Most of Your Brand Strategy is a Waste of Time

Most nonprofit leaders have been through some version of the brand strategy process. The board retreat, where everyone debates whether "empowerment" or "transformation" belongs in the mission statement. The persona exercise where someone invents a 34-year-old Prius-driving mom of two to represent an entire constituency. The tagline brainstorm that eats up a full afternoon and produces something no one will remember six months later. Eric calls it process theater: work that sounds great in proposals and looks impressive on a timeline, but halfway through, everyone in the room is quietly wondering what they're actually building toward.

This episode puts ten common elements of brand strategy on trial. Eric and Jonathan each rank them as essential, important, or overrated, and the results surface a real philosophical divide. Jonathan, coming from the executive director seat, keeps returning to self-awareness as the throughline: an organization that deeply knows its values, its audience, and the specific value it delivers to the world has the foundation for everything else. Eric, working as the branding strategist who inherits the output of these processes, keeps seeing the same trap: organizations that pour months of effort into the wrong elements and emerge with jargon-filled statements that sound impressive and communicate nothing.

Where they genuinely disagree is on brand values. Jonathan ranks them essential; Eric calls them overrated. Jonathan argues that values should inform hiring, culture, and how leadership shows up every day. Eric’s response is: "Compelling argument. No one does that." They end up aligning on a nuanced middle ground, but the tension reveals something important about the gap between how brand strategy is supposed to work and how it actually plays out in practice.
 

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:00] Brand strategy has a "process theater" problem 
[00:03:00] Mission and vision statements: both rank them overrated 
[00:05:00] Brand values: essential or a motivational poster trap? 
[00:09:00] Why positioning and niche is the most undervalued element 
[00:13:00] Taglines: "No one gives a shit about your tagline" 
[00:14:00] Audience segmentation vs. the persona exercise trap 
[00:19:00] Brand voice and tone: important, but only after the essentials 
[00:22:00] Value proposition: Jonathan's "God tier" pick 
[00:26:00] Theory of change: comic books over engine schematics 
[00:30:00] The four questions that replace your entire brand strategy

Notable Quotes:

[00:01:20]: "Sometimes these processes can be overinflated, a bit of process theater. Things that sound great in proposals, and then halfway through you're like, 'What are we even doing here?'" Eric Ressler

[00:05:35]: "I need to know what my values are as an organization to build my team, to build my board. That's going to inform who I hire, how I show up, how I expect others to show up." Jonathan Hicken

[00:07:15]: "I see these values that are so ubiquitous they essentially mean nothing. Integrity, empathy. That version of brand values is more common and is a trap." Eric Ressler

[00:12:30]: "As an executive director, knowing what your niche is, is like a stress reducer. When other organizations pop up, rather than being fearful, you can just be like, 'Oh no, that's a different thing.'" Jonathan Hicken 

[00:23:30]: "We cannot assume that because we're doing something that might feel good, or that our staff and volunteers really care about, that we are bringing meaningful value to our community." Jonathan Hicken 

[00:24:05]: "Working on solving a valuable or important problem is not in and of itself a value proposition. That is a mission." Eric Ressler 

Resources & Links:

• Cosmic — Eric Ressler's creative agency for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations
• Seymour Marine Discovery Center — Jonathan Hicken's organization at UC Santa Cruz
• WeDo (Women's Environment and Development Organization) — Global advocacy org referenced as a case study for distilling complex work into clear messaging
• Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History Theory of Change comic 

P.S. — Struggling to align your message with your mission? We help social impact leaders like you build trust-building brands through authentic storytelling, thoughtful design, and digital strategy that works. Let's talk about your goals »

Full Transcript:

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:00]: I think you need to know what your values are as an organization to build your team, to build your board. I need to know those things because that's going to inform who I hire, how I show up, how I expect others to show up. And I need to know that deeply about who I am and bake that into my brand strategy.

Eric Ressler [00:00:20]: Compelling argument. No one does that. That's my take.

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:25]: Bullshit. I do that.

Eric Ressler [00:00:25]: I'm Eric Ressler.

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:25]: I'm Jonathan Hicken.

Eric Ressler [00:00:25]: And this is Designing Tomorrow.

Eric Ressler [00:00:30]: Okay, Jonathan. I'm very excited for today because we're going to continue talking about brand strategy and strategy in general. And I thought it'd be really fun to do... Have you ever seen these tier ranking YouTube videos or podcasts before?

