The Committed Enterprise: How to Make Vision and Values Work
This guide describes how to build unstoppable organizations, whether businesses or charities, hospitals or orchestras, by managing vision and values scientifically yet creatively.
TABLE OF CONTENTS The Committed Enterprise: How to Make Vision and Values Work
Chart 10.9 The organization brand iceberg
Chart 10.9: The organization brand iceberg
You can see the questioner's frustration. CEOs of this type can't mentally widen their brandwidth beyond consumers and heavy advertising.
Values give substance to the organization brand
"What you see is what you get" is a good motto for an organization brand, and Chart 10.9 illustrates this. Promises must be kept and expectations met. No organization brand can tolerate gaps between promise and performance. If an organization has values of integrity and care for people, these will be implicit in its brand. Failure to live up to them will be noticed, first by employees, and then by customers. Chart 10.9 also illustrates that appearance should be based on substance.
Above the waterline of the brand iceberg are promises, symbols and experiences. These are created by products and people, words and pictures. Below the waterline, the skills and values of the organization provide substance for the appearance above. If these are weak, or inconsistent with the appearance, the iceberg will melt from the bottom up, and eventually capsize.
That's why it's wise to build vision and values internally first, and tell the world about them later. Once they are solidly embedded within the organization, the brand will have the substance to withstand the pressures of outside examination. Save the Children understood this well:
Save the Children (SC) is a Type 1 organization brand with a compelling heritage. It was founded in 1919, by Eglantyne Jebb, for children in Austria, and soon became international.
By the...
Copyright Hugh Davidson 2002 under license agreement with Books24x7
