Ross Williams is Managing Director - Studio at Courts. He helps ambitious organisations align strategy, brand and creativity to build lasting competitive advantage.
I’ve spent the best part of 15 years sitting in meetings, running workshops and working alongside leadership teams at some of the most pivotal moments in their organisations’ journeys.
Some were launching new ventures. Others were entering new markets. Most were successful businesses that had simply reached a point where they knew something needed to change.
Despite their differences, I’ve noticed one pattern that appears time and time again.
Very few organisations lack ambition.
In fact, I’d argue the opposite is true. Most leaders are deeply ambitious. They want to build businesses that are respected, attract exceptional people, deliver outstanding customer experiences and create something that stands the test of time. They don’t aspire to be average. They don’t wake up thinking, “Let’s build a business that looks like everyone else.”
And yet, that’s often exactly where they end up.
Not because they’re incapable of doing better. Not because they’re short of ideas. And certainly not because they don’t care.
They simply drift there. That’s the word I’ve come back to more than any other over the years. Drift.
Because businesses rarely become ordinary through one bad decision. They become ordinary through hundreds of perfectly reasonable ones.
The danger of sensible decisions
Imagine you’re sitting in a meeting discussing a new direction for your brand.
The work on the table is exciting. It feels different. It captures something authentic about the business and expresses it with confidence. It’s distinctive enough that people would probably remember it.
The room likes it. People get excited. Then someone asks a perfectly sensible question.
“Will our customers understand it?”
Someone else follows.
“It’s a bit different from what our competitors are doing.”
Then another.
“Could we make it a little safer?”
If you’ve worked in branding for any length of time, you’ve probably been in that meeting. I certainly have. More times than I can remember.
The interesting thing is that none of those questions are wrong. In fact, they’re exactly the kinds of questions responsible leaders should ask. Businesses shouldn’t pursue bold ideas simply for the sake of being different. Commercial judgement matters, of course it does...
But I’ve often wondered why we don’t ask another question with the same level of conviction.
What if the safest option is actually the greatest commercial risk?
Because while those conversations feel insignificant in the moment, they have a habit of changing the trajectory of an organisation.
The proposition becomes slightly more generic.
The messaging becomes more familiar.
The visual identity loses a little personality because consensus demands compromise.
None of those decisions fundamentally changes the business.
But... together, they change everything.
Some years later, the leadership team finds itself asking why customers struggle to differentiate them from their competitors, without recognising that differentiation wasn’t lost in a single meeting.
It disappeared one sensible decision at a time...
When consensus becomes the strategy
One of the biggest misconceptions about creativity is that it’s somehow at odds with commercial thinking. I’ve never believed that. In my experience, the opposite is true.
The organisations that consistently outperform their competitors are rarely reckless. They’re usually incredibly disciplined. They understand their market. They know their customers and they make informed decisions.
What makes them different isn’t that they’re more creative, it's that they have a stronger point of view.
They’re prepared to make decisions that not everyone will agree with because they know who they’re trying to reach, and just as importantly, who they aren’t.
That’s where many organisations begin to lose their way.
As businesses grow, decision-making inevitably becomes more complex. More stakeholders become involved. Governance increases. Risk becomes something that has to be managed carefully. That’s all part of building a successful organisation.
The challenge comes when consensus quietly replaces conviction.
Ideas aren’t evaluated on whether they’re the right answer. They’re evaluated on whether everyone is comfortable with them.
They’re not the same thing.
Consensus feels productive because everyone leaves the room happy. Conviction often feels uncomfortable because it requires leadership. And leadership, almost by definition, involves making choices that not everyone would make.
That’s true whether you’re developing a new product, entering a new market or redefining your brand.
The organisations that shape industries rarely arrive there by taking the most comfortable path. They get there because they’re prepared to make deliberate choices while others continue searching for universal approval.
That’s a very different mindset.
Customers don’t buy certainty. They buy confidence.
There’s another observation I’ve made over the years that continues to shape the way I think about branding.
Businesses spend a huge amount of time thinking about what they want to say and their customers spend remarkably little time listening.
That isn’t because people don’t care.
It’s because they don’t have time to.
Every day we’re presented with hundreds of choices. New suppliers. New products. New technologies. New services.
We simply can’t evaluate every option in depth. Instead, we rely on signals.
We make quick judgements based on what we see, what we experience and how an organisation makes us feel.
Long before someone reads your proposition, they’ve formed an opinion about your credibility.
Long before they’ve spoken to your team, they’ve already made assumptions about your professionalism.
Long before they understand the quality of your work, they’ve decided whether your organisation feels trustworthy.
Those judgements aren’t always fair. But believe me, they are real.
And that’s why I’ve never been comfortable describing branding as something that sits beneath business strategy.
Because in reality, brand is often the first experience people have of your strategy.
It communicates your standards before you’ve had the chance to explain them.
It creates confidence before you’ve earned trust.
