Why Most Brand Projects Start with the Wrong Question
A systems approach that helps breakthrough organizations build for lasting impact.
Most brand projects start with the wrong question.
They ask: "What should this look like?" when they should be asking: "How does this need to work?"
Working in design for almost two decades, I kept seeing the same pattern. The most innovative organizations—the ones doing genuinely important work—often struggled most with communication. Not because they weren't smart enough or didn't care enough, but because the very complexity that made their breakthroughs possible became the thing that made those breakthroughs impossible to explain.
The difference matters more than you'd think. It's the difference between creating something “beautiful” or “innovative”, and creating something that actually serves the mission it was designed for.
A biotech company developing life-saving treatments that couldn't get investors to understand the opportunity. A clean energy startup with technology that could reshape entire industries, stuck debating whether their logo should feel "approachable" or "cutting-edge." Good god, help us. Brilliant teams with world-changing ideas, trapped by the assumption that if they could just find the right aesthetic, everything else would fall into place.
It doesn't work that way. I’m from Texas… they call it putting lipstick on a pig.
The Honesty Problem
Before we can design anything from the inside out, we have to be honest about what's actually happening on the inside. And here's what everyone knows and few admit: most organizations and brand teams avoid tough conversations. Hell, most people in general do.
Not because anyone's trying to be deceptive. But because there's this unspoken agreement to dance around the hard stuff. Organizations present sanitized versions of their challenges. Brand teams ask safe questions and propose safe solutions. Everyone stays comfortable, and nothing really gets solved.
I've found that being the person willing to name what's actually happening creates space for the conversations that matter. When a room full of smart people keeps circling around a decision without making one, I'll say what everyone's thinking, or just ask a stupid question to reframe the mood. When someone presents a challenge that's clearly missing half the story, I'll ask about the half they're not mentioning. #YOLO.
This pattern shows up everywhere, not just in brand work. People avoid the real conversation because it feels risky. But you can't solve the real problem until you're willing to see it clearly, without the stories we tell ourselves about what we wish were true. Yes, your logo might suck, or your messaging feels off. But I guarantee you there’s a deeper reason why that goes beyond just “brand building”.
Most brand projects fail because they're solving for the polite, presentable version of the challenge rather than the messy, complicated, human version. The organizations that breakthrough aren't just those with the best ideas. They're those willing to get honest about what's really happening so they can design systems that actually work.
The paradox? The more willing you are to see what's not working, the more clearly you can see what wants to emerge.
The Aesthetic Trap
Here’s how most brand development projects go down: teams start by looking at what successful organizations in their space are doing, gather visual inspiration, and begin sketching logo concepts. The conversation centers around colors, fonts, and whether the logo should be "modern" or "trustworthy" or "innovative."
This outside-in approach treats brand development like interior decorating for businesses. It focuses on making things look professional without asking whether that aesthetic actually serves the organization's deeper purpose.
But mission-driven organizations face challenges that can't be solved with better aesthetics. They need to communicate complex ideas across diverse stakeholder groups. They need alignment between personal values and organizational strategy. They need companies that can evolve as their understanding of their impact deepens.
When you design from the outside in, you're solving for appearances. When you design from the inside out, you're solving for outcomes that actually matter.
An Honest Systems Alternative
"When everything is connected to everything else, for better or worse, everything matters." — Bruce Mao
Systems thinking recognizes that every organization exists within multiple interconnected networks. The way you communicate with potential collaborators affects your ability to attract talent. Your relationship with your community shapes your access to resources. The clarity of your mission determines whether your cool ideas reach an audience who could benefit from them.
This isn't just business strategy. It's life strategy. Personal purpose becomes organizational purpose becomes community impact becomes world change. Each layer influences and is influenced by the others. What affects one, affects the whole. The African tradition of Ubuntu captures this truth beautifully: I am because we are. This interconnection isn't philosophical, it's practical. Change happens not through force, but through understanding these connections.
I don’t know if it was the psychedelic trips I did as a teenager, or the analytical tools I developed studying mathematics and economics in college that revealed something crucial—you can't optimize one part of a system without understanding how it affects every other part. Change one variable, and the entire equation shifts. This principle applies whether you're modeling economic behavior or designing breakthrough branding.
But here's what makes this approach actually work: the willingness to be radically honest about what each variable actually represents, not what we wish it represented.
Five Layers of Honest Integration
The honest systems approach works through five interconnected layers, each building on and requiring the truth-telling of the previous layer.
0—Layer Naught: Radical Honesty
What's really happening here?
This is the foundation that most brand work skips entirely. Before we can design anything, we need to get honest about what's actually happening. Not the version that sounds good in meetings, not the sanitized story that avoids uncomfortable truths, but the real, messy, human version.
The questions here cut through the politeness:
What are you actually worried about?
What isn't working that everyone's pretending is fine?
What would happen if you said the thing no one wants to say?
Where are you lying to yourselves about what you're capable of?
Often, these types of conversations are best done 1-1 and preferably in person. This isn't about being harsh. It's about being useful. You can't build effective business or communication systems on a foundation of pleasant fiction. Most brand projects fail because they never establish this honest foundation, so everything built on top of it wobbles. I like to think of it as Generative Tension.
Layer 1: Core Integration
Connecting personal mission to organizational purpose
Once you've established what's actually happening, you can start connecting the dots between personal purpose and organizational strategy. This goes deeper than typical brand strategy work. We're not just asking what the organization does. We're asking why it needs to exist, who it serves, and how that service connects to the broader change its founders want to see in the world.
The questions here are both analytical and personal:
What patterns do you recognize that others miss?
How does your work connect to the change you want to see?
What would success look like not just for your organization, but for the communities you serve?
How do your personal values inform your organizational decisions?
