A major player in the legal and professional services markets has announced the following guiding principles in their Annual Report - they were even voted on by their people - "customer focus, honesty and integrity, innovation, passion and service excellence".
Answers on a post card please if you can immediately spot which firm is boasting these guiding principles - surely it's obvious...you know the market well so they should be obvious...still strugging?...such a shining light must be blinding...oh come on...
But then again - to be conspicuously "customer focused" is no big deal - everyone says it, and frankly in my experience firms that have dominant market positions always claim this and confuse an inability to go anywhere else with a silence about doing so. If you flip each of these "qualities" to see who would do the opposite - you will see we are firmly in motherhood and apple pie territory.
"Honesty and integrity" are the sort of thing you only claim if you haven't got any. They are self evident - there is no greyness here - you are either pregnant with them or not - end of. If you have to claim it - you've lost it and simply demonstrate that you understand neither of them.
"Innovation" - well - in a tech business you assume this is cloud technology, simple and effective code, intuitive service, etc - but that's not what this lot are best known for. Perhaps they mean the financial innovation in taking very high profits each year from locked in clients - but even that's not new really, now is it.
"Passion and service excellence". Show me the firm which hates what it does and deliberately screws its clients at every opportunity - and then has the honesty to say we plan to keep doing this every year in their annual 200-page-spiral-bound-strategy-wonk " Action Plan", and these pious acclamations may just begin to have some meaning.
I despair. A simple strategic test is (1) flip the proposition to see if it really makes you look different from everyone else - if it doesn't - leave it out, and (2) define yourself in relevant ways - who would ever know this was not a doughnut factory in Wisconsin, and (3) know what you don't do...
- and start with "don't do bullsh1t".
Answers on a post card please if you can immediately spot which firm is boasting these guiding principles - surely it's obvious...you know the market well so they should be obvious...still strugging?...such a shining light must be blinding...oh come on...
But then again - to be conspicuously "customer focused" is no big deal - everyone says it, and frankly in my experience firms that have dominant market positions always claim this and confuse an inability to go anywhere else with a silence about doing so. If you flip each of these "qualities" to see who would do the opposite - you will see we are firmly in motherhood and apple pie territory.
"Honesty and integrity" are the sort of thing you only claim if you haven't got any. They are self evident - there is no greyness here - you are either pregnant with them or not - end of. If you have to claim it - you've lost it and simply demonstrate that you understand neither of them.
"Innovation" - well - in a tech business you assume this is cloud technology, simple and effective code, intuitive service, etc - but that's not what this lot are best known for. Perhaps they mean the financial innovation in taking very high profits each year from locked in clients - but even that's not new really, now is it.
"Passion and service excellence". Show me the firm which hates what it does and deliberately screws its clients at every opportunity - and then has the honesty to say we plan to keep doing this every year in their annual 200-page-spiral-bound-strategy-wonk " Action Plan", and these pious acclamations may just begin to have some meaning.
I despair. A simple strategic test is (1) flip the proposition to see if it really makes you look different from everyone else - if it doesn't - leave it out, and (2) define yourself in relevant ways - who would ever know this was not a doughnut factory in Wisconsin, and (3) know what you don't do...
- and start with "don't do bullsh1t".
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