Core Values as competitive advantages (Part 2)
Assessment Framework by C. Hodges Consulting, LLC
In the last newsletter, we walked through a short primer for this multi-week series on competitive advantages. You can go back and reference that article 👉 here.
To add context for the overall food and agribusiness sector, “Competitive advantage in food and agribusiness is increasingly elusive. The ability to differentiate ourselves on tangible assets such as unique products or services, geographical protections, or superior physical assets is ever more difficult and any advantages are usually short-lived.”1
In other words, the nature of the game continues to evolve. We are challenged to look to other areas of the business. An antidote is to shift focus to how we do things - to position for the long-game. To treat core values as competitive advantages.2
I believe that considering all aspects of the business and doing so with an unbiased perspective is a non-negotiable. And as mentioned before, it is best to recruit outside help that you trust to keep the process honest.
This is also one of the reasons I developed a framework to help clients make sure that they carefully consider the big picture and then take a deep dive into their business assessments.
I want to add a special thanks to Dr. Danny Klinefelter, Ryan Turner, and the excellent professors at institutions like Purdue University for the initial exposures to the power of frameworks!
Together, we will venture in the coming weeks into all four categories surrounding Core Purpose. And we will begin identifying your core values within each.
*PSA - having a graphic designer on the team also makes everything better!
Reference your Core Purpose, Target Customers, and Brand Promise from before. Ideally, write them down / have them visible in the same place. Without these, you will have a much more challenging time determining whether or not certain ways of doing things truly matter.
Think about what your organization’s core values are (as you understand them today). Write them down. No need to categorize just yet. We will get there.
Notice similarities and differences between your original list of competitive advantages (from the last newsletter) and your current list of core values.
Save these notes for next week.
As mentioned last time, my intention at a minimum is to offer you some practical guidance for identifying competitive advantages in a way that you may have not previously considered. In this case, I challenge you to focus less on what you do and more on how you do things. Thanks for going on this journey with me.
Wishing you a purposeful weekend,
Courtney
P.S. - if you are enjoying the topic, be sure to check out this Forbes article.
1 https://agribusiness.purdue.edu/intangible-competitive-advantage/
2 https://whittakerassociates.com/core-values-as-a-competitive-advantage/