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:45]: Oh yeah. I listened to Bill Simmons podcast and he does this with sports all the time.

Eric Ressler [00:00:50]: Okay, cool. So we're going to give our shot at this, but we're going to be tier ranking the elements of brand strategy.

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:55]: Awesome. Amazing.

Eric Ressler [00:01:00]: What even is brand strategy? We just did an episode. What the fuck even is strategy? We're going to keep going deep on these things. So as a designer and a branding guy, I think deeply about brand strategy. We do a lot of brand strategy work with our clients, but there's a lot of these different elements of brand strategy like mission and vision and niche and all these things. And sometimes, frankly, I look at our brand strategy process and framework almost every year and I'm like, how can we simplify this? Because I do think sometimes these processes can be overinflated, a bit of process theater, things that sound great in proposals. And then halfway through you're like, "What are we even doing here?" So today, I hope we can get more clarity for our listeners around, yes, you do need a brand strategy. And what does that mean exactly and what are the elements that matter and what are some of the elements that are in fact overrated and not as important as we think they are?

Jonathan Hicken [00:01:55]: I've got my elements tiered out here, man. I'm ready to get into it.

Eric Ressler [00:02:00]: So the other thing I just want to tease is that we're going to talk a lot about all these different elements of brand strategy and it's going to probably feel maybe even a little overwhelming to some of our listeners.

Jonathan Hicken [00:02:05]: Sure.

Eric Ressler [00:02:05]: I think at the end of the day, this really boils down to four questions that you need to be able to answer as a leader for an organization. And so once we get through the tiering, I'm going to ask those four questions, give an example, and hopefully that'll be a nice summary takeaway for today.

Jonathan Hicken [00:02:20]: And just to be clear, we're not talking about people strategy, we're not talking about financial strategy, we're talking about brand strategy, limiting it there, right?

Eric Ressler [00:02:30]: I think so. And I would say that brand strategy should influence some of those decisions.

Jonathan Hicken [00:02:30]: Yeah, and vice versa.

Eric Ressler [00:02:30]: And vice versa. But yeah, we're talking about brand here, baby. Okay.

Jonathan Hicken [00:02:30]: Sounds good.

Eric Ressler [00:02:35]: All right. So here's where we're going to start. We're going to go and I'm going to have you rank first and then I'm going to rank for each of these. And we're going to start with the most common one of mission and vision statements. And just to be clear, we're going to rank these on three different tiers basically. So is it essential? Is it important or is it overrated?

Jonathan Hicken [00:03:00]: Overrated.

Eric Ressler [00:03:00]: Oh, I was hoping we disagree on this one. Definitely overrated.

Jonathan Hicken [00:03:05]: It's definitely... I mean, there's baggage to this one, right?

Eric Ressler [00:03:10]: Especially for me.

Jonathan Hicken [00:03:10]: There's a century of history and mission and vision statements. And there's a whole... When I say overrated, it's all that stuff. So it's not just the "Hey, here's our mission, here's our vision." I think there's value in those things, but when we think about mission and vision statement as this process and you got to get your board and everybody involved in a thousand voices to write the perfect sentence, that is the thing that's overrated.

Eric Ressler [00:03:35]: Yeah. Unfortunately, we're perfectly aligned on this one. I was hoping we get some early disagreement, but yes, I think you need a vision statement. I think you need a mission statement. I think you should even think deeply about those things. What I see doing a lot of these and clients coming and hiring us to help them build some of this out as part of their brand strategy and their messaging strategy is that they get an outsized amount of effort and the impact of them is usually not very important. And so yes, we get into wordsmithing land really early. We get into, "Oh, well, the board member thinks this word needs to be in there and oh, we're forgetting about this one program that's really important too." And so then what inevitably happens is you end up with these jargon filled laundry list mission and vision statements that people read and you're like, "Oh, well, that sounds cool and I have no idea what you do."

Jonathan Hicken [00:04:25]: I think what ends up happening is we try to use these mission and vision statements as tools to do a lot of different things when they really serve one purpose and it's a sales purpose. It's almost like your elevator pitch. The best version I think of a mission and vision statement is the thing that you tell someone, what does your organization do when you're in passing? It's my quick pitch.

Eric Ressler [00:04:50]: So you think about it almost like a little elevator pitch.

