Why I'm asking five executives the same questions, separately

Ask a CEO what the company promises customers and you'll get a confident answer. Ask the CRO the same question an hour later and you'll get another confident answer. Ask the head of HR and... you can see where this is going.

Nobody in that sequence is wrong, exactly. Each answer makes sense from where that person sits. The trouble is that customers, candidates, and buyers hear all of them, and nobody hands them the org chart to explain the differences.

That gap is what I'm studying this fall.

What the Field Study is

The Upstream Field Study is a research project with a small group of growth-stage B2B technology companies. At each one I interview four or five senior executives, one at a time, using the same set of questions. Nobody sees anyone else's answers.

The questions come from the Amonta™ Brand Integrity Framework, which looks at six places where a company's promise either holds or quietly comes apart. How clearly the promise is defined. Whether operations back it up. Whether the story stays consistent from the sales deck to the recruiting pitch. Who governs it. How it holds up under growth pressure. And whether changes over time were decided or simply happened.

Why separately

Put five executives in a room and ask what the company stands for, and you'll get alignment. People are polite, and the CEO is sitting right there.

Ask them one at a time and the real picture shows up. Where the answers match, the company has something solid to build on. Where they diverge is usually where drift started... and it's almost never where anyone expected.

What I'm testing

After about thirty years inside B2B technology companies, my working thesis is that brand drift behaves like a governance problem. It starts in decisions made outside marketing, compounds quietly, and surfaces later as longer sales cycles, early attrition, and uncomfortable questions in diligence. The Field Study is how I find out where that holds and where it doesn't. I fully expect to be wrong about some of it. That's rather the point of doing research.

What participating companies receive

Each company gets a Brand Integrity Profile, a confidential summary of where its leadership team lines up, where views differ, and which themes deserve a closer look. Individual answers stay confidential, and there's no cost to take part.

Findings across all companies will be published as an aggregate report at the end of the year, with no company identified.

Timing

I'm speaking with companies through the end of November and into December. If your leadership team would be a good fit, or you know one that would, I'd welcome the introduction.