Establishing Ethics, Values and Guiding Principles
Defining your Brand’s Mission and Vision.
What are the core values of your business? What ethical guidelines do you follow?
By determining your brand ethics, values and guiding principles, you show your team and your audience the type of community you are fostering. This will serve as a guideline for you and your team on how your business runs, but also an invitation to the type of clientele you want to attract, whose values align with yours.
Your brand values can be your defining factor. They can be the story that makes people admire and appreciate your brands commitments.
To get you thinking, I’ll share the Field & Co. Ethics, Values and Guiding Principles here:
Transparency - We are transparent and open in our thoughts and actions, both within our team and our clients. We value honesty in process, pricing, expectations, outcomes and communication.
Environmental Sustainability - Whether its in-office operations, outsourcing, vendors, printing for clients, encouraging and teaching our community, or charitable donations, we strive to reduce our negative impact on Earth and leave our planet better than we started.
Creativity - We value the creative process and ensure our project timelines allow for ample time in the creative flow. This also means we ask a lot of questions and are interested in learning about every aspect of your business, so we can be the best problem-solvers possible.
Social Justice - As humans and as a company, we have the opportunity to help create a more inclusive world. We are always learning and holding ourselves + others accountable to shift our behaviors and mindsets, to create space for those who are systemically marginalized, and to take action to support those around us. This work to become more inclusive is constant and insistent. We hear, support, and uplift the voices of BIPOC, LGBTQ2IA+ and other marginalized communities.
Mutual Respect - As business owners, our journeys are all so unique. But as humans, we have so much in common and deserve to be treated with kindness. We respect and honor where you’re at in your business and who you are as a person, and expect that same respect to be returned.
Keep reading to learn how to establish your brand’s ethics, values and guiding principles.
Related Post: Identifying, Defining & Attracting Your Ideal Client
By creating your brand’s values, you will show your audience what your brand feels strongly about, how you operate and what you strive for. Potential clients see huge value in this and will bring themselves to your business if your values align with theirs.
Brand Values - boring right?
Generally, yes. We’ve all seen the “Integrity. Honesty. Quality. Customer Service” bullshit hanging in a corporate boardroom. Does anyone actually care about this or follow it? How does this translate to our clients, to our employees or to the people we’re helping?
At a company I previously worked for, we had a poster displaying the company’s values, not far from the ones listed above, plastered in the boardrooms of our office. Not once in 2 years of working here, was there ever a conversation around these values. Except for when a group of old white men, who had flown in from all parts of the world, came to our office for an annual board meeting.
The brigade of old dudes and our C-Suite staff holed up in conference rooms for 3 days straight, refining these “Company Values”. They had extravagant lunches brought in and were NOT to be bothered by any of their staff.
What came from these 3 days and likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary, food, travel and other resources?
A poster with a list of values that looked like the previous ones, just switched around slightly.
Even after all this, we were still not brought into the conversation on Company Values. As staff who connected with, created, presented and sold our products to clients every day, you would think we would need to be trained and evaluated to ensure these values weren’t just a poorly-designed poster on the wall and were really put into action.
Brand values shouldn’t just live on an ugly poster.
Brand values are just words until they are given meaning through substance and true action.
All team members, whether juniors, just entering the workforce or C-Suite executives should be able to define, align with and embody your company’s values.
Let’s be honest:
When it comes to ethics and values, don’t pretend. Stick to things you ACTUALLY care about, not what you think you should care about. Authenticity is key to embodying and sticking with these values. If you know in your core that you do not give a hoot about affordability/low price commitments, then do not make it one of your business’ core values and guiding principles. Stick to the stuff you actually want to guide you.
You are the leader of your brand, you have the opportunity be a leader in your chosen community.
Once your clients have trust in your shared values, they are more likely to align themselves with you. They will look out for how you are working to achieve the ethics and goals you’ve set in the small business steps you make. Your audience wants you to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Skip the performative BS and take true, meaningful action towards your values. Align your business values with you ideal client’s personal values and see how quickly your audience grows.
Don’t let them die.
Check in with this strategy every few months to ensure you’re keeping your business in line with the ethics, values and guiding principles you created. For your business to keep growing and to remain authentic, you need to hold yourself and your team accountable to these values.
Books I Love on the Topic of Establishing Business Ethics and Core Values:
Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Non binary Field Guide for Graphic Designers
The Value of Core Values: Five Keys to Success Through Values-Centered Leadership by Lisa Huetteman
How can you create values that are real, measurable and that actually mean something?
Your brand values can be your defining factor. They can be the story that makes people admire and appreciate your brand's commitments.
Ask yourself these questions to form your Brand Ethics, Values and Guiding Principles:
Representation matters. Are you bringing in voices from all reaches of your team? Not just the stakeholders, board members and executives. Are you hearing the opinions, desires and values of all levels of staff?
Are you hearing the opinions, desires and values of your clients? Past, current and potential?
Values should be a mix of truth and aspirations. What are you currently doing that represents your values? What are you striving to do?
For example: A&W, Canadian fast-food chain, has been consistently reducing their waste output in recent years. Sustainability including waste reduction, food donation and resource conservation is a main value of the company.
Here’s how they’ve displayed the work they’ve already done:
“Since 2016, we have donated more than 55,000 pounds of food from our supply chain to charitable organizations across Canada.”
While also showing where they are headed and what they are continuing to do to support this value:
“A&W strives to work with food suppliers who care as much as we do about sustainability. And we’re constantly encouraging our current suppliers to utilize the most responsible practices possible. Because as environmental methods and options evolve, it’s imperative that we grow along with them.”
This is a company that really is making the steps to show their audience that they stand by their core values by showing what they’ve already done, what they’re currently doing and what they plan to do in the future.
Remember: Set ethics, values and guiding principles that align with the brand you actually want to be a part of, not ethics and values that you think you’re supposed to follow. Be authentic at this stage in building your brand and allow those core beliefs to continue to develop your business as it grows.
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Click here to read about How to Influence Buying Decisions
Click here to read about Why I’m a Business Owner Who Prioritizes Employee Well-Being