The Gap Between Your Brand Promise and Reality

Your brand makes promises in every ad.

Your employees keep those promises in every interaction. Or they don't. The difference isn't training or talent. It's whether they have the authority to make judgment calls when customers need help. "I need to check with my manager" doesn't mean the employee doesn't know what to do. It means they're not allowed to do it.

And customers experience that gap at every touchpoint.

The Authority Paradox

Companies approach branding backward.

They invest millions crafting the perfect message. They hire agencies for compelling campaigns. They build elaborate brand guidelines.

Then they send these beautiful promises into the world through employees who lack the power to deliver them.

This gap has a name: The Empowerment Deficit.

It's the distance between the authority employees need to deliver on brand promises and the authority they actually have. It's where brands go to die.

When employees can't make decisions, they can't be brand ambassadors. They become brand apologists instead.

The root cause is trust, not training.

The Mathematics of Broken Promises

Customer satisfaction measures how expectations match reality. It looks at what people hope for versus what they get.

The formula: Satisfaction = Performance - Expectations

The stronger your brand, the more you raise expectations. And the more authority your employees need to maintain satisfaction.

If expectations rise through marketing but performance stays flat due to restrictive policies, you guarantee dissatisfaction.

A budget airline can enforce rigid fees without destroying satisfaction because expectations are low.

A premium brand claiming, "We care about you," but enforcing a strict policy leads to strong disappointment.

The Empowerment Deficit caps your brand experience at your most restrictive policy level. Your marketing faces no such cap.

The gap widens until it breaks.

What You're Really Signaling

Every policy is a message.

Granting authority signals trust. Stripping it signals the opposite.

When you require manager approval for minor decisions, you signal distrust. When you force script adherence, you signal distrust. When you create permission loops, you signal distrust.

When employees feel untrusted, they respond in kind. They withhold the discretionary effort that makes brands special.

They do exactly what's required to avoid getting fired. Nothing more.

After many tries to help, employees face blocks. They start to develop Learned Helplessness. Their brain adapts to powerlessness. They stop looking for solutions.

Even if you relax the rules later, employees with Learned Helplessness might not use the new authority. They no longer believe in their own agency.

This is why "empowerment initiatives" fail. They overlook the lasting impacts of past disempowerment.

Case Study: The Diseased Orchard

From 2002 to 2016, Wells Fargo workers opened 3.5 million unauthorized accounts. No permission. No customer consent.

The system stripped authority while demanding impossible results. Fraud became the predictable outcome.

The Impossible Goal

After Wells Fargo's 1998 merger with Norwest, leadership rejected traditional banking. Branches became "stores." Banking became retail.

From this philosophy came "Going for Gr-Eight"—a strategy to sell every customer eight financial products.

By 2014, Wells Fargo claimed they'd reached 4.6 products and were pushing toward 6. They touted this to Wall Street as proof of a superior business model. But the demand for eight products didn't exist.

To bridge the gap between customer need (2-3) and corporate demand (8), the workforce had to manufacture it.

Every morning, huddles laid out daily quotas. Some as high as 20 products per day.

Miss Tuesday's target? The deficit was added on to Wednesday. By Friday, it became clear that the targets were mathematically unachievable through legitimate means.

The bank fired 1,000 employees yearly for sales violations. This created constant churn. It terrified survivors into compliance.

The stress was acute. Employees reported vomiting before shifts. Hair loss. Migraines.

One Wisconsin banker, Angie Payden, drank hand sanitizer to numb panic attacks. She was being forced to exploit customers while being told she was a "helper."

"It was the lowest point of my life," she said.

The Mechanics of Fraud

Faced with poverty or fraud, employees developed gaming techniques.

• Simulated Funding: Open unauthorized accounts. Transfer money from legitimate accounts to "fund" them. This triggered overdraft fees. It bounced rent checks.

• Pinning: Issue unauthorized debit cards. Assign PINs. Enroll customers in online banking with fake emails. This boosted digital metrics.