Or it quietly undermines both.
That’s a responsibility many organisations underestimate.
Brand is where strategy becomes visible
People often ask what brand strategy actually means and it’s a fair question because the term has become increasingly diluted.
For some, it’s a logo.
For others, it’s tone of voice.
For others, it’s marketing.
I’ve never seen it that way.
To me, brand strategy is business strategy in action. It’s the point where your ambition becomes visible. It’s how your culture shows up in the outside world. It’s choosing to care about the details because those details communicate what kind of organisation you are.
That’s why I struggle when branding is treated as something cosmetic, something to think about once the “real” business decisions have been made.
Because in my experience, the strongest brands don’t begin with design.
They begin with clarity.
Clarity about purpose.
Clarity about positioning.
Clarity about values.
Clarity about the future you’re trying to create.
Everything else follows.
Design.
Language.
Photography.
Digital experiences.
Customer journeys.
Environments.
They’re all expressions of something deeper.
Without strategy, they’re disconnected assets.
With strategy, they become a competitive advantage.
And that’s the difference I’ve seen play out time and time again.
Not just in successful brands, but in successful businesses.
Creativity isn’t decoration. It’s commercial.
One of the things that’s always fascinated me is the way creativity is discussed in business.
It’s often spoken about as though it’s a luxury. Something that makes a business look more interesting once the important decisions have been made.
I’ve never recognised that version of creativity.
In my experience, the businesses that invest in creativity aren’t doing it because they want to look different. They’re doing it because they understand the commercial value of being understood, remembered and chosen.
That’s a very different conversation.
When most people hear the word creative, they immediately think about colours, logos, advertising campaigns or clever ideas.
But creativity starts much earlier than that.
It starts with asking better questions.
What do we want to be known for?
Why should somebody choose us rather than the business next door?
What do we genuinely do differently?
What are we prepared to say no to?
The strongest brands I’ve worked with all have something in common. They know exactly what they stand for. That doesn’t mean they’re loud. Or controversial. Or trying to reinvent their industry every five minutes.
It simply means they have clarity. Once that clarity exists, creativity has a job to do.
It takes strategy and makes it tangible. It gives people something they can see, experience and remember.
Without strategy, creativity becomes styling.
Without creativity, strategy remains invisible.
You need both.
What nearly forty years has taught us
Courts has been helping organisations navigate change since 1987. During that time, the tools have changed dramatically.
Technology has transformed the way we communicate.
AI has reshaped the way we think.
Customer expectations continue to grow.
Markets move faster than ever before.
But the principles behind great businesses haven’t really changed.
People still choose organisations they trust.
Teams still perform better when they understand what they’re building.
Clear positioning still beats confused messaging.
Conviction still outperforms imitation.
And businesses that understand themselves continue to outperform those that spend too much time looking over their shoulder.
That’s reassuring.
Because it reminds me that while platforms, trends and technologies will continue to evolve, clarity doesn’t go out of fashion.
Ambition deserves more than ordinary thinking
I’ve never met a leadership team that wanted to build an ordinary business.
What I’ve met are talented people working incredibly hard, making sensible decisions, trying to reduce risk and create certainty.
The irony is that certainty can sometimes become the greatest obstacle to progress. The businesses that move industries forward don’t ignore risk. They simply recognise that there are different kinds of risk. There’s the risk of trying something new. And there’s the risk of becoming indistinguishable from everyone else.
Personally, I think the second risk is talked about far less than it should be. Because once a business becomes ordinary, it’s incredibly difficult to compete on anything other than price, convenience or familiarity.
That’s not a position most ambitious organisations aspire to occupy. Which brings me back to where I began this ramble...
Ambition.
To me, ambition has never been about growth for growth’s sake.
It isn’t measured purely in profit, headcount or market share.
It’s reflected in the standards an organisation sets for itself.
The decisions it’s prepared to make.
The ideas it’s willing to defend.
The details it refuses to overlook.
The experience it chooses to create.
The future it has the confidence to build rather than inherit.
That’s why I believe ambitious brands don’t settle.
They don’t settle for average ideas because average ideas rarely create extraordinary outcomes. They don’t settle for generic experiences because they understand that trust is built through consistency. And perhaps most importantly, they don’t settle for ordinary thinking. Because ordinary thinking has never changed an industry. It has never inspired a team. It has never created lasting competitive advantage.
The organisations that shape markets (the ones we’re still talking about years later) have always had something else. Clarity. Conviction. Creativity with purpose. And the courage to keep choosing those things, even when the safer option is sitting right in front of them.
That’s the kind of ambition I believe in.
And after nearly twenty years of helping organisations define who they are and where they’re going, I’m more convinced of it than ever.
Not because I’ve read it in a book.
Not because it’s a trendy idea.
But because I’ve watched it happen.
Time and time again.
The businesses that move forward aren’t the ones that settle for ordinary. They’re the ones that never stop asking how they can become extraordinary.
