Brand Essence – 5 Whys

While working with one of my client-partners board of directors recently, I lead them through a Brand Essence exercise. I cover this exercise in my recent book The Beautiful Business. Each time I lead this process, I’m reminded of its simple potency.

As you’ll see below, this exercise, which is sometimes referred to as the 5X Whys, can be applied to exploring the Brand Essence of an organization, it has applications beyond brand essence.

A bit of history behind the 5X Whys
The creation of the “5 Whys” is most often credited to Sakichi Toyoda, the Japanese inventor, and industrialist. It was part of the Toyota production system, and it became an integral part of their Lean business philosophy.

Again, the tool has been adopted by many organizations as part of their processing and innovative practices but can also be applied to explore your Brand Essence.

Now, what is Brand Essence?
Brand essence is a phrase that expresses the fundamental nature of a business. It goes much deeper than the industry that a company competes in, such as consumer electronics, sporting goods, nonprofits, education, etc. A business leadership team or marketing team can go through a series of reflective exercises developing effective ways of expressing the brand essence by underscoring the unique value they provide.

The deeply instructive question originated by Theodore Levitt and evangelized by Peter Drucker offers, “what business are we in?” can help an organization drill down on the essence of their business.

• Disney answered this question: to create magic.
• Airbnb’s answer: democratize hospitality.
• BMW’s essence is: pleasure driving.
• Patagonia’s is: to solve the environmental crisis.

When a business is in what Maslow called their peak experience, they deliver on their essence, their purpose, their vision, and their promises.

5X Whys — Brand Essence Tool
Here’s a tool designed to help you get to the essence of your business. This simple practice is a variation on the well-known “5X Why” tool, in which participants are exploring the essence of something, for instance, the essence of a brand. The practice is simple yet potent. Let’s assume you’re doing a workshop with your leadership team. Ask each participant to write down the answer to this question 5 times, without repeating their answer.

Here’s an example of how this exercise might go, applied to my business:

1. What business am I in?
   • I’m in the business of evolving brands and cultures.
2. What business am I in?
   • I’m in the business of helping leaders identify the heart and soul of their business and activating this through their culture and brand.
3. What business am I in?
   • I’m in the business of building people-first organizations, all while connecting your people (all stakeholders) to your brand purpose.
4. What business am I in?
   • I’m in the business of guiding leaders to evolve into more beautiful businesses, so they work with self-awareness, belonging, magnetism, and integrated wholeness.
5. What business am I in?
   • I’m in the business of helping leaders realize their business and human potential (AKA self-actualize), all while making their world a better place.

As you can likely see from my example above, all the statements carry a level of truth, but as we drill down on each answer to the question — without repeating the responses — we get to deeper and deeper truths. Thus, we clear away the superficial and gain a deeper understanding of the essence.

In addition to exploring your brand essence by asking this question about the business you’re in, the 5X Whys tool can be used to explore several vexing questions.

For instance, the 5X Whys tool can be a tool to help you…

• … get to the root cause of an issue you’re facing personally or in your business.
• … to examine why your board of directors is not being effective or communicating well.
• … get to the heart of employee engagement issues.
• … to understand why your marketing isn’t working as effectively as it should.
• … to identify what’s causing team members to leave the company.

Of course, once you go through the 5 Whys process and get to the root cause of the issues, corrective action is required. All team members who are involved in the question exploration should also be involved in identifying the best remedy or remedies. And, then the right implementation team should be identified, along with a team leader, to activate the solution or solutions.

Ultimately, the 5 Whys technique is a simple and effective tool for problem-solving and getting to the root of issues and opportunities. Its primary goal is to get to the truth and find the precise reason that causes a problem.

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P.S. If you haven’t ordered The Beautiful Business, you can do so here.

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