This is the third part of a series of four and is about the “Trust within Vision, Mission and Values… which are the base for the Strategy”.

• The first part was about “Goal and Elements of Trust“
• The second part was about “Trust within Marketing“
• The fourth part is about “Trust within You“

Trust within Vision, Mission and Values… which are the base for the Strategy

Marketing was the first direction we looked at… but vision, mission, values and the strategy is what’s behind marketing. This is something which affects the entire company, not just marketing. Let’s see wat logic, authenticity and empathy means here.

Logic

Vision is something unreal which is just real for the visionary. It is something great, something we want to reach and gives us a direction we have in mind and align everything we do. The visionary believes in it, but other may think this is crazy. It is difficult to get others on track. If there is logic in, we will get that they say “that’s right and makes sense, but I do not think this could be reached”. Such a person believes on the quality of the vision. A vision does not claim to be reached. The main direction is, that people believes in it and gives everything a common direction. The vision needs to be present every time and every where. If we know the vision and think that it makes sense (it is logic) we still keep on track, even is there is a fail…. we believe on the big thing. That’s the best and strongest trust we could get from colleagues and customers.

But a vision needs the mission behind. A mission is more concrete than the vision and describes the purpose. If we don’t know the purpose of it, we tend to be skeptical.  The purpose of something includes the quality and brings it down to a round figure and that it is logic. A corporate mission must contain what a company does for its customers, its employees and its owners… and, if there is the right communication, people tend to stay behind something if it helps them personally.

For the logic trust, values are less important in a first view. They describes what motivates a company and what they stay for. Here’s an example from Adidas:

• Performance: Sport is the foundation for all we do and executional excellence is a core value of our Group.
• Passion: Passion is at the heart of our company. We are continuously moving forward, innovating, and improving.
• Integrity: We are honest, open, ethical, and fair. People trust us to adhere to our word.
• Diversity: We know it takes people with different ideas, strengths, interests, and cultural backgrounds to make our company succeed. We encourage healthy debate and differences of opinion.

This is the point on the i and makes the vision and mission logic, it underlines it. They must be true and show who we are, not who we want to be. With the values we understand why someone is doing something, what is motivating him and why he is acting in this way. The logic circle is closed.

Authenticity

Appearance and reality must be crossing to reach trust. Authenticity is much more and from a business point of view it does not mean “be yourself and ignore what others think”. The vision you have in mind which you stay for must be you and be inline with your customers needs. Speaking, feeling, acting and thinking needs room and have to show the vision to be authentic.

For brand authenticity we align product and marketing efforts with the mission and discover what is against authenticity here. Through the mission, we show the way we are going. If we are 100% behind our mission, then we are authentic. We shouldn’t have something in our mission which we think that it must be there because it is expected. Brand authenticity gives a brand character and, if it’s positive, trust.

Be real, be authentic and be you as a brand, show your core values. Values are a key element of authenticity and much more important than in direction of logic. Your brand will always be measured on it’s values, much more than on it’s vision and mission. The values needs to be credible, visible and you to reach authenticity.

Empathy

Empathy describes the ability and willingness to see and understand perception, thoughts, emotions, reasons and personality traits. A vision aligned on logic and authenticity is reflecting and showing string arguments and customer needs, but not the attitude. Logic and authenticity are the hard facts, not what is between the lines… the gut instinct which we need to trigger in a healthy  measure in the big vision. But be carefully, to much empathy in the vision is maybe recognized as non-authentic.

The empathy within the mission is, compared with logic and authenticity, not reflecting the purpose and the way, it’s reflecting (passive) how we adopt on perception, thoughts, emotions reasons and personality traits in our acting.

Values are our own principles which we stay for. Values needs to be true to be authentic, to be emphatic they need to trigger (active) perception, thoughts, emotions, reasons and personality traits of ourself. We shouldn’t be self-orientated, we should be value-orientated. If a company acts in a way which does not fit to values, than everything else is not relevant. An example is, if a company exploits his employees and the press is writing about it. In this case they do not stay behind real values and do not get empathy and trust.

This was the third part of a series of four. Have you seen the other once?