What’s important to you?

This was the question I used to ask back in the days when I built brands for professional property investors. And the purpose was to elicit someone’s values.

Almost invariably the first answer would be honesty. I must admit in 25 plus years of building brands, not once did anyone say “dishonesty”. So we needed to dig deeper, and push the boundaries a bit, although a confession, one of our core values at Hillsgreen is “just honest”. I think this goes further; what we’re saying is it’s a “straight-talking, down to earth honesty”, a reflection on our farming routes.

I can remember one conversation following me asking that question of a particular gentle chap. And it caused a lot of deep thought. His challenge was he felt his strongest value should be family; after all as a family man with loving wife and children, shouldn’t they be his highest priority whatever he was doing, and be doing it for their sakes. But you can’t make your values up; just as you can’t choose the colour of your eyes. That’s not to say your values can’t change and develop over time. The reality was even more important to him was freedom. His worst nightmare was to be told what to do, or restrictions being placed on him. I imagine the pandemic may be particularly challenging for him, although I believe saying freedom, he meant more in a working capacity. Actually, his drive and determination to become a successful property investor was to give himself freedom. And by achieving this status, with over 70 rental properties to his name, he was able to give his best to his family. When we looked at it like that, he felt far happier. 

A big bug bear of mine is how many big businesses think they can invent values. They can’t. What they can do is agree a set of behaviours. Take the big banks as an example. Before 2008 the banks would publish their impressive set of “values”, normally along the lines of “exemplary customer services”, “always putting our customers first”, “treating our staff decently”…. You get the gist I’m sure. Then along comes the Worldwide Recession and suddenly all that bollocks goes out of the window, and their priority becomes protect the balance sheet, take care of the shareholders, and don’t worry about the customers, they’re not our problem. If they really had a genuine set of values, they would have continued to have lived by them!  

But actually what prompted this outburst was a client meeting today. The best business is when your values align. It means you get each other, and understand where you’re each coming from. And the specific value which connected us was “fun”. One of our core values is “We take our work seriously, but not ourselves!” Both sides of the metaphorical table (read that as Zoom call), talked about wanting to enjoy work, and actually have some laughs. Sure the work has got to get done, but why not have some fun too? And having fun is so important in the current situation; I’m sure I’m like millions of others, sat by myself at home, in front of the laptop, and the highlight of the day is jumping on a Zoom call; so let’s get the work done but take the opportunity to connect with others as best we can through the airwaves. After all we’re human. 

So if fun isn’t important to you, then best you find someone else to work with. If you want the job done professionally and enjoy a bit of banter, then maybe we’re the perfect fit.  

And to dispel a possible myth that farmers are grumpy, whilst we are farmers at heart, we’re not grumpy ones! 

Daniel Bennett

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