Jonathan Hicken [00:04:55]: It's like a little elevator pitch. And then you should have that. You should have that. But as far as it being central to brand strategy, totally overrated.

Eric Ressler [00:05:05]: Okay. I think we're mostly in agreement on that one. Let's keep going. So next one up on the list for me is brand values.

Jonathan Hicken [00:05:10]: Brand values. Okay. I think it's essential.

Eric Ressler [00:05:15]: Oh, okay. So I have brand values overrated.

Jonathan Hicken [00:05:15]: You go first. Okay. Here's the disagreement you're going for. Okay. I think that brand values are essential because it's a part of defining who you are and knowing who you are. And that's going to be a thread through all of the items here that I call essential. And that is this deep sense of self-awareness. And I think you need to know what your values are as an organization to build your team, to build your board, to motivate people. I need to know those things because that's going to inform who I hire, how I train, how I show up, how I expect others to show up. And I need to know that deeply about who I am and bake that into my brand strategy.

Eric Ressler [00:06:05]: Compelling argument. No one does that. That's my take.

Jonathan Hicken [00:06:10]: Bullshit. I do that. Okay.

Eric Ressler [00:06:10]: Okay. You're like the only person I know who does that. So okay, here's my take on this one. I see this similar to mission and vision statements where we choose these words and we did an early episode on brand values. Yeah, we did.

Jonathan Hicken [00:06:20]: We did.

Eric Ressler [00:06:20]: And you impressed me because I was like, this is the smartest way I've ever heard anyone articulate how to actually take brand values and put them into action. And it's funny because we have values at Cosmic and I couldn't even rattle off what my actual values list is because I didn't do as good of a job as you're doing with your brand values. But there are a couple that stick with me. And I remember talking about this in the episode that we did. So one of ours is Kaizen, which is a Japanese word that basically means continuous improvement. And so there's these values that become very embodied that I can remember and they become, for me, less of a laundry list of things I remember and more of just an embodied knowing and that's the best version of a value. And I think that that is very important.

And so I hear your argument around knowing that and knowing who you are is really critical. However, what I mostly see is that this is the same trap that we fall into when it comes to mission and vision statement where we come up with these words like integrity and empathy that are so ubiquitous that they essentially mean nothing.

Jonathan Hicken [00:07:25]: Yeah.

Eric Ressler [00:07:25]: Right. So that's why I somewhat controversially put this in the overrated because that version of brand values is more common and is a trap. And I think especially when they become these "Oh, we're going to go do a retreat and we're all going to figure out our values and then we're going to live our values and we're going to put them on the website and we're going to print posters." I think that's mostly how it happens. And I just honestly, I don't ever hear anyone say, "Well, one of our brand values of this is this, and so we're going to act this way." So maybe it is more of just an embodied thing.

Jonathan Hicken [00:07:55]: Yeah. I think in the version of the motivational poster, I agree with you that is overrated. If that's as far as you take the brand values work, then it's totally overrated, waste of time. If you're going far enough to incorporate those values into expectations for your people, into your tone, your messaging, right? If you're integrating those values thoughtfully into other elements of your business, I think that is essential because it helps define who you are for yourself, for your team, for your supporters. But you're right, that work doesn't always happen. And so lacking that work, overrated. I can see that.

Eric Ressler [00:08:35]: So phoned in brand values,

Jonathan Hicken [00:08:35]: Overrated.

Eric Ressler [00:08:35]: Okay.

Jonathan Hicken [00:08:40]: I can get on board with that.

Eric Ressler [00:08:40]: Well executed, deep, strategic, integrated, embodied brand values, essential.

Jonathan Hicken [00:08:45]: All right. All right.

Eric Ressler [00:08:45]: Okay. Agreed. All right, let's keep going. So next we have positioning, differentiation, and we'll just kind of like, the word I like to use for this is niche.

Jonathan Hicken [00:08:55]: Yeah, essential. Again, for me, this is about knowing who you are, knowing how you fit. This is almost like a flavor of product market fit or service market fit. And I think that you need to know where you sit in your community of focus. That could be community, regional, state, national, international, whatever, but you need to know who you are and how you fit. And I think that clarity is essential to building everything else around it.

