Purpose & Values
How you do it, and why
We shape your purpose and values,
to unite employees and inspire customers.
An authentic purpose provides meaning for your brand and business. It’s both a guiding principle, offering wisdom and direction, as well as a powerful idea, creating connection and empathy. When fully brought to life it generates trust and drives choice and loyalty both inside and out — ultimately to help you to perform better, connect deeper and have a more positive impact on the world around us.
For your people
- Guides and inspires decision-making, strategic direction and ways of working
- Inspires growth and drives performance
- Unites and connects disparate teams and functions
- Provides the underlying foundations of your culture
For your customers
- Builds equity and awareness, creates relevance and trust
- Helps people understand what drives you
- Let’s customers and investors know what to expect
- Adds value by providing a greater sense of meaning
Belief
Purpose must do more than simply express a deeply held belief: it must also answer to a human need that you can truly reach for, a change that you can really make in the world. Your purpose must become a practical tool that guides everything from strategy and decision making right through to everyday ways of working.
Values need to encapsulate ideas that your people can easily understand ready put into action. They must feel relevant and applicable, be connected to your purpose and go beyond the table-stakes that now everyone expects from work.
Approach
While others see this as a largely democratic exercise – essentially crowd-sourcing the question with their employees – we prefer a more balanced and forward facing approach. We agree that it’s absolutely essential to listen to your people – but we equally believe that it’s essential that purpose and values also reflect the beliefs of leaders, the demands of the growth strategy, the realities of the market.
Frame: set objectives and measures, determine where purpose and values need to work hardest for you
Decode: listen, understand and unpack the challenge through five lenses of business, brand, competitor, market, culture
Define: develop and test territories and ideas, refine and finalise
Activate: embed deeply inside the organisation to create really sustainable change
Our Work
Wagamama
Since opening in 1992 there has been a‘Wagamama magic’, something that has shaped their success and defined who they are, but had never been captured. We worked with Wagamama to articulate what makes them so special, uncovering a unique and vibrant culture and brand that sets them apart.
Scotiabank
Scotiabank needed to land on a core purpose that worked hard for bank inside and out. We developed a Purpose that would help guide the bank through times of crisis and prosperity, navigate evolving marketplaces and differentiate it against a rising number of FinTech’s.
NCR
We worked with the leader in banking and commerce solutions to galvanise NCR around one strong core purpose. Something that would unify and showcase their wider contribution to the world – shifting from the micro to macro, from the individual to the community.
