Would your customers help you move?

25 Aug Would your customers help you move?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When their home of 103 years was sold the beloved bookshop Hill of Content had to move. They found another space a few hundred metres away but needed to transport 17,000 books.

Bring in the movers? No. Put out a call to their community of book lovers? Yes. And so, hundreds gathered on an overcast, drizzly Tuesday morning. Forming a human conveyor belt passing books from hand to hand. Even nearby construction workers on a break jumped in to help.

Would your customers help you move?

Perhaps not literally. But metaphorically, how much goodwill could you muster from customers, staff, partners, suppliers, or other stakeholders to support what you need to do ?

People are deeply loyal to their favourite independent bookshop. So perhaps it’s an unfair bar to set. Still, the mechanics are worth examining when applied to different aspects of what you do. Regardless the kind of organisation.

Whether you name the force bringing 300 people together goodwill, reputation, social capital, or something else. It’s one proxy for what value stored in the brand looks like when you put it to work.

Beyond books, there are plenty of places, both big and unheroic, where you might need it. In a global example this week, Taylor Swift gave the world a front-row seat to her Grand Canyon-sized store of value when she announced her new album and crashed YouTube. Closer to home, Foodbank Victoria is rallying support for a food drive this weekend to help in its mission to feed 69,000 people every day.

The places the brand can support your organisation range as widely as your work. Every day you unleash that stored value to kickstart the big choices in your latest strategy. It shows up when research and development ponders how AI will change your marketplace. In teams streamlining an internal process or weathering a public relations crisis. Even answering a customer’s query and pointing them to a competitor who stocks what you no longer do can generate value.

Think about the effort any activity takes. Finding customers, attracting staff, fulfilling orders, or securing funding. If growing what’s important feels harder than it should, it might be time to look at how much value you’re storing.

The foundation is a well-honed identity of what matters most and how you do things. Aka purpose and values, or whatever labels you prefer. Use it to underpin your promises and keep them in people’s experience. Repeat. Every role, everywhere, from boardroom to back office.

The formula for storing value kicks in the minute you open the doors. Doesn’t need a specific budget and accumulates across actions and decisions. The resulting value acts as a discount on everyday operating costs. It compounds and is there to draw on when choices go sideways. Or when you need willing hands to help you move.

Thanks for reading.