Eric Ressler [00:09:25]: This is essential for me too. If I could tier rank my essential tier, this would be the top. And the reason I say that is because in the social impact space, I think this gets... Whereas mission and vision get outsized attention, this gets less attention than it should. And this is where we run into all these different nonprofits who are all working on the same issues in the same way. So not enough differentiation, not enough understanding of where the needs are and where there's white space opportunities. And this isn't the same as in the business world where you need to differentiate or you die necessarily because we're not in competition with one another. We're in collaboration with one another for the most part. But I think really getting clear on your niche is absolutely critical because everything else is downstream of that.

And I think we're starting to see some themes here. So we spend a lot of time when we work with our clients helping them figure out how are you positioned in, the way we like to describe it, the broader social impact ecosystem. And there are different levels you can look at. You could look at that regionally, you could look at that in terms of the skillset. I often think about this as, what is your sweet spot? What is unique about how you do your work that you can claim that is different and advantageous to creating an impact in ways that even peers in your social impact ecosystem wouldn't be able to claim in the same way? Getting really clear on your niche to me unlocks all kinds of amazing things. And maybe I'm a little biased here because when we decided to niche in on the social impact space, there was this fear that I had around, well, now I'm pigeonholing myself and now I'm going to say no to all these opportunities.

But as we talked about in previous episodes, saying no is strategy, right? That's one of the hardest things about having conviction with the strategy. So to me, niche is just probably the most important and most undervalued element of brand strategy in this space.

Jonathan Hicken [00:11:15]: You mentioned competition versus collaboration. And I think that having your niche well-defined actually is a benefit for collaboration.

Eric Ressler [00:11:20]: Agreed.

Jonathan Hicken [00:11:25]: Yeah. Because you can show up to the table and you can say to your collaborators, "Here's our piece, and that's your piece. And if we put these pieces together, we can do great things." In some of the collaborative situations or the conversations I've been in, lacking that clarity on your niche can just lead to this nebulous confusion about how we want to work together, but we don't really know how.

Eric Ressler [00:11:50]: I think that's so true. And also someone who before felt like they might be in competition with you now suddenly become more of a collaborator.

Jonathan Hicken [00:11:55]: Correct.

Eric Ressler [00:12:00]: And you can say clearly, no, this is actually not our sweet spot, but this org over here who's very adjacent to us would be a perfect fit for you.

Jonathan Hicken [00:12:05]: Exactly.

Eric Ressler [00:12:05]: And vice versa. I think also being clear on your niche is magnetic for referrals and introductions and that natural networking that happens because if someone knows you and they're like, "Well, they're in the climate environment space, but I don't really know exactly how they're different or unique in any way or what exactly they do," then how are they supposed to introduce you to the people who are going to help move your mission forward?

Jonathan Hicken [00:12:30]: Last thing I'll say as an executive director, knowing what your niche is, is like a stress reducer.

Eric Ressler [00:12:35]: Oh, huge.

Jonathan Hicken [00:12:35]: It's a huge stress reducer because when news of other organizations or other things pop up, rather than being fearful that "Oh, they're going to beat me or they're going to attract more gifts or whatever," if you have your niche, you can easily just be like, "Oh no, that's a different thing."

Eric Ressler [00:12:50]: The way that I think about this sometimes, to just piggyback off that, is you're predeciding how you're going to act in the future. And it's not niche isn't the only way you do this, this is just about boundary setting in general. It's like, I'm going to make the decision now so that in the future when there's some deliberation that might happen, I don't have to spin out on it mentally. That mental taxation just goes down immediately because it's like, I've already made this decision three months ago.

Jonathan Hicken [00:13:20]: Totally. 100%. Then you can just do it.

Eric Ressler [00:13:20]: So

Jonathan Hicken [00:13:20]: If for wellness alone, I recommend that you develop your position and niche. Yeah.

Eric Ressler [00:13:30]: Okay. Next one. Tagline.

Jonathan Hicken [00:13:30]: Overrated.

Eric Ressler [00:13:30]: Overrated. Taglines are overrated. People love taglines. They want their taglines. They think their tagline is the most important thing. If only we just had the perfect tagline, all of our problems would be solved. No one gives a shit about your tagline.

Jonathan Hicken [00:13:45]: Nah.

Eric Ressler [00:13:45]: I mean, maybe if you're Nike, and that's the one example of a tagline that people actually remember that's any good. The other big trap that people fall into with taglines is they're like, "The tagline must describe who we are." Just like the logo must visually represent who we are, another common mistake. And no, it doesn't and you don't need one. That's my take on it.

