sense of fun

Richard Branson with the band at San Francisco airport

Not everyone in business, by any means, subscribes in practice to the idea of business values being crucial, or even just important, for a business.

From what we learn of the more egregious examples of corporate misdoings, and personally from some of the negative experiences I’ve had as a business owner and as a customer over the years, I believe the term “business values” is for some business owners and executives an oxymoron.

As for me, I no more wish to do business with such people, or to have a values-free business myself, than I would wish to live in a values-free society, with everyone for themselves and the Devil take the hindmost.

It’s not just a matter of pragmatism. I firmly believe it is a key part of how most of us want to live our lives.

For those of us in business, we spend a lot of time at it, and to an extent and to varying degrees what we do or don’t do in business defines us and is going to be our legacy.

Do we want to be, and be remembered, as shysters and tricksters, for whom business is solely about making a profit by whatever means we can manage, or as as business people of principle, with high values, with alignment between our stated values and how we actually run our businesses on a day to day basis?

Does that sound serious? Well, it’s meant to be.

But does it exclude having fun?

Far from it.

Every now and again I remind myself of a set of business values adopted and applied by legendary entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.

In one version I read of those, for his Virgin brand, the list was:

Value for money
Quality
Reliability
Innovation
Sense of fun

One reason I like travelling on planes with the Virgin brand is that the cabin crew practise that sense of fun.

Without in any way creating a sense that they don’t take their job, and the passengers’ safety, completely seriously.

It’s a nice balance.

Not that we should expect to always get the balance right.

But in my business, if there is a risk that sometimes people will mistake my intention to have fun doing business for a lack of appropriate seriousness of purpose about providing great service, then that’s a risk I’m prepared to take. I reckon in the long run it will play out well for everyone concerned.

Is a sense of fun, or something similar, one of your business values? Or doesn’t the idea appeal?

Image credit: “Branson posing with the band”, courtesy riz94107 on Flickr, Creative Commons

If doing business with a sense of fun works for Richard Branson, that’s good enough for me

In recent weeks my partner Suzie Cheel and I have been very preoccupied with re-focusing our consulting business. Today, prompted by a four year old blog post about Sir Richard Branson’s business values, we reminded ourselves about the necessity of having a very clear, understandable, easy-to-communicate values framework for the business. And that led to a very productive discussion about our marketing.

Richard Branson with the band at San Francisco airport

Although we have had the consulting business in place for over twenty years, and our formal company structure for some sixteen of those, what we have been setting up with our all-new, all singing and dancing Social Media Powered Marketing is in many ways a new business, with some of the usual challenges attendant on such ventures.

It’s involved getting out of our comfort zones and some 4 am starts to take advantage of coaching sessions from the USA. And balancing other commitments, including family ones, some travel, my ongoing coaching commitments and so on.

We have been attending to a lot of practical details of how the business will work, getting clarity about our target market, developing marketing plans and initiatives, ensuring the supply of some outsourced services, developing product. All good, all necessary. But not much, at least explicitly, about the values framework.

Then today, in a management magazine I was scanning over breakfast, I read some comments by a top executive which reminded me of how essential it is for any business with long term prospects to define and articulate its values. I made a mental note to get around to that. “Too busy” right now, of course. Which if I heard a coaching client say I would no doubt ask, so when would be a good time to identify and document your company values?

Physician, heal thyself!

It’s not that we are working in a values-free zone, or that we don’t have shared values guiding the way we do business. Just that we had not had that specific conversation to identify our values in sufficient clarity to guide and monitor the way the business operates.

No doubt because I had been thinking briefly about these issues, my eye was caught a bit later in the morning, while fixing some photos that had somehow gone missing from older blog posts here, by a post I had written back in 2005 about the values espoused by Sir Richard Branson for his Virgin brand enterprises. One version of those values lists the following:

Value for money
Quality
Reliability
Innovation
Sense of fun

The first four make eminent good sense to me but I like particularly having “sense of fun” inscribed as a key company value. I suspect that, in a sea of companies offering internet marketing services, it could be easy to think we have to be and be seen to be Very Serious.

Because business is serious, right?

Well, if Richard Branson and Virgin can be so successful (and not just in monetary terms), we can hardly be said to be irresponsible about our business if we choose to be known as people who are committed to having fun, as well as to providing value for money, quality, reliability and innovation, and whatever other “serious” values we might choose to incorporate.

Incidentally, taking time out just now to have that conversation about our values and to agree definitely that Sense of Fun was going in the list, we went on to have a further, very productive conversation about our branding – which frankly until this morning had been a bit fuzzy and is now clear enough for us to have a story we are keen to tell. But you know how it is, we had spent some money on branding and would now have to change and probably spend some more money.

We took the long view, better to get it right now, even if there is a bit of extra expense, than to stick stubbornly to something just because we have paid some design costs. Specifically, we are switching from “Webarts Online Marketing” to “Social Media Powered Marketing” – if you check out the site in the next day or so, just imagine that the name has been changed .

All in all, a fast trajectory of marketing clarification and decision-making between breakfast and lunch, triggered by the initially disconcerting and disruptive effect on my thinking from seeing “sense of fun” listed as a business value. But a process which rapidly pulled some loose threads together and which we believe gave us a better framework with which to proceed.

So what would your business look like if you incorporated a sense of fun as a key value? Or have you already done that? Or does the idea appal you?

I’d love to hear about any other companies you know of – including your own – that have incorporated a sense of fun in their values framework. No doubt there are some obvious ones, such as clown services for children’s parties. But what “serious” businesses are there, besides Virgin, which include a sense of fun in their values, explicitly or implicitly in the way they deliver service?

[Image credit: "Branson posing with the band", courtesy riz94107 on Flickr, Creative Commons]