I had a very interesting conversation with Arthur op den Brouw, Creative Director of Designation about business values and how they relate to an organisation’s brand. Arthur’s key assertion is that an organisation’s values are the ones they actually take action on, rather than what they might have decided in a executive meeting.

This problem is that if the “values in use” are different to the “espoused values” then brand positioning, general marketing and even sales suffer as the customer’s experience is different to the expectations that have been set. There is a particular problem in that branding is very much about the intuitive part of the brain rather than the rational and so a customer, partner or employee that sees espoused brand values not being acted on in practice will typically have a negative emotional response; potentially destructive to the organisation.

In short, do what you say you are going to do; or at least be honest about who you really are!