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:05]: Honestly, I don't think we need to spend too much time on this one because it's overrated. Don't spend time on it.

Eric Ressler [00:14:10]: Okay. Listeners, no more taglines allowed, unless you can come up with a really good one. All right. Next one should be interesting. Audience segmentation and personas.

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:20]: Essential.

Eric Ressler [00:14:20]: Essential. Okay.

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:20]: Essential. And again, this is about understanding who you are and who you serve and just this deep sense of self-awareness. And I have a background in tech, so there's also just, this was hammered into me early in my career on understanding the customer and everything. So I think deeply understanding your customer or your constituent or whatever word you use, that has to be crystal clear. As you're making decisions and building programs and iterating, you have to have that always in focus when you're making those decisions and you need to be able to segment. Just a quick example from Seymour Center. We have this fabulous educational program that's a field trip to our center. You probably went to something like this when you were a kid. Our kids are going to be coming to this program, I'm sure, here soon. On the surface, it seems like it's a youth program. I actually think it's a teacher program.

Eric Ressler [00:15:20]: Yeah.

Jonathan Hicken [00:15:20]: So I think we're actually providing more of a value to teachers, not to say we're not serving the kids and providing value there, but when we think about designing this program, we're actually designing it to meet the teacher's needs first. So anyway, that's just one little example of how we're using audience to make decisions internally. And it's because we know who we are and what this program's all about.

Eric Ressler [00:15:45]: Okay. So I have audience segmentation and personas in important, but not essential. And I think it's because of the persona that put me that way.

Jonathan Hicken [00:15:55]: The activity of creating the persona.

Eric Ressler [00:15:55]: Yeah. To me, this goes back into that performative process theater side of things. So I agree. Knowing your audience, knowing who you are for, and actually that example you gave is great because the audience you think you're for, I really recommend a peeling of the onion style exercise for this of just really deeply questioning some of these assumptions around "Oh, we serve kids." It's like, "Okay, but who are you actually serving in that scenario?" That pushes me up into essential when you start to think about it that way. Persona exercises irk me because they feel reductive and in a way that's not actually helpful for moving processes forward. It feels like you're trying to... And just to be clear, when we're talking about personas here, it's like, "Oh, our audience is a 34-year-old Prius driving mom of two." And it's just like, no, it's not. You're taking an entire population of people and trying to... And I get why people do it, right? Trying to paint a more human relatable version of that. Again, I think too much time and energy gets put towards that.

We do audience strategy work at Cosmic, as you could imagine. We do audience surveys, et cetera. The way that we segment our audiences, and we're obviously biased because we're looking at this from a brand communication standpoint, is there a meaningfully different message that needs to be developed for that audience? If yes, new audience segment. If no, figure out where to lump them in. And I found that that's a really pragmatic and practical way of breaking down audiences without... We don't do any personas. No one has ever come to us and said, "Oh, the process was so great except we didn't do personas." And I think that's meaningfully hurt our success here.

So I would say ditch the personas, audience segmentation, get very clear about who you know and who you're trying to reach and what you know about them. Segment based on is there a meaningfully different message or story that you need to tell to them? And I think that's probably good enough.

Jonathan Hicken [00:17:45]: Yeah. I mean, here's a really easy shortcut for personas. Just picture somebody that you know that fits that persona. Boom, done.

Eric Ressler [00:17:55]: Yeah.

Jonathan Hicken [00:17:55]: And you

Eric Ressler [00:18:00]: Don't need to define them. And you do need to acknowledge that a persona and a segment is a group of many people.

Jonathan Hicken [00:18:05]: Exactly.

Eric Ressler [00:18:05]: But when you start to get hyper specific about what kind of music they listen to...

Jonathan Hicken [00:18:10]: Yeah, all these fictitious things that... Yeah, I agree. That's not helping anybody. Never research-based, by the way, just totally vibes all the time.

Eric Ressler [00:19:15]: Brand voice and tone.

Jonathan Hicken [00:19:15]: Ah, important but not essential.

Eric Ressler [00:19:20]: Okay. We're aligned there. Brand voice and tone, I think can be a superpower for certain brands who are willing to be bold with that. Most are not. But to me, it's only helpful to have a strong brand voice and tone if some of the more essential elements of your brand strategy are strong.

Jonathan Hicken [00:19:40]: So you agree, important but not essential?

