Value has shifted. What we valued in the past isn’t necessarily what we value now! It, perhaps, distinguishes itself slightly differently. It’s led to some huge value gaps in what we offer as brands and what we expect as customers. Some thoughts:

Emotions – In the design of the product/service. We forget about individuality, self expression, trust, transparency, community and what we feel.

Marketing - The difference between what the marketing says and actually what the product/service does. I really don’t want to be ’sold’ to I want to ‘take part ‘ in your brand.

Price – We don’t demonstrate value well especially if we are more expensive. What is the extra value? Brands then get miffed because no one buys and then reduce prices. Customise it and tangibly show the extra value.

Monolithic brands – Complacency or arrogance? Whatever we call it, just because you have been around a long time, doesn’t mean I will buy it. Where’s the value in that?

Innovation – ‘Look at us’ has been replaced with ‘look at’ what we are doing. Value now isn’t in the existing product/service, its moved to how we are constantly changing it, re orientating it.

Seek out the value difference in our products/services rather than hiding the sameness. Value is not what we generate, but the impact we have in our business community assembled around our business.

One of the most significant problems with people who manage a small business is they are wholly task driven. They focus on the day to day operations and tasks without identifying and inspiring their people to the long term view, what the business is aiming to achieve. That’s coupled with not clearly communicating what that means for their people and how that benefits them! Creating purpose is the road map, the vision, the thing you gather at work every morning for. Nothing happens effectively without purpose, it presents a clear plan for the long term and looks at possibilities not problems. To start you off focus on:

-       What is your core purpose?

-       What is your dept’s core purpose?

-       What are your peoples core purpose?

-       How does that purpose add value?

-       What will it take for you to drive people towards the purpose?

The point is this, if you don’t know in one sentence what you businesses purpose is, how the hell can you people deliver it. What is your department’s value creating proposition in terms of leading your team and customers?

There is a sea of change spreading across business. In the past we celebrated people who had achieved and been successful. We measured it by their output. Nothing wrong with that however, we measured via how much money they had, how big their company was, how big their car was, how big their house was, or even worse, how many houses they had! 

What we didn’t think about enough was how they achieved that. How many people did they screw or screw up getting there? There are a few examples of that across the world at this moment in time! What we measured people by was how much noise they were making not necessarily their meaning or how they were thinking! 

What I mean is that its becoming abundantly clear that how you got there is far more important now. Did you enrich peoples lives or simply manipulate them for your own needs. How many people did you work to the bone through fear, control and using authority rather than through inspiring, influencing and motivating using an individualist approach?

Profit, in financial terms is not the only way we must measure business success in the future, it must also be about how an organisation has added value in terms of excitement, fostering talent, trust and purpose. We have spent the last few years in business creating egocentric value, where a few or one person has become wealthy rather than sharing that value and making all of our people wealthy. And by wealth, I don’t just mean money!

There has been a lack of moral measures, doing the right thing and concerning ourselves with the short term rather than long term output. We need to measure what’s really important knowing that it will produce just the same output, but be more wealth creating than what’s happened previously.

As Nassim Taleb comments in his book, Fooled by Randomness, “Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behaviour, not because they won or lost.”

Random acts of kindness often cost nothing but can create huge value in your business. It’s demonstrated no better than this quote by Ann Herbert, Margaret M. Pavel and Mayumi Oda in their book “Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty:”

“Anything we do randomly and frequently

starts to make it’s own sense

and changes the world into itself

Anything you want there to be more of

do it randomly

Don’t wait for reasons”

Simple, significant goodwill with your customer portfolio.