• Bundling: Tell customers products came in required packages. "To qualify, you need this account." A lie. But customers couldn't verify.

These weren't isolated inventions. They were shared between branches.

The Whistleblower Trap

Wells Fargo's "EthicsLine" trapped dissenters. Complaints were routed to HR officers who worked with accused managers.

Whistleblowers faced sudden scrutiny for minor infractions. And termination for "performance issues."

Claudia Ponce de Leon was a ten-year manager. She called the hotline in September 2011. Three weeks later: fired for "drinking excessively." No evidence.

Seven years for OSHA to confirm retaliation.

The bank fired 5,300 employees. Leadership called this evidence that controls worked.

But firing 1% of your workforce for the same violation shows a systemic pattern, not isolated incidents. A diseased orchard, not bad apples.

The Lost Decade

September 2016: $185 million fine. CEO resigned after brutal congressional hearings.

February 2018: The Federal Reserve froze Wells Fargo's assets at $1.95 trillion. The cap lasted seven years. Until June 2025.

During that decade, JPMorgan grew to $2.1 trillion in deposits. Wells Fargo stagnated at $1.4 trillion.

And in February 2020, the bank made a $3 billion settlement. They admitted to "unlawfully misusing customers' sensitive information." Mass identity theft.

By early 2026, 27 units had unionized. In April 2025, a report alleged the bank replaced "quotas" with "outcomes." Same pressure, new name.

Consumer complaints in 2024-2025 surpassed pre-scandal levels.

The Real Lesson

Wells Fargo took away the authority employees needed. Then, they demanded impossible results.

Employees had no power to question quotas. No power to advocate for what customers actually needed. No ability to say "This customer doesn't need eight products." Or, "This goal is mathematically impossible."

But they were 100% accountable for sales numbers.

When you remove the authority to serve customers or challenge bad strategy, but maintain absolute accountability for outcomes, people find other ways to survive. Wells Fargo employees had no legitimate path to hit quotas—so they created illegitimate ones.

The 5,300 fired employees weren't the problem. They were the symptom.

Case Study: The $25 Investment That Bought a Legacy

In 1975, a man rolled two dirty tires into a Nordstrom store in Fairbanks, Alaska.

He'd driven 50 miles to return them.

One problem: Nordstrom has never sold tires.

The Context That Changes Everything

Nordstrom hadn't built that store. They'd acquired it from Northern Commercial Company. A mercantile outfit that sold everything. Including tires.

When Nordstrom bought the Alaska stores, they gutted inventory. Out went tires and hardware. In came apparel and shoes.

The building transformed. But in locals' minds, it was still where they'd done business for years.

The customer wasn't a scam artist. He was a legacy customer caught in a corporate transition. He'd bought tires from Northern Commercial. In that building. With a return guarantee.

To him, the name on the sign was an administrative detail.

The Decision

Craig Trounce was 16. He'd been with Nordstrom for weeks.

Typical retail would provide a safe retreat: "Our policy says I can't take these."

But Nordstrom's handbook was different. A single card: "Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules."

By removing the policy shield, Nordstrom exposed Trounce to the full complexity. He couldn't hide behind rules.

Trounce recognized the situation. A legacy customer with a valid moral claim. Based on the building's history.

He didn't guess at a refund. He called a Firestone dealer for the market value. About $25.

He opened the register. Withdrew cash. Handed it to the customer. Then he invited the man to shop for what Nordstrom did sell.

The Silent Validation

The transaction wasn't secret.

John Nordstrom, co-chairman, happened to be visiting the store. When the customer came in with tires, Nordstrom told the store manager: "Let's see how our team handles this."

Both men watched from the stockroom as Trounce worked through the problem. The manager looked ready to intervene, but seeing Trounce handle it well, he gave a silent thumbs-up instead.

In command-and-control organizations, the manager's job is to stop "shrinkage."

