Rafael Posada

Brand is the story an organization tells the world. Culture is whether people experience that story as true.

Writing about brand, culture, trust & AI. ☕️

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Challenges are the best opportunities to learn and grow, so hope to share this four step process I created to address challenge:

The DARTing process:
🎯Define a problem
🎯Assess potential solutions
🎯Reflect on how you will measure success
🎯Try one and focus on learning

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Brand partnership test:

If you remove both logos from the announcement, can you still explain why these two companies belong together?

If not, you might have sponsorship.

Not strategy. 😅

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

One thing I’ve learned about partnerships:

The logo on the announcement matters much less than what happens six months later.

A partnership isn’t:

🤝 + LinkedIn post + logos

It’s whether two organizations can actually create something neither could create alone.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

The interesting thing about employer branding:

You have a marketing department telling people what working there is like.

And hundreds of employees with LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Reddit and group chats telling them what it’s actually like.

Good luck winning that info asymmetry.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

@techreview found toxic culture was 10x more predictive of attrition than compensation during the Great Resignation.

Which makes “people leave for better salaries” a very convenient explanation.

Sometimes they leave because working there sucks.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

I love beautifully written company values.

“Be bold.”
“Think differently.”
“Speak up.”

Then someone disagrees with the CEO in a meeting and suddenly we’re conducting a live experiment.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Your brand is making promises your culture eventually has to keep.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Only 20% of U.S. employees strongly feel connected to their company’s culture, according to @Gallup

We’ve somehow built organizations with:

mission statements
values
Slack emojis
culture decks

…and 8/10 people still aren’t feeling it.

culture isn’t a communications problem.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Companies spend millions deciding what their brand should say.

Meanwhile, their employees are deciding what their brand actually means.

Marketing can shape perception.

Culture eventually reveals reality.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Partnerships aren’t just distribution.

Every organization you choose to associate with tells people something about who you are.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

I’ve become increasingly interested in the gap between the story a company tells externally and the experience its people have internally.

Eventually, one exposes the other.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Trust travels through relationships.

Which means partnerships don’t just borrow reach.

They can borrow credibility.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer found something fascinating:

People who trust certain influencers can become willing to reconsider companies they previously distrusted when those companies are vouched for by those trusted voices.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Your employer brand is what employees say when marketing isn’t in the room.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

I didn’t choose the virtual coffee life. The virtual coffee life chose me. ☕️

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

Cultural debt accumulates when technology changes the way work gets done faster than an organization renegotiates its shared expectations about authorship, effort, disclosure, accountability, and value.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

AI is changing the unwritten rules of work faster than organizations are making those rules explicit.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

@KPMG_Canada shares that 80% of AI users say it helps them thrive at work, while 43% of employees feel overwhelmed by the pace of technological change.

What is that tell us in the way we should think about building our culture around its adoption?

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

56% of leaders design AI implementations for business outcomes without accounting for human outcomes.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

@DriveTeslaca @Tesla Selling my grey RWD 2024 model 3 with under 13k, travel a lot so don’t use it as much anymore. If anyone is interested in Vancouver, send me DM.

[Rafael Posada @posadar11]

We don’t build trust by offering help, we build trust by asking for it. - Simon Sinek