01
Strategic Coherence
- A clear why
- Sharp positioning
- Explicit trade-offs
- A 3–5 year ambition
A diagnostic framework
Your growth problem is probably not a marketing problem.
Where do your strategy, brand and organisation need to work better together?
The Brand–Culture Engine is a diagnostic framework I developed from twenty years in marketing and management, to explore the connections between your business direction, your market promise and the way your organisation works. Start with the self-assessment. Use the result to reflect on your business, compare perspectives with your team or begin a conversation with me.
- Since 2006at the intersection of brand, marketing, culture and leadership
- Executive MBAWU Executive Academy, Vienna
- 12 sectorsfrom electrical distribution to private healthcare
Why a fraction and not a checklist
Most diagnostics add points. This one multiplies and divides, because that is how organisations actually behave. A sharp strategy and a brilliant market position get divided by silos, conflicting KPIs, unclear decision rights and a leadership team that is not saying the same thing.
That is also why friction is squared in the model. A company that is excellent on every other force but heavily blocked inside still loses close to a third of its score — friction cuts deep without cancelling everything else.
Friction is the hidden killer. It rarely appears in a strategy document, it never appears in a marketing plan, and it quietly consumes the returns on both.
Which is why, in most growth-stage companies, the highest-leverage move is not a campaign. It is alignment, friction reduction, and execution discipline. Marketing amplifies afterwards — and amplifying a misaligned company only makes the misalignment travel faster.
The five variables
What gets measured
Laid out the way the model calculates them: three forces on top, friction underneath the line — squared — and one that multiplies the result.
02
Cultural Alignment
- Leadership behaviour matches the positioning
- Decision-making supports the strategy
- Incentives reinforce the brand promise
- Talent profile fits the archetype
03
Market Relevance
- A real customer pain is solved
- A clear value proposition
- The experience matches the promise
04
Organisational Friction²
The denominator, squared. The only variable that makes everything else worth less — and it counts twice.
- Silos
- Conflicting KPIs
- Unclear roles
- Slow decision-making
- Leadership misalignment
05
Execution Discipline
- KPIs
- Cadence
- Feedback loops
- Consistency
- Learning cycles
Multiplies whatever is left
What your result means
A model, a questionnaire — and a starting point
The model
How I think about performance
The equation above is the Brand–Culture–Performance model: three forces multiply, friction divides — squared, so it weighs as much as two variables — and execution discipline multiplies whatever is left. It is a way of structuring a diagnosis — of asking the right questions in the right order — not a measurement instrument and not a law of performance.
The self-assessment
What the 15 questions give you
Your answers are scored on each of the five areas and combined, using the model, into an index out of 100 and a company pattern. It is an indicative self-assessment based on your answers. It does not independently measure company performance or replace research, a full diagnostic or professional judgement.
The four minutes are a starting point: first for a conversation with your management team, then with me — to look at your specific context, choose the approach that fits and unblock the growth path.
The team assessment
The score tells you where you are. The disagreement tells you why.
When eight people from the same management team answer the same questions, the average is the least interesting output. The spread is where the money is.
A high average with a wide spread is the most common and most expensive pattern in growth-stage companies: a team that agrees on the words and disagrees on the reality. Everyone signs off on “solutions partner”. Nobody has the same picture of what that means on a Tuesday.
Answers are anonymous. That is not a legal footnote — it is the condition under which people tell you something you did not already know.
The online diagnostic gives you one reading: yours. The team assessment puts every reading side by side, and I run it with you. Ask about a team assessment.
Illustrative — divergence on one variable
How it runs
Start with step one →-
STEP ONE
You take the diagnostic
Fifteen behavioural questions about what actually happens in your company, not self-ratings. About four minutes, on a phone if that is easier. No email needed to see your result.
-
STEP TWO
You see your result
Your index out of 100, the five variables scored, your company’s archetype, and the three moves with the highest leverage for a company shaped like yours. Yours to keep.
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STEP THREE
Bring the team perspectives into the conversation
People in the same organisation can experience the same strategy very differently. A facilitated team assessment helps us examine those differences, understand the situations behind them and decide what needs attention. Before starting, we agree how responses will be collected, reported and discussed.
Discuss a team assessment →
How I use it in consulting
One tool within a broader approach
The Brand–Culture Engine is one tool within my broader approach.