Eric Ressler [00:19:40]: Agree.

Jonathan Hicken [00:19:40]: Yeah. For me, the items that fit into this bucket are ones where it's really about expressing who you are and I feel like expressing who you are comes after knowing who you are.

Eric Ressler [00:19:50]: Yes.

Jonathan Hicken [00:20:50]: And so to me, this is an example of a way that you're going to express things like position and niche and your clarity on audience. And so it's just the expression piece. I think you need to be good at that, but it's important and not essential.

Eric Ressler [00:20:05]: And I think if you think of it as essential, that's a trap because what I've seen sometimes is people skip the truly essential work and try and just mask it over with a really hip voice and tone that sounds forward thinking, but actually is empty inside when you open it up. So I think yes, it's important to have a brand voice and to have a tone and have that be consistent. You don't want staff writing things in certain ways or speaking in certain ways or having a certain message that's dissonant with how your leadership is talking. So having a unified voice as a brand is truly important, but it should not be the thing that you elevate.

Jonathan Hicken [00:20:45]: Yeah. Agreed.

Eric Ressler [00:20:50]: Okay. Let's keep going. Brand story and messaging.

Jonathan Hicken [00:20:50]: Important, but not essential.

Eric Ressler [00:20:50]: Important but not essential. We're aligned. And the same argument as the last one.

Jonathan Hicken [00:20:55]: Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Ressler [00:21:00]: What do we mean when we're talking about a brand story? To me, this is almost more where I think about the elevator pitch. When you run into someone and they're like, "Oh, you work at this org, what do you guys do?" That's your brand story, right? And it should be, that's an elevator pitch version of it, but it's your narrative. It's how you talk about the work. You can, again, process theater this thing and write this massive thing. We've been trying to cut these down more and more. When we deliver brand stories and messaging for our clients, if we're not doing audience specific messaging, we have the brand level one. We write a page version, a half page version, a paragraph version, and one that you can put on your social profile. Done. And they're all basically the same. They're just cut downs. So it's when someone's like, "Hey, we need a one pager about you." You have a boilerplate that's accurate, that's aligned with the rest of your strategy. You're not cobbling it together with ChatGPT last minute. So that's all that you really need for that.

Jonathan Hicken [00:21:55]: Yeah. Don't work on your brand story until you know yourself and you really know what your story is, right? That's ultimately what we're saying here.

Eric Ressler [00:22:00]: I think so. Okay. Next one's an interesting outlier. Not to be confused with values, your value proposition.

Jonathan Hicken [00:22:10]: I'm going to zag on you here, Eric. I created a new tier.

Eric Ressler [00:22:15]: Whoa. You can't do that. That's not allowed. There's three tiers, man.

Jonathan Hicken [00:22:20]: S tier, God tier. This is the top. This is tops for me. You said you put positioning niche as your number one in that. I'm like, I think it's value proposition.

Eric Ressler [00:22:35]: Okay. I feel like most nonprofits, especially social impact orgs, don't even think about this.

Jonathan Hicken [00:22:40]: Yeah. Well, that's a problem.

Eric Ressler [00:22:40]: I mean, do you agree?

Jonathan Hicken [00:22:45]: Well, I think it depends. I really do. I think that some, at least the organizations I'm familiar with, some really get it more than others. So the reason why I think that value proposition is the most important thing, because why does any business of any type exist other than to deliver some value to the world? I mean, to me, I think it is the very essence of working in any organization that you want to make better.

Eric Ressler [00:23:20]: I think that's true, but I think a lot of nonprofits especially assume that their value is obvious and inherent in just being a nonprofit.

Jonathan Hicken [00:23:30]: Yes. A, yes. B, be better. We can't assume that because we're doing something that might feel good or something that we might really care about as individuals, or even that our staff and volunteers really care about it, we cannot assume that we are bringing meaningful value to our community or to whatever our sphere of influence is. We cannot make that assumption just because we think it's good or right.

Eric Ressler [00:24:05]: I'm going to take that a step further and say, you can't make that assumption even if the issue area or the problem that you're solving is worth solving. Working on solving a valuable or important problem is not in and of itself a value proposition.

Jonathan Hicken [00:24:20]: Right.

Eric Ressler [00:24:20]: That is a mission.

Jonathan Hicken [00:24:20]: So let's talk about housing homelessness, right? Housing homelessness is important and maybe you're working on it, but if you don't know the value that you are bringing to the problem of housing and homelessness, then what are you even doing?

