Why should anybody care about your company?

Can you express and verbalise your company's purpose and value prop? No? Don't panic. Company soul-searching can help you find (back to) your roots and create a financially rewarding sense of direction as well as a meaningful workday for you employees.

Get busy, get practical

Most employees today desire to be part of something bigger, leave a mark, do something meaningful. They want to play a role in a bigger narrative, and it is up to you to set the scene. You might think the task is easy, but you will often find it difficult to concentrate your tasks, projects, visions, ideas and operations in a single sentence.

Identifying your purpose and bringing it to life will be a great help for your future strategy. It will also help your partners and employees to understand what direction you are going. But: Soul-searching is tough going and answering these basic questions might speed things up and give you something concrete to kick-start your rebranding process:

• What are you, your company and your employees passionate about?
• What is your core business today – and what might it be for the next 5-10 years?
• What is your main value-adding offering?
• In what way are you involved in the environment/society you are a part of?
• What might be a good future contribution be?

At Master International, we went through this very process in 2016/17.

The outcome, strategic and commercial decisions like in the case of MASTER

• Focus on the developement of  innovative Human Resources solutions with proven business benefits 
• Change the company strategy by adding sales/marketing to development and production (reallocation of resources and investment into sales and marketing)
• Add on to today's “exclusive partners” and open up to new marketing and sales channels like multiple cooperation partners, alliances and integration (multi- channel strategy)
• Use our skills, tools and some of our resources for social activity and support (CSR)

The process gave a clearer focus, brought new energy, and provided us with a sense of brand direction. Interestingly, it also created the desired increase in sales and turnover AND increased our social contribution, at the same time.

Have patience, be honest

The process is not supposed to be painless and without any challenges. You are not dealing with a quick fix here. Big questions take long to answer, and often the process is as just important as the outcome. Why? Because it will inevitably bring your company and employees together – and get them engaged. And engagement is the key motivator if you are looking for increased performance.

An interesting article as inoput to about what is more important, strateg or purpose by HBR: https://hbr.org/2017/11/the-best-companies-know-how-to-balance-strategy-and-purpose