Defining value before you try to communicate it

In higher education, there is a growing anxiety about “value”. Political pressure, media narratives and funding scrutiny have all pushed universities to explain what they are worth. The instinctive response is often to produce more evidence: economic impact figures, spinout numbers, graduate salary data, efficiency savings.

All of that has its place. But it raises a more fundamental strategic question: how do you define value in a way that is actually useful, rather than simply defensible?

In recent conversations with colleagues, we found ourselves circling a common problem. Many institutions are trying to communicate value before they have properly distilled it. The result is messaging that feels either overly functional or oddly generic. The annual report becomes a catalogue of outputs. The brand campaign becomes a montage. Neither quite answers the harder question of why this institution, in particular, matters.

If you are thinking about institutional value, there are a few shifts that can make the exercise more productive.

First, separate defining value from communicating value. These are not the same task. Defining value is strategic work. It requires choices about who you are really for, which needs you are uniquely placed to meet, and where your contribution is genuinely distinctive. Communicating value is the expression of those choices. If the first step is weak or rushed, the second step will always feel cosmetic.

Second, be careful not to equate value with what is easiest to measure. Financial impact and job creation are important, but they are only one dimension of institutional contribution. Universities create intellectual, societal and cultural value that does not always sit neatly within quarterly metrics. If you allow external frameworks to define value purely in economic terms, you risk narrowing your own sense of purpose. A more useful approach is to start broadly and then decide which aspects of that broader value are most strategically important to emphasise.

Third, bring audience thinking into the value conversation early. Too often, audience considerations are treated as a downstream marketing issue. In reality, they are central to defining value in the first place. Value is not abstract; it is experienced by someone. A funding body, a civic partner, a prospective student, a policymaker and an academic collaborator will all assess worth differently. When you are clarifying your value, you should ask which audiences matter most to your future and what they genuinely need from you. That discipline alone will sharpen your thinking.

This is where strategic positioning becomes useful. At its best, positioning is not about slogans or visual identity. It is a structured way of distilling complex organisations into a coherent point of view. A rigorously developed brand model forces you to connect purpose, strengths, audiences, and choices into something that holds together. It asks uncomfortable questions about focus and trade-offs. It helps you move from “we do many good things” to “this is the distinctive role we choose to play”.

When value is treated as a core component of that positioning process, rather than as a reporting add-on, two benefits follow. Internally, it provides a clearer lens for decision-making. You can test new initiatives, partnerships or investments against the position you have articulated. Externally, communication improves because it is anchored in a coherent framework. You are not scrambling to prove your worth; you are expressing a defined contribution.

None of this suggests that brand or positioning is a panacea. Universities, like many complex organisations, operate within political and economic constraints that no narrative can solve. But there is a practical difference between reacting to external definitions of value and proactively shaping your own.

If you are reviewing how your institution talks about value, it may be worth stepping back from the communications plan and asking a prior question: have we really defined what we mean by value, for whom, and with what strategic intent? Only once that is clear does the work of articulation become meaningful.

Higher education is an obvious arena for this debate, but the principle travels. Any organisation built around complex ideas, multiple stakeholders, and public scrutiny faces the same risk. If you do not take the time to distil your value with intent, it will be defined for you, often in narrower terms than you would choose yourself.