Shifting Values Redefine The Enterprise Panorama
This moment is unlike anything America has experienced since the 1960s. In this period over half a century ago and a few generations ago, the values of lifestyle changed rapidly. Individuality was on the rise. More and more people rejected institutional authority and shifted their loyalty and identity from society to themselves.
Yankelovich, the company I've run for over a decade, has been a pioneer in tracking this shift in value toward individuality that began in the 1960s and became mainstream in the late 1970s. The original purpose of the Yankelovich MONITOR service, which started in 1971, was to track the emergence and development of these so-called “new values”. In his book New Rules, published in 1981, Dan Yankelovich described this change in values as a shift from self-sacrifice to self-realization, that is, less about the common good than about what is good for me. This was a profound reorientation of society and the market. It shaped everything that came afterwards. Despite the crescendo of sound and anger about trends and novelties and trend observation in the years since, the basic values of American society and indeed of most of the world have remained unchanged and anchored in a foundation of individuality.
At the turn of the century, however, the values were turned upside down. Social values are changing today just as quickly as the changes in the 1960s and just as radically. Public attitudes have quickly impacted on a range of social issues related to justice, discrimination and social justice. For example, in 2001, Pew polls found only 35 percent of people who advocated same-sex marriage, but in 2013 it was half and today it is 61 percent. Similarly and even more dramatically, a USA Today poll by the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project found that whites who had an unfavorable view of the police shifted from 18 percent to 31 percent within a week of George Floyd's death.
From same-sex marriage to the #metoo movement, climate awareness, racial justice and the waking movement to monuments and much more, a wave of new values is drawing through American society and the commercial market. This does not mean that the values have been completely transformed. It can only be said that something happens around us that is rarely seen. It is the beginning of something as big as the changes at the beginning of the second half of the last century.
A new era of conscience
The change in values in the 1960s and 1970s went in the direction of individuality – especially self. The change in values today goes towards conscience – others no less than themselves. We are entering a new era of conscience. The self will still be important, but others will become much more important than before and will no longer be reflexively subordinate to the self.
The recoil against itself is evident in the politicized struggle to wear face masks in public due to the coronavirus pandemic. Apparently, many people were "hippie-bound" without even realizing it. At the root was the hippie ethic freedom without responsibility – free love, endurance tests, termination, doing our own thing. Resisting masks in the name of freedom is the same way of thinking – especially the self or freedom without counterbalancing responsibility towards others. This stance is not only characterized by the increase in COVID-19 cases, but also by violating the current shifts in values - others no less than themselves or a responsibility to public health that, if not, that has the same weight as individual freedom.
With the rise of values rooted in conscience, the sense of responsibility for others is stronger today than it has been for many decades and is moving towards an even stronger development.
In his book on cultural war in the mid-1990s, The Twilight of Common Dreams, sociologist and former SDS president Todd Gitlin, describes the two competing political and cultural forces fighting against each other on different battlefields – on the right of the ballot box and on the left in the ballot box Academy. The results of the 2016 presidential election looked as if the ballot box strategy had finally won the cultural war. In the few years since, however, it has been shown that the lessons that the emerging generation has learned in school should not be underestimated. Many reject this as irrelevant whining of a mollycoddled group of young young people who are rich in participation trophies but have little ideas with substance or perseverance. Such a view ignores the lesson from the last period of transformative value shifts in the 1960s.
Move with, not against
Dan Yankelovich always emphasized that the counterculture of the 1960s made up a very small percentage of the entire US population. It was a minority of students, and the students themselves were a small group. Dan's assessment that the first upheavals in value change in the 1960s affected only 2 percent of all Americans. However, it turned out that this small percentage of people who were mostly to be found on the college campus paved the way for profound changes in values across society. As Dan put it, what began as political individualism in the mid-1960s eventually extended to social and cultural individualism. Business leaders were concerned that these new values would disrupt the retail landscape, which was the impetus for the Yankelovich MONITOR. It started as a tracking study to see if and how quickly the new values were picked up by mainstream Americans. As it turned out, the changes that went with that 2 percent were, in some form and to some extent, the values of almost all Americans by the late 1970s.
This type of change in value takes place again. The values rooted in conscience grow and prevail. It is a change that is being driven by a new generation and a new way of thinking. The impact on business can be found in the question; "Are you aligned or aligned with the shift in value?"
At The Blake Project, we support clients from all over the world at all stages of development. Redefine and articulate what makes them competitive in critical moments of change. Please email us for more.
Brand Strategy Insider is a service from The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy that specializes in brand research, brand strategy, brand growth and brand building
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