Values and Value

For all the high-minded opining about brand reputation, one central truth endures. Brand reputation is predicated on demonstrable values and value. Values translate as organizational character; value materializes through operational proficiency.

Brand-led organizations continuously reveal their values and value through the countless organizational activities performed throughout the course of daily operations and via the people, products, and services acting as agents of the brand.

Thus, the operative phrase for the reputational brand is “value delivered and values demonstrated.”

Most people would have a similar understanding of “value,” even if it’s highly subjective according to one’s expectations and needs. On the other hand, when we refer to values in the context of the brand system, we don’t mean the words and phrases that organizations formulate and promulgate as part of their culture-making efforts. Instead, we are referring to something altogether larger and more meaningful.

Rather than the “words-on-the-wall” encouragement of salutary attitudes and behaviors, “values” should be understood as the overall character of the organization — the type and quality of work it performs; the nature of the expertise and people who perform the work; the economic, social, and cultural benefit of the work; its accountability to stakeholders who matter; and the attention paid to its responsibilities as a citizen of the planet. In other words, the observable representations of the organization that form a discernible perception of its character.

Certainly, the stated values of an organization prefigure character, but they don’t automatically validate character. While the expressed values of the culture set the tone for members of the organization, the actual experiences people have with the organization are what substantiate the culture. Thus, character comprises both organizational culture and the experiences produced via its culture, the combination of which represent the organization’s demonstrable values as perceived by its stakeholders. Demonstrable values are the only values that matter in the brand system. And, ultimately, demonstrable values comprise brand values.

Value also shapes the character of an organization because of its determining effect on culture. According to brand system theory, the reputational brand is premised on unique, exceptional, and high-barrier institutional expertise, which corresponds to a distinct value proposition. In turn, whatever characterizes the institution’s expertise permeates the DNA of the organizational culture that emerges, including its values. Said another way, the nature of institutional expertise establishes the basis for the organization’s value proposition, which in turn shapes organizational culture and the experiences that ultimately accrue to the character of the organization and its reputational brand.

Differences in organizational character from one type of enterprise to the next may be subtle, but those differences matter greatly to the way culture and brand evolve. An engineering-oriented organization will materialize a different character from that of an advertising agency. An industrial manufacturer will manifest an operating culture distinct from a software development outfit. The culture of a healthcare provider reflects (or should) a significantly dissimilar temperament than one would expect from a financial services firm. The differences in character between each of these organizational comparisons rest on core institutional expertise.

Certainly, organizations operating in the same or an adjacent market sector often evince similar institutional expertise. In these instances, institutional expertise ultimately reaches a limit as far as brand differentiation is concerned. That partially explains why organizational culture has become a focal point of brand theory. Where the playing field has many participants there’s a strong interest in establishing the organization’s unique, individual character. If the competitive market is especially commodified, the task to establish one-of-one brand differentiation becomes grim. Thus, internal branding around culture seeks to configure a distinctive organizational identity, galvanized by values, that attaches to the character of the enterprise and its brand.

This internal branding effort makes even more sense when we accept the reality of the organization, i.e., an assemblage of dissimilar individuals seeking to productively coexist as a coalitional community. Even if people share a passion for the work they perform or the cause they advocate, their extracurricular lives largely exist in separate and often divergent realms. Organizational culture thus becomes a critical focus in harmonizing the diverse society that encompasses everyone across and in between the executive suite, shop floor, back office, and field operations and the personalities, predilections, and predispositions that inhabit each individual therein.

Ultimately, the discernible atmospherics of organizational culture (values) and the performance of operating culture (value) combine to shape the organization’s stature. Still, while organizational culture indeed plays a role in shaping perceptions around the reputational brand, operating culture carries the greater weight in that mission by virtue of the actual brand experiences and outcomes that emerge from its productive efforts.