Business Design

Finding your core & values

Its not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are
— Roy Disney

The core of an organization is its purpose. Beyond products, services & other functions — sales / marketing / operation — the core is what helps in creating a continuity for the organization.

A clearly defined purpose helps in articulating both internal and external manifestos — ensuring that what we promise to our customers is what
we do everyday.

The purpose can be seen from two aspects of any organization:

Simon Seneks Model is another clear way of understanding the functional and emotional aspects of the organization.

The Functional:
What we create and how we create it — what is easily defined— the product and the process. The functional also covers aspects like marketing and sales.

The Emotional:
Our drivers and the softer aspects of an organization — the aspects that are difficult to define and monitor but is equally and in some cases more important than the functional part.

To identify our core, the workshop first focusses on articulating our values. Every organization has a set of deeply embedded values with which it operates- whether identified or not. The workshop focusses on discovering our values.

Some workshop formats work with individual interviews while others work best in a group or a large team scenario when there is enough trust within the members.

Some of the leading questions that help in bringing out the values:

1. What are our strengths and weakness as an organization?
2. Talk about a critical issue that the organization faced and how was it handled? The way the issue was handled tells a lot about shared values — was there anything different you would do today looking back?
3. What was the first few days at the organization like? How is it different from now?
4. Talk about a success or a moment when the organization pulled together and did something that was tough. How would you address the same task today?
5. If the organization was in some other business altogether but with the same team, what business or industry would you envision it to be in.

The interview and group discussion leads to identifying a set of values. By distilling these values further — and then crosschecking the values against how we operate — allows us to articulate them clearly. A set of 3 or 5 values in most cases is a good number of values to define. The smaller the number the harder it is to define it clearly.

Once the values are defined clearly the core purpose becomes the unifying thread that connects all the values together. The core purpose as a singular statement needs to have resonance both internally and externally.

The core purpose also becomes the Northstar for the organization and as a reminder. To further embed the core within the organizations everyday function — the core purpose also creates the framework for the identity of the organization. This ensures that the organizational brand — visible in various forms in both internal and external manifestations.

The purpose sits within a nested process that defines the various aspects of an organization going ahead:

The purpose builds the various facets of the organization.

As an exercise, the workshop also tests out the core purpose against the organizations’ USP, market need and the value that the organization is able to create. This exercise also helps in aligning the purpose with the market need and ensuring that the business model the organization is in is able to capitalize on the right opportunities.

once the core purpose is defined — defining the market need / value creation and USP allows us to define our own market and strategy

As a focussed module, the workshop ends with clear value articulation and identifying the purpose which is then used as the groundwork for creating the organizational identity.