One of the concepts that is promoted at work is the idea that change must provide a return on investment. There must be an actual, measurable result that has, as a benefit, a monetary savings. I'm deep into this culture; I'm working on my Six Sigma Green Belt. I can see that the rationale is, well, rational. Don't just make change for sake of making change. At the last place I worked, they did that and we called it churn. In 18 months, I had four different managers, belonged to two different division (without changing my job), had five different directors, and three different VPs. Each time one of these changes happened, we had to go through the whole introduction, analysis, and goal setting for my work. My work didn't really change, but I had to spend an inordinate amount of time educating new bosses as to what I did and why it was worthwhile for the company to let me keep doing it.
So, the focus on evaluating processes before deciding to change them, then measuring the processes to discover where the problem actually is, and fixing that instead of flailing about changing every thing on the fly, seems good to me. But, given that, what's the problem they're trying to solve with our buy into the brand day?
How much is it costing to design and deliver this day of wooing the employee? What is supposed to happen at the end of the day? Am I supposed to fall in love with the corporation? Is this religion? A corporation is an ethereal thing, like a god or demon. Since it has no consciousness of its own, what can I fall in love with? But, people are patriotic, which is kind of like being in love with your country. A country, like a corporation, is non-corporeal. I mean they both have physical manifestations, but they aren't sentient beings, they aren't aware; they are collections of people who have come together.
So, maybe the idea is to create an agreement, a sense of connectedness, like people from the same country feel some link to everyone else who calls themselves by the same national or cultural name. When news talks about travellers, I look to see if any are my countrymen. The chances of me knowing them personally are shatteringly slim, but, I will feel more concern about a fellow countryman in danger than just another human tragedy.
Is my company trying to become a country?