Eric Ressler [00:24:35]: You don't have a value prop.

Jonathan Hicken [00:24:40]: You don't have a value prop and you have absolutely no basis to begin your work.

Eric Ressler [00:24:40]: So how do you think about value prop in your work?

Jonathan Hicken [00:24:45]: Yeah. Specifically to Seymour Center? Or just in general, as someone who's been in the social impact space in a number of different positions.

Eric Ressler [00:24:45]: Sure. Or just in general.

Jonathan Hicken [00:24:50]: Yeah. I get to this... You brought up Kaizen. I'm going to go to another Japanese concept and we may have talked about it on the pod before, Ikigai.

Eric Ressler [00:25:00]: Oh yeah, Ikigai.

Jonathan Hicken [00:25:00]: Yeah. We've talked about this, which I think is the intersection of these four pieces, which is something the world needs, something that is economically viable or that you can make money doing, something you're uniquely good at doing and something that you're passionate about.

Eric Ressler [00:25:15]: And the Venn diagram where all those four converge is your Ikigai.

Jonathan Hicken [00:25:20]: Right? Yeah, that's your Ikigai. And that's where my mind goes immediately: can you define all four of those things for yourself in terms of your organization? And also, the next thing I would do is thinking about audience. We talked about audience for a second. What problem do they have? Would they articulate the problem in the same way you would? And would they validate that the thing that you're doing is solving that problem?

Eric Ressler [00:25:45]: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Hicken [00:25:45]: So some combination of those things.

Eric Ressler [00:25:50]: Okay. So we're pretty aligned. I have value prop as essential as well. I didn't make my own fake tier and break the rules, but yeah, value prop is high up there and I think underconsidered. I don't get a lot of nonprofits in social impact orgs coming to us saying, "Hey, we need help defining our value prop." Although we do get that, it's a little more rare. We get a lot more people saying, "Oh, we need help rethink our mission and vision." So something to consider, I think, for our listeners. Okay. Next one, also an outlier to a degree, theory of change.

Jonathan Hicken [00:26:15]: Okay. I think it depends on how we're going to define this again, right? Because if it's the process of doing the thing and the flow charts and the infographics and all that stuff, I think that you can get lost in that and it can become a waste of time. But I think at its very core, the idea that you have clarity on how your work produces meaningful impact, I think that's essential. I think that's essential. And you have to understand that and you have to understand how the way that you're using donors' money, the way that you're showing up, the actual work that you're doing is producing impact and that you're fueling the pieces of that chain that are ultimately getting you to your desired end state.

Eric Ressler [00:27:05]: Yeah. Okay. So I hedged my bet a little and put this one in important because of that, you see these schematic style diagrams of theory of change and you're just like, "Are we building a car engine here? What's going on?"

Jonathan Hicken [00:27:15]: Exactly.

Eric Ressler [00:27:15]: So I agree though that you should be able to answer, how do you and how does your organization and how does its value prop and its work actually create change in the world? You got to be able to answer that and you have to be able to answer it in a way that someone who's a layperson or not in your field as an expert could basically get it. And so I would say also important, if not essential, and I don't think it needs to be... I remember, I think we've talked about this on the show before, but at the Santa Cruz MAH, the Museum of Art and History, the Theory of Change was a comic.

Jonathan Hicken [00:27:50]: Yeah.

Eric Ressler [00:27:50]: I loved that. I was like, yes, more comics, less engine schematics.

Jonathan Hicken [00:27:55]: For theory of change. Yes. And by the way, I've never seen a theory of change better than that one.

Eric Ressler [00:28:00]: Yeah, that one's amazing. And we'll link to that in the show notes, which I will have to do later and remember to do. I always say that. I'm like, "Why do I say that?"

Jonathan Hicken [00:28:05]: Email us and we'll send it to you. How about that? Yeah.

Eric Ressler [00:28:10]: Okay. Last one. Number 10 here, case for support.

Jonathan Hicken [00:28:15]: Oh man, see, this one's tough. This one's tough for me. Ultimately, I put it into important, even though you and I worked on a case for support for Seymour Center, and it has been so impactful to the point where in my day-to-day work, I would call it essential. For me personally in my work, I need that case for support and it's been really helpful. And to me, it fits into this bucket of expressing yourself after you know yourself.

