Nelson Phillips

The importance of values

The evidence is clear. People want to work for companies that are making a difference in the world, and this has important implications for the need for strong corporate values to attract and retain the best talent. At the same time, companies with strong values often find it challenging to change, because the values they are built on can get in the way of their ability to respond to changes in the environment. 

Generation Y (born in the 80s and 90s) and Generation Z (born in the late 90s and early 2000s) want to make the world a better place, and believe that business methods are the best way to do so at scale. They see business leaders having a deeper impact on society than religious or political leaders, and they desire organizations to shift from focusing narrowly on generating profit to balancing social and environmental concerns and making a more positive impact.

How do you leverage new growth opportunities?

All kinds of organisations – universities, NGOs, private companies – look to access new audiences and enter new markets by reaching out to resource holders and diverse constituencies outside their standard remit. And there’s a certain amount of good business sense at play here: addressing new audiences helps increase risk diversification and safeguard longer term prosperity.

But this growth strategy comes with potential pitfalls. New audiences often have demands that can be very different to those of existing markets. Organisations entering new spaces run the risk of neglecting mainstream business. The capabilities needed to address a new market are often not those needed to maintain the flow and quality of products and services to existing customers and stakeholders.

How can organisations manage this kind of audience diversification so that everyone comes out of it better off? How can they balance who they already are – or are perceived to be – and what they already do, with the goals, objectives and modus operandi of their new audience