Values
How should your brand behave?
Once you have developed a Vision and a Mission, work on your Values: what sort of company do you want or need to be to realise your aims?
Refer to your completed Worksheet 2 – where you examined your strengths and identified where you could differentiate yourself from the competition – your answers should help you.
In defining your Values, you are trying to crystallise how your organisation should behave.
It might help to imagine explaining this to your staff. For example, if you were recruiting staff, how would you describe your organisation to them? What behavioural traits would you expect from them? What would you say that the organisation stands for?
The Values are a key differentiating factor in the life of any organisation. They are the characteristics that will underpin every action you take, so they must be traits that you think will be important in achieving your Vision and Mission.
Fill in the Values section in Worksheet 3 – remember you should have no more than five or six and try to make at least some of them differentiating (distinctive), ie avoiding the standard, generic Values such as ‘professional’, ‘integrity’, ‘passionate’ etc.
Once you have defined your five or six Values, expand them by writing a sentence for each one explaining what it means within your organisation. The Values must have meaning – what does each Value mean in terms of how your brand and your people should behave? Defining them will bring you clarity.
The strongest brands all start with clarity — regardless of size.
The strongest brands all start with clarity — regardless of size.
