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...
Organisations are made of unheroic work — those thousands of everyday actions and decisions that keep your particular engine turning. Hidden and often unexamined, it is the lion-share of what people do in their jobs.I call the gap between what you say is most important and how people do that...
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...
What are the enemies of the brand result? The desire to fiddle, resistance, and the doldrums.The first one – the desire to fiddle – might feel counterintuitive. After all the things you do result in the brand. And while yes that’s true, for it to work you’ve got to do...
When everything in the world around you is in flux, how to find the one thing your organisation is ‘great’ at can seem an insurmountable quest. However, without it, achieving a brand result people want to stick with is what’s impossible.Because knowing that one thing will help you make and...
Smart and savvy, my friend was utterly taken aback when a business venture she had poured her passion and time into recently sputtered to an acrimonious end. She’s far from alone. Statistics variously reveal 12-month failure rates for startups as anything up to a whopping 95%. Leaving aside what constitutes a...
Several decades ago Patagonia landed on its mission statement. And ever since, uncompromising attention to the details of what it means has fuelled the steady growth and wider impact of its endeavours. So, as a long-time student of how they do things, I was somewhat shocked when I saw a ‘new’...
Purpose is the new black. Every time I turn around I see a new headline or article on the topic. We are a ‘purpose-driven company’ is pasted across the websites of organisations.I should be doing cartwheels.Purpose has been central to my message to organisations about their identity and brand result...
I’m a voracious reader and always on the lookout for titles to add to my reading list. It’s particularly nice when that reading connects with the enduring question about how to achieve a brand result.The book, in this case, is Deep Work* by Cal Newport. And while the headline gives...