Here, he validated Trounce as the decision-maker. The thumbs-up reinforced psychological safety: I trust you.

The executive stood back, too. He let a 16-year-old make a $25 decision that would define the company culture for 50 years.

Afterward, the manager nailed the tires to the stockroom wall—a physical reminder that service standards were absolute.

The Strategic Genius

By honoring a promise Nordstrom never made, Trounce showed what the company actually stood for. Merchandise changed, but integrity didn't.

In tight-knit Fairbanks, this story circulated immediately. The narrative shifted from "Nordstrom is an outsider" to "Nordstrom is honorable."

The ROI:

• Direct cost: $25 (~$140 today)

• Marketing value: 3.4 million Google results. Countless case studies. Decades of free publicity.

If Nordstrom bought ads to convey "exceptional service," it would cost them tens of millions. The tire story achieved global reach for the price of used tires.

Craig Trounce later built a 30+ year career at Alaska Airlines. He links the cultures: "For both companies, service comes from giving people the training and authority to say, 'This is what we can do for you today.'"

His decision-making technique: holding his hand over his heart. "If you listen to what you're feeling right here, you'll discover the right thing to do."

This technique uses emotional regulation, not sentiment. It allowed empathy instead of defensiveness.

Pete Nordstrom recently shared full context on the company podcast. "Almost everywhere I go, someone says 'there's no way that's true.' And I say 'no, it's actually true.'"

The tire story defined Nordstrom's culture. Proof that empowerment delivers competitive advantage, not just aspiration.

Tires are cheap. Trust is expensive. Craig Trounce knew the difference.

The Three Requirements

To make employees brand ambassadors, you need more than just saying, "You're empowered.""

Based on the contrasts between Wells Fargo and Nordstrom, employee empowerment needs three critical elements:

1. Authority

Employees must have actual power to make decisions. Without seeking approval.

This means establishing clear guidelines:

• Monetary limits they can spend to solve problems

• Situations where they can make exceptions to policies

• Authority to make judgment calls in ambiguous situations

Wells Fargo's employees lacked this. Nordstrom's employees have it in abundance.

2. Resources

Authority is meaningless without resources to act on it.

This includes:

• Budgets for service recovery

• Access to systems and information

• Time to solve problems rather than process transactions

• Support from management when they exercise judgment

Nordstrom's "One Rule" handbook worked because employees had the resources and management support to act.

3. Training

Employees need to understand not just policies, but principles.

They need to know:

• What the brand actually stands for

• How to make judgment calls aligned with brand values

• How to balance customer needs with business sustainability

• When to escalate and when to decide

Nordstrom trains on judgment. Wells Fargo trained on quotas.

The difference in outcomes was predictable.

The Strategic Imperative

Your brand is a by-product of what customers experience consistently across every touchpoint. Your employees deliver most of those touchpoints.

If you don't trust them to deliver it, you don't have a brand. You have a logo and a liability.

The companies that win don't just talk about customer centricity. They structurally enable it. By distributing authority to the people who interact with customers every day.

They understand that the Empowerment Deficit goes beyond HR or culture. It's a strategic vulnerability. One that destroys brand value with every transaction.

Here are three questions to diagnose your own empowerment gap:

1. Can your front-line employees solve the most common customer problems without asking permission? If not, you're teaching customers that your brand can't help them.

2. When was the last time an employee was celebrated for breaking a rule to help a customer? If you can't remember, you've signaled that rules matter more than outcomes.

3. Do you measure employees on customer outcomes or activity metrics? If it's activity (calls answered, accounts opened, transactions processed), you've optimized for the wrong thing.

The answer to all three questions points to the same root problem.

Close the gap between your brand promise and your employees' authority.

Onward,

Aaron Shields

P.S. Is your marketing team making promises your front-line can't keep? That gap is where customer trust dies. And growth stops. If you're ready to align your brand promise with operational reality, let's talk. Reply to this email, and I'll set up a free 20-minute call to help you think through the disconnect between authority and accountability.