(Updated in 2020)
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
10-Point Plan — The Brand Values Baseline Defined
Three Reasons Get Us to the Task at Hand
Now the core team returns to discuss the feedback from the stakeholder leaders who’ve helped them identify the brand values baseline. Review the words each group has returned with and talk through the meaning until the group can roll up the short list to three words that stand for the foundational core values that drive the business. Try one from the head, one from the heart, and one from the long-term vision or meaning.
An example might be these three that drive SOBCon:
Delivering brilliance: We believe in intelligent, elegant connected ideas that raise us up to higher thinking.
Trusting fearlessness: We believe in authentic trust in ourselves and others that has no room for fear as it stand with our intelligent ideas.
Deep Strategic Vision: Our quest and our purpose is to move ourselves, our businesses, and those around us forward with leadership born of strategy and deep meaningful purpose.
Or brilliance, trust, vision. Those three words wrap up the sentences and make the an easy reference for every decision that drives our business. Other people on the core team can choose their synonyms and as long as they mean the same thing, we can trust in the variations and the mutations that will grow from them.
We have our values aligned.
What three values drive your business?
READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.
Great post Liz and always a good exercise!
So, hmmm…let’s see…Matt About Business’ core values:
1) Eschew obfuscation – beyond simply removing all jargon and technical talk from technology and using plain language only, we believe that business solutions and tools should be straightforward and easy-to-use.
2) The only thing to fear is fear itself – technology solutions are not to be feared, but instead seen as an enabler of getting great business done.
3) Enthusiasm above all – we believe that cynicism is an insidious trait that leaks into everything you do and leaches the life from your success. Do business, and live life, with gusto!
Hi Matt!
I agree … speak in the language of your customers, bravely and with joy!!
I hear you do that with every word of yours that I read. 🙂
You live your values for sure. 🙂
I think quality of products are most important
Providing what is needed, and what solves problems should be the values every business must strive for. Whether it is a product or a service it should help its users improve the way they do business or live their lives. Every business must take the world and the civilization forward without causing harm to the people and the environment it works amongst. These are the core values the drive us at StormDriver.
Hi StormDriver,
Your values are mission critical to your customers. That’s key to a great business. It quickly sorts the people who will be a fine fit for your work from those who won’t. Love how well you know what they are. The values that drive a brand are what attracts people to it. The stronger we communicate our values the more that people who share those values can see, hear, and understand us … essentially find our signal in the noise.
Another wonderful thought provoker, Liz! I would add that it’s not enough to nod and wink and use the agreed upon words or phrase but everyone must know what it means and believe it. And that belief must be consistent with every stakeholder.
This is not to suggest everyone drinks kool-aid but it must come from the collective gut before it can go on the email signature.
We must ask why are we doing this before ask how are we going to do it and what will we do to do it.
If we don’t believe it, no amount of strategy will ever materialize into a usable entity.
Mine are…
Image. Create. Share.
Hi Kneale,
I ask a question and you bring back brilliance. 🙂
Imagine. Create. Share.
Those will attract people who want to build things bigger than they can build alone. 🙂
Wow, and I toss in a typo! Too funny.
Imagine. Create. Share.