Last week Interbrand revealed its annual study on the best brands in 2021.

The fastest risers significantly outperformed other brands on three factors:

• Direction: Set a clear direction. Ensure that the entire organization knows where you are going and is working towards the same ambition.
• Agility: Move fast. Bring new products and services to market quickly, and where necessary, pivot to address changing customer needs.
• Participation: Bring people on a journey with you, and make them part of the movement to create an engaging brand world

As you’re probably aware, I am writing my second book, which is themed “Remarkable Resilience,” – and the three factors above indeed drip through in virtually every interview I do.

The big question is: “How do you pull this off?” There are so many obstacles to overcome.

Here are some of the more obvious ones I constantly see:

• Our vision is inward-focused instead of outward.
• We try to be everything to everyone.
• We’re obsessed with the product, not the problem.
• We assume we understand what customers need but are unclear about what’s keeping them up at night
• We try to be better instead of being different.
• …..

So the words ‘work towards the same ambition’ in the three factors above is probably the most crucial one to get right.
Without it, agility will be impossible. So yes, you will create some speed, but that doesn’t mean you’ll create velocity.
Without it, forget about creating a movement.

One tip to get started is writing up your vision. In my recent interview with Radhika Dutt, she gave a perfect definition:

“a good vision is one where you see a problem in the world that you want to see solved. And even if you’re not in the picture, you’d be happy to see that problem solved”

What makes me curious: what did you do differently in the past 20 months to outperform?