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Values are one of the great ironies of brand. Everyone professes their importance, and some brands invest considerable time finalising them. Then they systematically ignore them, often because they don’t know how to practically apply them. In doing so, they underplay the importance and guidance that powerful brand values can provide.

Not all brand values are the same

Within the context of the Principled Culture, we distinguish between two types of values:

• Hygiene – the base principles that those operating within that sector work to and that essentially are must-haves, and
• Distinctive – the specific principles that align those working within a brand culture with the character and driving strategic intent of the brand.

So many brand values don’t get beyond hygiene. They are a shopping list of undemanding terms that simply endorse professionalism. Distinctive values, on the other hand, define what’s expected within a brand culture in order to clearly and competitively deliver the strategy.

Truly powerful brand values cost something

Will Sewell makes the great point that values should cost something. They’re a trade-off, he says, where a brand deliberately chooses to give up on something in order to achieve that particular characteristic. He refers to these as anti-values: the counterbalance to the core value that qualifies it and makes it specific to the brand’s intentions. For example, a brand value like “move fast” is just about pace. But the brand value move fast and break things is about embracing pace and failure in the quest to succeed.

The tension here of course is that you want your values to serve the brand, but they must also be embraced by all those who work within the culture. The temptation is to find a polite list of values that everyone feels comfortable with after exhaustive workshopping and wordsmithing. Our view is that the values should set expectations. In fact, they should be the key filter for every decision – and as such, they should push your people to adopt ideas that make them most effective as a performing brand culture.

The priority question is: Do the values you have chosen align with the brand culture you need to deliver on your strategy?

The best values are powerfully expressed

There are a number of ways to express such values. You can articulate them as a short phrase (usually with an active verb), such as Will’s example. Or you can proffer a concept – where you bring ideas together to define a value that is startling, challenging, or inspiring. Or you can use a single word that in itself and alongside the other values telegraphs what’s important.

The key criteria for choosing values is that your values set itself should be short, and that it should inform your brand culture and not just the sector. The values themselves must be inspiring but also directive, and, ideally, they should define how the brand expects people to think, how they can act and what they are encouraged to feel.

Your brand values should reflect what does, or could, make you great. They should be simple, memorable and shareable – and they must be applicable and relevant to every aspect of your brand culture and service delivery. They should cultivate a culture where what you say in groups, individually and collectively, and what you do are never in conflict.

Applying your values to your decisions

But then what? Dr. Pranjal Kumar Phukan has developed a simple but effective Values-Based Decision-Making Framework that we admire and that provides a powerful checklist for how to make values-based decisions. This is his work and this is how we’ve applied Dr Phukan’s thinking to evaluating the effectiveness of the values you have chosen for your Principled Culture:

1. Define how your values govern your interactions and decisions around all stakeholders. For example, how does “move fast and break things” impact investors? And what does it mean for how you encourage employees to act? Align your policies accordingly.
2. Are there ethical or regulatory considerations that might govern how you interpret a value? (If so, is that value still right?)
3. Your values may be evergreen, they may be more time-specific or they may evolve over time in keeping with changes in the business. Be clear about how long you expect a value to apply, and if and when it should change.
4. Make sure everyone understands the values – not just the words, but also the spirit of the values and how they fit with and inform the purpose and the vision.
5. Agree as a culture how you will raise, discuss and resolve “conflicts of brand” where an action or decision may not align with your values.
6. When you are socialising key decisions, explain the decision in terms of why it makes sense commercially and logically, but also how it aligns philosophically and ethically with your values and purpose.
7. Monitor your values for the influence they have within the culture. Change any value that doesn’t earn its keep.

We can help with creating powerful brand values

Need help expressing distinctive values that galvanise cultural behaviours and actions? We offer strategic sessions or consulting to do just that. More on the Principled Culture itself here.

Acknowledgements

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash