Doing the Opposite: David Allison – Demographics are Nonsense! Values are Key in Properly Understanding People

We often talk about the importance of company values but, in reality, a company doesn’t have values — the people working within it do. According to my latest Doing the Opposite : Business Disruptors guest David Allison , these values are the key to unlocking a better understanding of your customers and teams.

?David is a two-time author, an international speaker and the founder of the Valuegraphics Project which has fundamentally changed how we understand ourselves. I really enjoyed diving into this topic with him and hearing his expertise.

Read on to discover my key takeaways from our discussion.

1. Demographics are useless

Demographics have traditionally played a huge role in business and marketing, with most companies targeting particular demographics to sell their products or services.

But David said that grouping people by their physical, social, or economic traits isn’t enough to give you an accurate picture of your ideal customer.?

“It's beyond me how we continue to spend trillions of dollars a year targeting people based on what we think we know about them because of their gender, their age, their income, but we do,” he said. “If you find out your target audience is 73% female, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to make everything pink?!”

Much of the time, an individual’s demographic isn’t going to define how they behave or spend their money, which David knows first-hand.

“A friend of mine is a chief designer for a large global sportswear brand, and he said, ‘We have these personas, and we’re supposed to design our stores and our clothing for them. But when I stand in our stores, anywhere in the world, and look around, I'm like, who the heck are all you people? You don't all match this persona that we've spent all this money and time thinking about.’”

Instead of zeroing in on demographics, David believes there’s something far more important to consider…

2. Values are everything

“Values drive all of us, all day long, to do everything we do,” David explained. “They're the most powerful thing on earth. And yet, the way we tend to talk about them and measure them is this incredibly airy, poetic kind of thing.”

Rather than treating values as corporate buzzwords you stick on a wall and ignore, you need to consider which values you live by both in and out of the workplace — because there is no work-life balance, only life.

I was especially fascinated to hear David explain how there is a neurological explanation for how our values motivate us.

“Neurologically speaking, there's an actual pathway in your brain that fires up — it's inside the piece of your brain called the insula.”?

“If you have to decide between two things, you're going to choose the one that’s aligned with your values. Your insula rewards you, and you get a little dopamine hit.”

While some people may struggle to list their key values off the top of their heads, the truth is that these values are built into us from a young age.

“Our values don't change,” David said. “Values are forever. We get them when we're young, in our late childhood, early adolescence, and they're with you for the rest of your life.”

3. Employers are focusing on the wrong things

If values are so important, why don’t most businesses consider them in a meaningful way??

David suggests that asking someone to reduce their beliefs and moral compass to just a few words is too complex.?

“You can't show people a list and say, ‘Here's a bunch of words that we think sound like values to us, which sound like values to you?’ It's just business poetry if you do that, we're just picking pretty words that we think are all nice and warm and fuzzy.”?

“So, what you do, is you ask people what gets them up in the morning, what their hobbies are, how they spend their time, and what keeps them up at night.”

Without understanding your team’s values, you won’t know whether your whole business is aligned and engaged with your vision. And without engagement, you won’t be able to create an unbeatable workplace culture where everyone can thrive.?

I loved chatting with David about this topic and it certainly gave me plenty of food for thought. You can watch or listen to the full episode now.