Great coaches lie awake at night thinking about how to make you a better board member. A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see so that you can be who you always knew you could be. An important part of the coach’s skill and service is to never wait to give feedback – a great coach coaches in the moment.
The prove → plan →execute model doesn’t work in agile land. Instead it’s a case of Act → Learn →Build.nAction is primary. You can’t do a financial plan if a customer has never seen your new product or service. You must put something out there!
Each of these has its place and can heighten our understanding of what is really going on – but without the critical 4th mechanism of acting from shared awareness – the difficult problems as exemplified by housing, health and climate change will persist. That shared awareness must extend to cultural awareness.
As a first step on leveraging your brand’s purpose – consider mapping it’s strengths against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
A good future may depend – not on minimising consumer capitalism – but on radically extending its reach and depth. This was an undercurrent at Bayer’s Future of Farming Dialogue held in Cologne in October. (I attended representing Nuffield International*.)
To add texture to business valuations – it’s important to think about customer value. Customer value can be defined as the total lifetime value of a company’s customer base. Companies can increase this value by acquiring more customers, retaining them for longer, making their experience simpler (and often less expensive to deliver) through digital improvements and so on.
To value a business through this lens – here are some metrics to consider: