It’s important to identify and communicate a brand

Editor’s note: Michelle Stockman is an independent consultant with her company, Fort Smith-based Msaada Group. Stockman earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University-Chicago in communications and fine arts, and earned a master’s in entrepreneurship from Western Carolina University. Her thoughts on business success appear each week on The City Wire.

Back in the late ‘90’s, I worked for an entrepreneurial fast growth company that was in the IT sector. The company was speeding toward an IPO on the stock market, so leadership brought in a consultant to evaluate the strategic business plan to take the company public.

In that process, business leadership engaged in multiple meetings and retreats to uncover what the company wanted to be in the next phase of business.

Executives were walking around talking in more acronyms than ever before while discussing the company’s core values, BHAG’s (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) and so forth. After months of evaluation, market research and meetings, the company emerged with a golden plan of who the company was, its core values and where it wanted to go. The process not only resulted in a solid corporate brand, but also a unified communication to the world of what the company represents.

Small business owners who go through the exercise of creating a traditional or strategic business plan often plot a mission and vision statement on paper that gets filed away. The mission and vision are generic statements about how the new business will use its competitive advantage to be the best in the market. However, most small business owners miss the point of creating centralized statements like the mission and vision statement.

Inc. Magazine (June 2011), wrote a feature article on company Core Values. Leigh Buchanan wrote; “Leaders of early-stage companies don’t lavish a lot of time on culture … (they) put off the heavy work of erecting the scaffolding of values, policies, shared beliefs, rewards, rituals and visual elements that constitute culture. In that void, culture happens …”

In the early stages of a company, many leaders let culture and core values happen, which may or may not be what is best for the company or the image it is trying to brand with the public.

However, when a leader, who has taken the time and attention to build a comprehensive company strategic plan, takes a little more time to set policies in place and take the core passion of the business and make it the company culture, the business identifies itself inside and out. One core value message for employees, customers, investors and more scales the ability for the business leader to communicate who or what the company is and where it is going.

Instilling core values is also a valuable tool to use in providing focus and structure to the first several employees. These employees are taking large risks in their lives to work for a company that may not be stable yet financially, so providing the keys to what matters to the company will become what matters to the employees. These core values or ideals infiltrate all areas of the company, from employees, to branding, to communications to product life cycles and so forth.

Knowing your business identity and enforcing the message across the board is another tool to use in strengthening your business culture and bottom line. Use what will set you apart from the competition and infuse it in all areas of the business. This is another form of you are what you think about, only this time you are what your business thinks about collectively.

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Stockman can be reached at [email protected]