It’s all very well having lots of ideas for how to improve your bottom line, but how do you decide which of them to take forward? Which will be best for your profitability and best for your brand values?
Profitability is always a useful measure. The power of one is an immensely powerful approach to help you improve your business. Challenge your management team to come up with ideas to improve your 7 key levers by 1% or 1 day, and they will respond when they see the potential impact of making incremental small changes.
But businesses that look purely at the bottom line may lose sight of their values and risk compromising their brand. It is hugely profitable to triple your prices when your products are in hot demand. And some companies will take full advantage. But if your ethics and your company values promote integrity or customer care, you may hesitate before price gouging and other dubious practices.
So the profitability brand values canvas measures ideas in two ways. Firstly, how much impact will they make to your profit and cashflow? And secondly, will they be positive or negative for your brand values?
The profitability and brand values canvas applies a simple 5 step structured approach to give you perspective. It helps you choose great ideas easily and discuss shared assumptions with your team.
Use it to build a shortlist of your best ideas quickly before you invest a lot of time in research, or in running around like a busy fool, trying to do 37 things at the same time. Time matters when you are running a business, so make sure you know which ideas are worth your effort, and focus on those.