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What I’ve learned about company and team culture is that it begins with a mission. From the mission, you define the behaviours needed to achieve it and the values required to support those behaviours. You then build the people, processes, and systems around those values. To sustain the culture, you must ensure these values are lived every day, including hiring people who align with them.
A brand is nothing to do with your logo or your mission statement. A brand is the perception of the person you are dealing with before the next interaction happens about what they expect will happen. The brand expectation and promise are the things that saves us time. Most mission statements I have read could be swapped from one company to another and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference – apart from the logos. One of the few mission statements that means something is Patagonia’s. Patagonia says we are going to reduce the number of items we sell, or we are going to stop selling this profitable item because it leaves too much of an environmental footprint. I think these are not mission statements, they are mission actions and if you do enough mission actions the statements get made by itself.
What is marketing and what can we use it to achieve?
Marketing is about making things better by making better things. Marketing isn’t about hype; marketing isn’t about hustle and marketing isn’t about selfish short-term narcissists seeking to maximise profit in a misguided capitalistic sort of way. My mission is to continue narrating and guiding other people do the heavy lifting of persistently and consistently making things better. And because I am not shouting from the rooftops about what I am doing or how I helped this or that organisation, it appears that I don’t do anything. Metaphorically speaking, I know how to step by step put a stake in the ground, so they fit in an arc and not necessarily in perfect order.
If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?
Life is a mission, not career. A career is a profession and asks, “What’s in it for me?” On the other hand, a mission asks, “How can I make a difference?” I think that if you don’t create a vision of your own, someone else will do it for you – the media, your friends or someone else. And who knows if their interests are the same as yours? Therefore, unless you create your own vision of who and what you want to be, you will be quick to follow anyone who is willing to lead, even into things that won’t get you very far.
What’s the one thing you want people to remember?
To answer this question, I would have to think of a person that I respect and the traits they have that I really like. Vision and mission have been popular concepts, these terms are often mixed up and their differences are not understood. Let me clarify:
A vision statement is an aspirational statement made by an organisation that articulates what it would like to achieve. For example: What is the dream you have that describes an ideal future state of your business?
A mission statement is defined as an action-based statement that declares the purpose of an organisation and how they serve their customers. For example: What you do? > How you do it? > Why you do it?
I recently had a 1:1 meeting with a CEO who was looking for a Sales Director. As we spoke I thought that this would be a great challenge for a hungry and driven sales leader who can grow, lead and nurture an enthusiastic sales team. Someone who could divide their time between the operational challenges and strategic support of the sales team in a fast-paced environment without losing sight of the mission. I used my knowledge about market developments and customer needs to help the CEO articulate the strategic initiatives for the organisation.
Humans engage with things they care about, and no one cares about something they don’t understand. Do you know your story? Why you do what you do? How you do it and what are you selling? If you are not clearly communicating this to your buyers, then unfortunately, they will never hear it. Dale Carnegie said, “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic but with creatures of emotion.” Contact me via e-mail for sales training or workshops.
In the western world we have been conditioned to look out for ourselves and we are judged on individual performance. When for example, we do well in exams or in our work, we are rewarded with awards, promotions and increased wages. People may be rated individually, but what can we do to align and more in the same direction? How can we connect and collaborate on a level where we are looking at that common mission?
As you know I am a huge football fan, so it makes sense to use a football team analogy. A football team consists of a goalkeeper, defenders, midfielders and attackers, they are all doing their jobs in different ways but at the end of the game, they all want the same outcome - to outscore their opponents and win the match. You can do things differently, you can have different skills but you are moving in the same direction and that is the way we want to behave when we are part of a team. What I try to do is get everybody to work towards the organisation's common mission. My work revolves around growing your influence and building trust with your colleagues. Contact me via e-mail for a meeting or a team building workshop.
I’m pretty good at not carrying regrets around and I choose to be happy. I no longer allow negative things in my life to spoil the good things. I have been described as a skilled strategic developer. My things are planning from conception to implementation whilst defining the corporate mission, objectives and branding. How can I get to the heart of the change I am trying to make in the world?
It matters to me that human beings step up and speak their truth. It’s important to me that we look each other in the eyes and take advantage of this moment we have, as in reality no one knows how long we will have these opportunities. I think all of us are more powerful than we can even imagine and all of us have the ability to make things better.
