often thankless, and they execute based on leadership’s priorities. So really, this is a leadership issue.

How is leadership directing IT investment?

The Real Risk is Disengagement

In my view, leadership teams need to own the fact that:

1. If you say one thing to the world (brand and messaging),

2. But the internal reality is in conflict with that (lack of adequate tech resources)

= You risk employee disengagement.

And we all know how mission-critical employee engagement is. It's easy to lose, hard to regain and maintain, and how seriously it affects performance, output, profitability, and retention.

Is that a risk worth taking?

When Brand and People Strategy Disagree

Now consider when people strategy and brand are misaligned. Your external brand might claim to be people-centric in your client service philosophy. But if there’s underinvestment in performance evaluation, learning and development, mentoring, and career paths, you leave the door wide open to cynicism and—again—employee disengagement.

Here are some things people might be thinking on the daily:

“I don't understand how we can say we’re a ‘people-first’ company when we don’t even offer a training budget.”

“We’re expected to go above and beyond, but there’s zero investment in helping us advance our technical and EQ skills besides giving us annual performance evaluations.”

“They’re always preaching excellence and talk about mentorship being available, but the reality is it’s ‘sink or swim.’”

“Why bother trying harder when there’s no recognition or plan to help me advance? My manager only tells me what I'm doing wrong, and I listen. But I want to know what will really help me grow.”

Sorry; I Don't Have an Action Plan For You, But...

I wish I had a crystal-clear solution. My gut tells me every organization can try a few standard things to find better alignment (listening sessions, tech roadmaps, cross-functional project teams, using marketing strategically rather than tactically). At the same time, it's obvious that every firm will need a different mix to mitigate the risk of dissonance between internal and external messaging.

One thing I do feel strongly about: in the ongoing war for talent, top performers are looking for the best places to work, the richest employee experience, the most engaged colleagues, and the most strategic leaders to work for. Future leaders—especially succession hires—are looking to learn from gifted leaders who get it, who walk the walk, and who take real action to be self-aware.

Cultures are self-replicating. Ingrained norms will persist unless intentionally shifted. And leaders have their hands full figuring out how to “future-proof” (if that’s even possible) any organization, especially a professional services firm.

Yeah, I just listed a bunch of stuff students of leadership theory already know.

But the real questions are:

What kind of leader do you want to work for?

What kind of leader do YOU want to be?

#InsideOutBranding #LeadershipMatters