In the sterile corridors of business firms, a curious form of therapy is taking place. Scott Kellum, Design Officer at Ishmael Interactive, has spent two decades conducting what he calls "talk therapy for business"—the process of brand discovery that strips away superficial desires to reveal deeper truths about organizational identity.
The malady is widespread. Companies routinely confuse rebranding with genuine transformation, swapping logos and letterheads whilst leaving their fundamental operations unchanged. Consider the federal office that morphed from "Enterprise Information" to "Mission Support"—a textbook case of cosmetic surgery masquerading as organizational renewal. When pressed about what, practically, changes would actually take place in the organization, officials could only point to their new vocabulary.
This affliction extends far beyond government bureaucracy. MSNBC's recent transformation into "My Source News" exemplifies what Scott terms the "words are different" approach—a rebrand that changes everything except what matters most.
Proper brand development, Scott argues, mirrors the Shaker philosophy: purposeful simplicity achieved through rigorous intentionality rather than mere reduction. Like the religious sect's functional furniture, effective branding emerges only after discovering an organisation's essential purpose. This requires persistent interrogation: Why rebrand? What unique client experiences define you? Where do you envision yourself in a decade?
The late Steve Jobs understood this instinctively. Rather than bombarding consumers with technical specifications—megahertz ratings that meant nothing to ordinary users—Apple focused obsessively on tangible experiences: exceptional trackpads, brilliant screens, intuitive interfaces. The brand became the promise that every interaction would delight.
In an age of corporate shapeshifting, such discipline feels revolutionary. Yet as Scott's practice demonstrates, the most profound transformations often begin with the simplest question: what are you actually trying to accomplish?
Practice Makes Progress (free PDF download):
🔍 After talking to Scott, we created a free Organizational Purpose Assessment because most teams are building on quicksand. They've never actually figured out what they do or why anyone should care.
⚡ The brutal truth: if you can't explain your organization's value without buzzwords like "synergy," your branding isn't the problem—your clarity is.
🎯 This free assessment cuts through the fluff with 8 questions designed to expose the gaps between what you think you do and what you actually deliver.
📋 The real test: can your entire team answer these questions the same way? If not, you're not ready for a rebrand—you need internal alignment first.
🫠 💬📥 Subscribe and get this free download sent your way.
What we’re into this week
Speaking of knowing yourself, HBR published Your Company Needs to Focus on Fewer Projects. Here’s How, a sentiment we couldn’t agree with more, but persists in eluding even the best companies. Why is it so hard to focus? Because usually, organizations don’t know what they want to accomplish.
Sometimes, of course, there is one person who knows what they want to accomplish. The problem is that they’re in the corner office, and they’re out for themselves. When a company (or a government, for that matter) runs because of a single man, is that good for shareholders and employees? The answer, roundly, is no. From the Economist: The Elon Musk theory of pay.
And, if after hearing Scott out, satisfying yourself you’re a focused company and that you’re not led by a megamanic, you’re thinking “Ah well, we’re a data-driven company, so no need for the navel-gazing of brand self-reflection here; we have evidence!” take a look at Sangeet Paul Choudary’s latest article, The 'data moats' fallacy, wherein you mistake the simple presence of data for its utility, when its utility is meaningless without a navigable, flexible data architecture.
Climb on the couch, friends: there’s no substitute for a self-reflective, focused org that’s led with humility and applies all three of those attributes to tending its data.
Like proper branding, effective research requires therapy—not cosmetic changes, but deep discovery of what people actually need.
We reduced a major federal agency's digital footprint by 37% while maintaining service levels and earning perfect audit scores. The HCD Discovery Guides distills those lessons from agencies managing disability claims to student loans—contexts where failure means real hardship.
Learn to recruit people who give honest feedback and translate findings into recommendations that survive organizational politics. These aren't academic theories; they're survival tactics from the trenches of public service.
Credits
Interviewer: Aaron MeyersGuest: Scott KellumProducer: Ana MonroeArticle: Abigail AdamsArtwork: Tennis Tournament 1920 George Bellows Painter, American, 1882 - 1925 via the National Gallery of Art