Depending on the brief, I combine it with interviews, customer or employee research, market analysis and working sessions. The next step may involve positioning, marketing, employer branding, management development or a specific implementation issue.
We choose the work based on what we find.
Explore my consulting services →Applied — national electrical distribution, 25+ years in market
A strong market position, held back by everything underneath it
A distributor moving toward a solutions and service model. Real technical depth, real market demand, own brands with genuine margin potential — and growth that kept arriving harder than it should have.
At diagnosisAfter
Modelled index · out of 100
57→97
The five scores on the left, run through the same model and 0–100 scale as the self-assessment · a modelled projection, not a measured outcome
Market Relevance never moved. It was already the strongest variable in the business. Everything in that jump came from identity clarity, sales behaviour, operational simplification and leadership cadence.
Marketing was never the growth lever here. It was the amplifier waiting for something worth amplifying.
What the diagnosis actually changed
Identity
An explicit decision to stop describing the company as a distributor. A portfolio and a set of priorities that reflected it, and the discipline to kill the initiatives that did not.
Incentives
The brand claimed “solutions partner” while the commission plan rewarded transactional volume. Culture follows the incentive, not the claim.
Friction
Clear segment ownership, defined sales stages, escalation rules, and an answer to the question nobody had written down: who approves what.
Cadence
A monthly strategic dashboard, segment-level visibility, a KPI cascade by function, and one named owner per initiative.
“It was the starting point for rethinking how we organise our work, collaborate and lead our teams.”Commercial Director, at the close of a four-month leadership programme
The consultant
A model is only as good as the person in the room when the results land
I am Georgiana Iancu. Since 2006 I have worked at the intersection of brand, marketing, organisational culture and leadership — the four things this model refuses to treat separately.
I spent a decade inside a multicultural technology company, the last five years of it leading communications: three-to-five-year communication strategy, employer branding, a management communications framework, and budgets between €70k and €450k. I ran the communication through the company's acquisition by a German group listed in Frankfurt — which is where I learned what a strategy document is worth when the organisation underneath it has not caught up.
Since 2020 I have worked in independent practice — six years now — through InkingBrands and Brandocracy, with Romanian entrepreneurial companies in growth, repositioning or transformation. The work sits with owners, CEOs and management teams, and in the same week with the sales, HR, marketing and operations people who have to make the decision real.
My method is warm in the room and direct in the diagnosis. I ask uncomfortable questions gently, and I do not leave a session without decisions, owners and dates.
- Executive MBAWU Executive Academy, Vienna University of Economics and Business
- Strategic Governance & Board LeadershipColumbia Business School with UBB FSEGA
- Leading and Managing InnovationUNC Kenan-Flagler Business School with UBB FSEGA
- Best Brand Building Consultancy, RomaniaManagement Consulting Awards 2023, with the Brandocracy team
Twelve sectors I have worked in
- National electrical distribution
- Industrial services
- Manufacturing
- Agribusiness
- Industrial packaging solutions
- Landscaping and green space construction
- Premium hospitality
- Private healthcare, multi-site
- Business travel and MICE
- Food ingredients distribution
- Tertiary education and executive programmes
- AI technology, global market
What the people in the room say afterwards
I do not think I could have found a more suitable person with whom to analyse my work, challenges and development as a manager. With patience, consistency and clear procedures, I believe I can move from being the firefighter to becoming the fire brigade commander — building a system that solves problems instead of putting out every fire myself.
national electrical distribution · after a one-to-one advisory session
This leadership programme meant much more than a course or a series of workshops. It was the starting point for rethinking how we organise our work, collaborate and lead our teams — laying the foundations for a more structured, coherent and performance-oriented approach.
national electrical distribution · at the close of a four-month programme
The most hands-on workshop, with the clearest direction, that we have had since we started working together. I appreciated that we stayed focused, that you gave us concrete feedback and that the guidance was clear.
travel · after a practical management workshop
Testimonials translated from Romanian and shortened for length. Client names withheld by choice; original messages and attribution available on request.
Find out what is really holding your growth back
Four minutes, fifteen questions, and a result you keep whether or not we ever work together.
- 15 questions
- About 4 minutes
- No email required
Take the 4-minute diagnostic
Want your whole management team assessed? Get in touch
Contact
Want to know more before you start?
Questions about the method, the diagnostic, or running the assessment with your whole management team — leave your details and I will reply personally.
- How the model applies to a company like yours
- What a team assessment involves
- Whether it is the right moment to run one