The continuing effort to keep values in balance tempts many organisations to measure and manage them in people’s performance and behaviours. Judging whether they’re holding the value or not.But there is a different way to keep values on track, so they contribute to the brand. One that allows for their...
Turn in any direction these days, and you’ll trip over people talking about their purpose. This is not a bad thing; it’s essential to individual and group endeavours.Yet, when I look past the virtue signals of purpose-led this and purposeful that, I struggle to see how people put it to...
Sticking with values, I want to expand on an element of Aristotle’s golden mean from my last article. I call it productive tension.Look under the covers of successful organisations, and you will find tension at work. No, I’m not talking about “this place sucks” hostility.You can most commonly find my kind of...
Too many conversations about values start by asking are they right or wrong. But for most organisations “How do we use them?” is a more worthy and useful question.I’ll go further. It’s the only question that truly matters. And I’m not talking about laundry lists of behaviours for doing this...
When an organisation puts a ‘fun place to work’ in their values, they often mean a games room, funky furniture and kombucha on tap. Not how they carry out the unheroic work living beneath the trappings.The Play Ethic author Pat Kane says play “Helps release thoughts that are locked in...
You know the page. There might even be one in your organisation. At the top is purpose, and from there, the cascade continues…PurposeVisionMissionCore ValuesStrategic pillarsBrand promiseBrand valuesEssencePersonalityExperience principlesPositioningEtc. I frequently see organisations that have the entire shebang including some I haven’t even listed. It’s madness. No one can hold all of...
The book “Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgement” by Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein and Oliver Sibony explores the information and choices that interfere with judgement when people make decisions.Reading it got me thinking about noise of a different kind.Brand noise.The interference comes from many quarters (and here I am adding...
Untethering a brand from day-to-day marketing activities can leave people feeling at sea about what remains. If it isn’t all the markers such as the logo, the campaign, the name, etc., what is it?Try thinking about brand as a warehouse for storing the value created by peoples and organisations day-to-day...
The team of five peered out from their respective Zoom screens. It wasn’t the ideal way to do the work we were about to begin, but after navigating some dicey days, exploring how to work together better was too important to wait until we could meet in person.Values and culture...
Does your to-do list include working on the brand? How about your team’s list? It’s almost certainly on the organisation’s list.And if yes is the answer you’ve got brand in the wrong place. Because it is not something you do, it’s the result of it.Marketing as driver of the brand...