Eric Ressler [00:28:40]: Interesting. Okay. I'm going to push back on that one a little bit. I have it in essential. And the reason why I have it in essential, and we can riff on this a little here, I think to have a solid case for support, going through that process forces you, if done well, to answer all of the other essential elements. You have to know what your positioning is and your niche. You have to know what your value prop is. You have to know what you are standing for in the world, all these things. What's the problem that you're solving? So it's a shortcut for forcing you to make the hardest and most impactful and important decisions as an organization. So I put the process as essential. Does every org need a polished... I think sometimes you think of case for support and you think of this report that you put together for a capital campaign, that's a version of a case for support, right?

Similar to the theory of change for me is, if I ask you, Jonathan right now as the executive director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, why should I donate? Why should I support? You should have a pretty good answer for me.

So to me, again, I think a lot of times, and as we wrap up, I think we'll get into this here, these different elements, there's all these terms and terminology around, well, what's a theory of change, a case for support, and it feels jargony. I'm in it every day, so I have deep knowledge of what it means to run these things. But if you're in a leadership position at a social impact org, what really matters? What's the distilled version of this? And so I want to leave listeners with a bigger picture takeaway, which is I think that however you describe this stuff, however you think about it, which parts you think are essential or whatnot, there's really four questions that you need to be able to answer as an organization. And if you can answer those questions, you could basically ignore all of this stuff at some level.

And the first question is, what do you do? The second question is, who do you do it for? The third question is, how are you different? And the fourth question is, why does it matter? I think if you can answer all four of those questions well, you have a brand strategy and you don't need to worry about all these terms and terminology and all this process.

Jonathan Hicken [00:30:55]: Preach that from the rooftops, my friend, because that's such a simple thing that literally every listener could take to their next staff meeting, take to their next board meeting and work through that if they don't already have the answers. It's such a simple exercise. It doesn't need to take months and months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to answer those questions. And if you can't answer those questions, that's probably really good for you to know. Maybe there's some problems with your business.

Eric Ressler [00:31:25]: The thing I will also add to that is you would be surprised how many orgs who are well-known, highly successful, and by common metrics of how we measure success in this space, who've come in to my door at Cosmic and cannot give me a solid answer on those four questions. And I don't mean that in a judgmental way. I mean, this is actually, those questions are simple, but they're hard to answer. And especially if you're in a moment of transition or stepping into a new chapter as an organization, the answers to those questions may not be relevant anymore. So you might be able, "Well, we were this, but we're becoming something else, and I don't really know how to articulate that yet. It's this vague thing we're still shaping."

I wanted to also just share, and I challenged myself to come up with an example that was actually difficult to answer these four questions for. We've been working with an org called WeDo for a long time now. They're amazing. Shout out to them. We just launched a new website, by the way. Go check it out. WeDo.org. They stand for Women's Environment and Development Organization. Their work is very complex. They do global advocacy work. It's the kind of org that... And I'll just be honest, and Bridget, I love you to death, but this was very hard to figure out how to take this super insular advocacy policy. They're at the UN, they're at COP. This is deep expertise work. And we still believe this needs to be distilled down into something that someone who's not in those rooms can understand without dumbing it down.

And so I actually tested. I was like, did we get to a point in their messaging where we could answer those questions? And does it show up on the website exactly like that? No. But I think we did. And so I'm going to test. WeDo could have been a complex global advocacy organization working at the intersection of gender equity and climate justice, but what does that mean? So what do they do? They advocate for gender just climate policy. Who do they do it for? They do it for grassroots feminist leaders and frontline environmental defenders. How are they different? They've been doing it for 35 years and they've been building coalitions and tools that get women in the rooms where climate decisions are made. And why does it matter? Because we know that when climate policy excludes women, the climate policy fails. Done.

Jonathan Hicken [00:33:50]: Done. Beautiful. That's wild. Congratulations to WeDo and to Cosmic for that because that's super powerful. Yeah.

Eric Ressler [00:33:55]: Okay. So Jonathan, this was great. More tier ranking podcast coming up.

Jonathan Hicken [00:34:00]: Yeah, dude, that was fun.

Eric Ressler [00:34:00]: That was fun.

Jonathan Hicken [00:34:00]: Yeah, thanks, Eric.

Eric Ressler [00:34:00]: All right, man. If you enjoyed today's video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.