“We’re going to need a bigger boat” has become my mantra around purpose lately. Because, while purpose is imperative, it has limits and today is groaning under the weight of expectations. Over lunch with friend and colleague Kate Messenger of Meme Partners in Sydney a few weeks ago, we spent some...
The business is starting out and needs a foundation to build on. Or it’s been around a few years and is growing, fast. A venerable family-owned company is going through a changing of the guard. Or the not-for-profit organisation is trying to stay relevant. The reasons to gather around the...
Alignment is a central part of how you build a brand, and I always expound the value of making sure this and that work together to achieve the same end. But it only does so much and needs another element to push the kind of deep work that is present in great...
After a recent brand workshop for the Women in Digital Group, I received a lovely message from Jenny Lindsay: “I’d been overthinking how to ‘create’ my brand, when, by contemplating my values, I realised I knew it all along. Now I just have to live it. What a revelation.” At the event,...
Purpose and positioning serve two very different functions for your organisation. It’s important that you don’t mix them up. In the process of finding your purpose and getting to a mix of breadth, clarity and inspiration, it’s very easy to find yourself in positioning territory. Knowing how and why they are...
“Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger.” Captured in this quote from Jorge Luis Borges is the part of a person’s brand that to often remains unexplored. Who am I and what do I truly care...
During a podcast, author Tim Ferris and Josh Waitzkin, who was the basis for the book Searching for Bobby Fischer, were discussing the necessity of bringing discipline and alignment around the things that you believe.It’s been an emerging theme these past few articles, from last week’s entreaty to not forget...
Every week I see the stories trumpeted across the pages of the business press. “Brand launch”, as if it is a space shuttle shimmering with unspent force just waiting for lift off. “Rebrand”, complete with (at least) a shiny new logo, clever tagline and assorted related items. Box ticked, event...
It is easy to get lost in the labyrinth of business motivation – vision, mission, promise, purpose goals, cause, reason to believe, but whatever you call it, the role it should play is pretty simple – it is the foundation of what drives your organisation. What’s your purpose? To your customers,...
The first step to brand alignment is getting the foundations right. One thing that truly irks me is the idea that you need a separate set of things to define what that is. Because when I talk about the foundations of brand, I’m not talking about a whole separate raft of things...