What makes a values-led business
A values-led business prioritises its core values over profits, aiming to have a positive impact and use ethical practices. It considers how its actions affect staff, supplier, partners, the environment, animals and society as a whole.
Defining your values helps ensure your business’s decisions benefit people and the planet by aligning any actions and decisions back to the core values. Customers increasingly support sustainable, ethical companies. It creates a filter to use.
To build a values-led business:
- Define your personal values.
- Establish your business’s values.
- Align decisions with these values.
- Consider your impact.
- Put people and planet over profits.
Values-led businesses attract customers and set themselves up for success in this world that is hopefully moving towards more ethics and sustainability.
How to define what really matters
It’s important to take time to review your personal and business values to ensure they still align with what you want for yourself and your business. Redefining your values, if needed, is a really good exercise to do if it has been awhile.
The first step is to define your personal values.
An exercise you can do is listing out all the values that come to mind for you. Often the ones that come up first are the ones that are most important to you. You can then also look at lists of values online to see if any others stand out to you as representing a value you hold too.
Then, look for common themes between the values you listed and narrow them down to a core set of values, around 3 to 10. For example, values like ‘ethical’, ‘fairness’, ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ could all group together under the value of ‘fairness’. Or, ‘honesty’, ‘integrity’ and ‘transparency’ could represent the value of ‘integrity’ for you. Choose the word that resonates the most and you feel encompasses the related values.
Next, consider your business values.
Your business values will be informed by your personal values, but they likely won’t be exactly the same. For example, ‘family’ may be an important personal value but not directly relevant as a business value, unless you want to cultivate a family feeling in your business or heavily cater to staff with families. Some values will likely cross over, like ‘creativity’ is both a personal and business value for me as a designer.
For your business, choose values that will guide your decisions and be important as your business scales. You can choose values intentionally that you want your business to uphold. Use your business values as a filter when making decisions, like whether a new product or service aligns with your values, for example a business that values ‘affordability’. will make different choices that one that values ‘wealth’. If ‘knowledge’ is a value, you might focus on sharing content and experiences that are very educational. If ‘transparency’ is a value, you might share behind-the-scenes and be open about your costs and pricing in the supply chain for example.
Sharing your values
While it’s good to openly share your values, be careful not to seem like you are “greenwashing” or exaggerating your values for marketing purposes. But, sharing the good things you are doing in line with your values helps to encourage other businesses and benefits consumers trying to make ethical choices. Clearly stating your values can help to attract customers with the same values.
Your values give your business and brand a strong foundation. To then use them in your brand identity, marketing and messaging to show your audience the values you share and the community you want to build. Overall, values-based businesses are becoming increasingly important to consumers so taking the time to define what your values are and using them in your business will set you up for success.
