What is the point of our business? This is one of those questions that seems obvious until you actually ask it - and then it turns out that everyone on the team has a slightly different view.
It goes without saying that we make food, and we can only continue to do that if we also manage to make some money along the way. There has to be more to it than that, though, because we only make certain kinds of food, they aren’t random and we usually intuitively know which foods we can make and which we can’t. And, on top of that, we communicate with a very specific tone of voice and visual style.
Also, what gets us out of bed in the morning is the feeling that what we are doing is valuable - so it would be good to be clear in what way it’s valuable exactly.
It took a few sessions over a period of months to elicit what we all understand, believe and agree, is the point of Rude Health. And after all this time and energy we arrived at our purpose: To inspire everyone to be in rude health. And, as with the invention of the paper clip, once we had come to realise this, it seemed completely obvious.
It is very valuable to know why we do what we do. Yes, partly so we don’t look stupid for not knowing in case anyone asks, but practically being able to refer to a core statement has made making a lot of decisions a lot easier. Making decisions is most of what we do, and as a bunch of enthusiasts, we have found it’s often too easy to say yes. Being clear about our purpose has made it a lot easier to say yes only to opportunities that are 100% relevant.
Consequently we have time to do the things we do better (check out our current window display in Whole Foods Market, which we’re really pleased with). It is also making NPD decisions easier and helps our sales team explain the purpose of our brand on-shelf. In fact, it helps explain our role to a huge range of people - from new hires to customers to potential producers and distributors.
Finally, we can only inspire other people to be in rude health if we are in rude health ourselves - the best reason ever to experiment with all the foods, drinks and activities we can dream up to keep our team in rude health.
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