Tipping Points

While I have to admit to being new to assessment and evaluation, I
do believe it to be a piece of the puzzle that we can get excited
about. It is an integral component that helps build a brand or a
program to its tipping point.

In my work with the book From the Barrio to the Board Room
for example, we’ve worked strategically to build a brand that inspires
and motivates at-risk youth and those who work them. Recently we have
built a curriculum (a perfect extension of our core values) that we are
piloting at Chicago Public Schools. Because we’ve been invited to
present our findings at a US Department of Education conference in DC
this summer, we have been aggressively collecting data.

As I mentioned, this area is not my expertise, so we have someone
else overseeing this collection and the evaluation will be done by
people who understand the proper way to do such things.

What’s exciting for me is that we have built the brand so
successfully that people are inspired to help us with the survey and
ensure its implementation, not because a superior told them they have
to do it, but because they are genuinely motivated to be part of the
journey of this book.

It is that emotional buy-in that core values and strategic branding
can create. Consider your brand a big game of chess. Every move of a
piece on the board is motivated through your core values and actualized
through marketing materials, programs, videos, etc. The small “checks”
on the king are those emotional buy-ins from people around you. When
there is enough emotional buy-in, a tipping point, or check-mate, is
inevitable and that’s when a brand suddenly explodes and your team goes
from chasing others to being chased.