Strategic Discipline Blog

Maximum growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They’re inseparable.

Attempting to quantify a subjective element of your business is not easy.  Fortunately Jim Stengel in Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's 50 Greatest Companies provides substantial data on the value of creating what he calls a “Brand Ideal” for your company. 

The chart on the right compares companies who have successfully formulated their “Brand Ideal” against companies that have not.  The data, from a ten-year-growth study of more than 50,000 brands around the world, show that companies with ideals of improving people’s lives at the center of all they do outperform the market by a huge margin. (The concept of improving people’s lives is at the core of “Statement of Values.”)  The results, as noted in the blog, mirror Patrick Lencioni’s observations in his book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Strength Trumps Everything Else in Business, and is based Lencioni’s years in consulting businesses.

Businesses driven by a higher ideal, a higher purpose, outperform their competition by a wide margin, and frequently create both new businesses and entire new business sectors. The chart shows companies with this “Brand Ideal” perform nearly 400% better in profit than their counterparts.   Stengel notes that the data “corroborated what I had implicitly believed and acted on throughout my career.” 

What’s your Statement of Values worth?  This chart provides a specific worth for elements like your Core Values, Mission/Company Purpose and Vision.   

By operating according to the principles in this framework, the world’s best businesses achieve growth three times or more that of the competition in their categories. The central principle of this framework is the importance of having a brand ideal, a shared goal of improving people’s lives. A brand ideal is a business’s essential reason for being, the higher-order benefit it brings to the world. A brand ideal of improving people’s lives is the only sustainable way to recruit, unite, and inspire all the people a business touches, from employees to customers. It is the only thing that enduringly connects the core beliefs of the people inside a business with the fundamental human values of the people the business serves. Without that connection, without a brand ideal, no business can truly excel.

From Stengel’s book here is the BRAND IDEAL Definition:

1. The key to unlock the code for twenty-first-century business success.
2. The only sustainable way to recruit, unite, and motivate all the people a business touches, from employees to customers.
3. The most powerful lever a business leader can use to achieve competitive advantage.
4. A business’s essential reason for being, the higher-order benefit it brings to the world.
5. The factor connecting the core beliefs of the people inside a business with the fundamental human values of the people they serve.
6. Not social responsibility or altruism, but a program for profit and growth based on improving

A brand is simply the collective intent of the people behind it; a brand defines who you are and what you stand for as a business to everyone the business touches, from employees to end consumers. If you want great business results, you and your brand have to stand for something compelling. And that’s where brand ideals enter the equation.

As Gazelles coaches our intent is to help you build your Statement of Values, the vision, purpose and core values that establish your core beliefs.  Stengel’s book intends to capture these as well as develop something more, the Brand Ideal.

Recently I’ve discovered a business that supports and helps companies build their Brand Ideal.  Daniel Blanchette of Dbcom Inc. and I have shared several conversations about the work he does helping his clients discover their Brand Ideal.  Dbcom is a marketing company which is precisely what developing your Brand Ideal is about.

Daniel shared these points about creating a Brand Ideal.  ‘"Brand Ideal" is the finality which links structure and process to deliver the results at best cost. (Performance)’

‘"Having a brand ideal" is the value connection between Leader, employees and Customers to deliver to them satisfaction. (Excellence)’

Read Jim Stengel’s book Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's 50 Greatest Companies. Contact Daniel Blanchette to help you develop your Brand Ideal.  Whatever you do don’t diminish the impact that creating a Statement of Values can have for your business. 

Employee Engagement increases the energy and voltage that your company performs at.  Discover just how powerful your business can be by harnessing the impact of Statement of Values and a Brand Ideal.