WHY HAVE VALUES?
Publicly defining what you stand for as a business outwardly shares your brand’s differentiation in the way you and your team handle yourself and your work.
Business values can seem completely arbitrary, and often pointless when spouted out into the ether of company messaging, lofty goalkeeping and unmet promises. However, there is genuine rhyme to the reason in the defining of brand values.
Values are expressing the essence of a company’s philosophy for achieving goals, providing cultural direction and standards for staff, defining your outward identity. Thoughtfully created, they should be the North Star that guides all business decision-making.
BRAND CULTURE
Ever heard the phrase culture eats strategy for breakfast?
You can have the most finessed brand strategy, but what really makes strategy fly is the culture, values, behaviour of the people within the business.
If values are fully bought into by a business and its staff, they become the cornerstone of a brand’s culture. They act as the hinge-point for everything from strategic moves to everyday interactions.
VALUES THAT DON’T SUCK
Passive values hold no meaning or relevance. You may look across your business and pull together a collective of pre-established values based on culture and personal motives. However, if values are assumed, they’re a set of ideals that don’t actually exist in the outworking of your business.
Good values are aspirational and explicit, guiding all decision-making. Broader than black and white policies, they’re more fluid, like cultural direction, aligning core principals.
GOOD VALUES:
Motivate commitment
Align action
Enhance products & services
Transcend conflicts
WHERE TO START
- Founders: Create a set of values as a first draft
- Share & discuss with employees and stakeholders, seeking feedback
- Teach & reinforce meanings and applications with staff
- Review & modify as Needed
Being thoughtful about the culture you set as a business owner, founder or leader will quite literally carry your brand, and beyond that, will make goal achievement that much more attainable.