When personal purpose and organizational strategy are properly aligned, decision-making becomes clearer, communication becomes more authentic, and the brand becomes a natural extension of the mission rather than something imposed on top of it. When this alignment is complete, decisions become easier. You know what to do because you know who you are.
Layer 2: Communication Architecture
Designing honest systems that scale across relationships
With clear core integration, you can design communication systems that serve it effectively. This isn't about crafting key messages. It's about creating frameworks that help everyone in the organization communicate consistently while adapting to different contexts and audiences.
The mathematical training here is crucial. You're essentially designing algorithms for human communication. If this person needs to understand this concept, and they have this background and these priorities, what information do they need and in what sequence?
We map stakeholder ecosystems the way you'd map any complex system, identifying feedback loops, dependencies, and optimization opportunities. The goal isn't just clarity. It's systematic clarity that can evolve as relationships and understanding deepen.
Layer 3: Expression Systems
Creating coherent experiences across all touchpoints
This is where most agencies start, but when it's built on honest foundations and clear communication architecture, the creative expression becomes much more powerful.
Every visual choice, every word choice, every interaction design can be evaluated against the frameworks established in the first layers. Does this serve the mission integration? Does this support the communication architecture? Does this help the right people understand the right things at the right time?
The difference is remarkable. Instead of endless debates about aesthetic preferences, you have clear criteria for creative decisions. Instead of brand guidelines that feel arbitrary, you have design systems that feel inevitable.
Layer 4: Evolution and Optimization
Building honest feedback systems that improve over time
Mission-driven organizations grow and change as their understanding of their impact deepens. The brand systems need to evolve along with that understanding, without losing coherence or requiring complete overhauls.
This requires building honest feedback loops into the system from the beginning. How are stakeholders actually responding to the communication? What's working better than expected? Where are the friction points? How has the organization's understanding of its mission evolved, and how should that evolution be reflected in the brand system?
The analytical mindset is essential here. You're not just collecting feedback. You're identifying patterns in that feedback that reveal opportunities for systematic improvement. And you're staying honest about what the data actually shows, not what you hoped it would show.
Why Mission-Driven Organizations Need This Approach
Organizations working on breakthrough innovation face unique challenges that traditional brand approaches aren't designed to handle.
Complexity that can't be simplified away. You can't reduce breakthrough cancer research to a tagline without losing the nuance that makes it breakthrough. But you can create systematic approaches to communicating complexity that serve different audiences appropriately.
Stakeholder ecosystems that traditional businesses don't navigate. You need to communicate effectively with researchers, patients, investors, regulators, community leaders, and potential collaborators! Each relationship requires different information at different levels of detail. Honest systems thinking helps you design communication that serves all these relationships without becoming incoherent.
Mission integration that affects every decision. For mission-driven organizations, brand strategy and life strategy aren't separate. The way you show up in the world needs to reflect not just what you do, but why it matters and how it connects to the broader change you're working toward.
Growth that can't be predicted or controlled. Breakthrough innovation often leads to unexpected opportunities and challenges. The brand systems need to be robust enough to handle this uncertainty while maintaining coherence. Honest feedback systems help you adapt without losing your way.
The Analytical Advantage in Human Systems
Having a background in mathematics and economics provides unique advantages in brand strategy work, particularly when applied to the messy reality of human communication.
Pattern recognition across multiple variables. Most brand challenges involve optimizing across multiple competing priorities simultaneously. Mathematical training develops pattern recognition skills that help identify systematic solutions rather than just addressing symptoms. More importantly, it develops comfort with looking at uncomfortable data.
Systems analysis applied to human dynamics. Understanding how changing one element affects an entire system is crucial when working with organizations that exist within complex stakeholder ecosystems. Economic training develops intuition for these kinds of interconnected relationships, including the feedback loops that traditional creative approaches miss.
Optimization thinking for communication challenges. The same analytical frameworks used to optimize complex systems can be applied to communication challenges. How do you design message systems that work efficiently across multiple constraints while remaining honest about trade-offs?
Honest measurement and feedback integration. Creating meaningful metrics for brand performance requires understanding the difference between correlation and causation, leading and lagging indicators, and how to design measurement systems that actually inform improvement rather than just make everyone feel good.
Getting Started with Honest Systems
If you're ready to move beyond aesthetic-focused brand development, here are the foundational questions to consider.
Radical Honesty Assessment:
What's the thing your team keeps not talking about?
What would change if you could sit with the discomfort of what's actually happening, without immediately trying to fix or avoid it?
Where are you presenting sanitized versions of complex problems?
What would emerge if you stopped telling yourself the story that everything is fine?
Core Integration Evaluation:
How clearly can you articulate the connection between your personal mission and your organizational purpose?
What patterns do you recognize in your field that others seem to miss?
How does your work connect to the broader change you want to see in the world?
Systems Thinking Application:
How does your brand strategy serve your broader mission rather than competing with it?
What would need to change for your brand systems to evolve naturally as your organization grows?
How are you measuring whether your communication actually supports your desired outcomes?
Building for Honest Impact
The organizations creating lasting change understand that brand strategy isn't separate from life strategy, business strategy, or impact strategy. It's the systematic approach to ensuring that how you show up in the world serves the deeper purpose driving your work.
When you design from the inside out, starting with radical honesty, you create alignment between personal mission and organizational expression. You build communication systems that can handle complexity without losing clarity. You develop brand approaches that strengthen rather than compete with your mission.
This isn't about perfection. It's about honesty, systematic thinking, and building for the long term. It's about recognizing that the way you communicate your amazing ideas is part of your process of bringing those ideas to life.
The world needs what you're building. Honest systems thinking ensures that your brand serves that mission rather than obscuring it.
Ready to explore how honest systems thinking can strengthen your mission-driven work? Let's start with what's really happening.