The Power of Principles

I have just added to my audio page an interview with me on Eric Mattson's MarketingMonger podcast series about the challenges facing businesses today and the principles that define successful business and managers.

One of the key messages I passed on was that the elements of good management often sound like "moral" points -- you "should" care about clients and customers and you "should" act as if you cared about whether your employees are engaged and enthused. In the past, I used to apologise for this and say "it's not a moral point, it just works in business!"

But then I made an interesting discovery. If you think somethingisa moral point, you'll just implement and execute it better -- and thereby get the business benefits faster and more extensively.

It turns out that there is nothing so powerful in business as actually having some principles that you actually hold on to passionately and require those around you to believe.

I further explore the ideas Eric and I discussed in these articles:

• Strategy and the Fat Smoker
• Do You Really Want Relationships
• Are You Abusive, Cynical, or Exciting?
• It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Much You Want It

(You can receive all of my future articles directly by subscribing to my free article newsletter.)

Thanks to Eric for the enjoyable interview. Best wishes to him on the remaining 968 interviews in his 1000 podcast series.

By the way, folks -- does your experience match mine?

Do people who actually believe things and have a personal morality about how business should be conducted actually attract like-minded people and build more successful institutions?

What about the opposite? Can you be a "pragmatic sceptic" and still build a thriving, financially successful business?

Don't Compromise -- Take Turns

As part of leading discussions on the keys to great business relationships, I often ask seminar participants what they think the keys to great relationships are in personal life.

Frequently, someone will say "Compromise" and I think this is dead wrong. Compromise means neither party gets what they want, and both sides end up unhappy.

Instead, the secret is "Take Turns!"

Some of the time, the focus is on one person, fulfilling their needs, and some of the time the focus is on the other person. This way, both sides experience the other party wholeheartedly paying attention to them, and doing things that they want.

The principle applies to business. Employees know that most of the time, the organisation is going to be run for the benefit of the owners and the bosses. But if occasionally, just occasionally, the employees needs become front and centre and receive true attention, the commitment to the relationship is strengthened.

Don't pretend that my interests are always taken into account in your decisions -- I know they are not. Don't attempt to make small token gestures, giving me unsatisfying, tiny pieces of what I want.

Periodically, make me the focus and give me a major part of your attention -- and I'll hang in there through the rough spots of our relationship.

Taking turns doesn't have to be an even-handed 50-50 proposition. I just need to know that you can be fair, equitable and just, and recognise that we both have to contribute to make this relationship work. And you do that when *I* get to be front-and-centre. It's not ALWAYS about what you want.

Train a pigeon -- new managing videocast & audiocast

The 10th episode in my live video and podcast series deals with helping another human being to live up to their potential. We will examine the prospect that this is a general process not unlike parenting a child or coaching an athlete and learn a number of tactics to nurture the excitement and success of others.

Audio Timeline

00:40 -- Introduction
01:08 -- Step one: Does this person want to live to standards we do?
02:29 -- Step two: Finding an overlap between organisational needs and personal excitement
05:05 -- Step three: encouraging success in the overlap
08:48 -- Conclusion

You can download Train a Pigeon or sign up to receive new videos automatically with iTunes or other video players. (Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to subscribe.) My seminars are always available for download at no cost.

Keeping the Kids

Among the most frequent consulting questions I receive is how, amid a scarcity of young knowledge workers, junior staff can be attracted, motivated and retained.

My clients also want to know how to justify and pay for the increasingly ridiculous salaries that these young people can command. As one example, young people straight out of law school in the US are being paid more than $140,000 per year!

Similar ridiculous numbers are showing up in a multitude of industries and countries across the world. Ask some Indian parents how they view the incomes their 20-something children can earn in the outsourcing factories of Mumbai!

My clients insist that there is a new "Millenial" generation with different attitudes -- that "they" are different than we were (or are.)

I think this is wrong. Because of differences in the supply / demand balance, younger people today may have more opportunities than Generation Xers like me (or like baby-boomers, Generation Y or Z. or whatever) but the realities of building a career remain the same.

What a young person needs (in addition to a good paycheque) -- in fact what he or she MUST have -- is the opportunity to work on stretching, challenging interesting things -- the chance to build skills.

Without this, they can not develop themselves and have a career -- they will be stuck in low added-value jobs. For someone who has not yet "made it", learning and growing is not a "nice-to-have" -- it's critical.

If they are not learning new things, they HAVE to move on in order to have a career and get somewhere with their work lives.

So, there's a very simple secret to solve the twin dilemma of how to both hold on to mobile young people AND to justify their ever-escalating salaries. It is this -- make sure that they are put to their highest and best use.

To do this requires that the organisation has no "underdelegation" -- work currently being done by a more senior person that could be done by the more junior person. It means that companies must outperform their competitors in establishing procedures, processes, templates, forms, databanks, knowledge systems and a multitude of other tools to ensure that the (expensive) junior talent can be economically justified by producing ever-increasing high-value output.

Companies that do this find that everybody wins -- the juniors get fulfilling, developmental careers that provide opportunities to learn that they could not get elsewhere; the product or service that the company makes is produced more efficiently than when it is made by higher-priced people. Some of the savings can be passed on to the customers or clients in the form of lower prices or fees, while some can be retained as company profits. And the time of the more senior people is freed up to invest in and pursue higher-value opportunities that will keep the organisation competitive.

Ah, but THERE's the problem for many firms and companies. To achieve this nirvana, the senior people must be willing to give up the comfort of holding on to the work they are already responsible for, and be willing to prove that a younger person could do what they have worked for so long to be able to handle!

In many places, this "delegation" solution is virtually impossible to achieve because the existing, senior people are afraid to expose themselves in this way. And company measurement systems that evaluate senior people on how busy they are only serve to reinforce this bad behaviour.

This syndrome is not new. Kids today may be expensive and have an attitude problem, but wise management practices to deal with them remain the same as they always were.

The Disproportionality Principle

You are never known by your best, but you are always tarnished by your worst.

Your triumphs are often forgotten by the marketplace -- your disasters rarely are.

You'll spend a long time recovering from one job done badly, or one client (or boss) disappointed in you.

People talk, and they criticise and gossip more than they praise.

It can take years to build trust, moments to lose it.

I'm not sure what you can do about this, except try, desperately try, not to mess anything up, and if you still do, try to mend fences (and your reputation) before you move on.

Creating a High-Trust Organisation

In a recent blog and article, I argued that law firms are remarkable for being low-trust institutions, and that this prevents them from accomplishing many of their goals because individuals do not work to advance the institutions goals, but mostly their own.

Mel Bergstein, who has just stepped down as CEO of the major consulting firm that he founded (Diamond Cluster) pointed out in a comment on my blogpost that the issue was much more generalisable, and that creating trust in organisations was a common challenge for all organisations of knowledge workers.

I'll be writing a follow-up article about this in the future, but here are some preliminary thoughts about what it takes to create an organisation where people trust each other and work for the common good, thereby also achieving more for themselves as individuals.

1. Selectivity in hiring, screening out those who don't want to be team players
2. A written constitution that spells out the common ideology of the organisation, and what it means for personal behaviour -- explicit not implicit, no ambiguities, please.
3. Some kind of programmed socialisation process so that new people (entry level or senior hires) are shown about the way the organisation requires them to behave
4. Careful selection of managers with both personal values and the courage and skills to tackle untrustworthy behaviour (even or especially that demonstrated by powerful people) early, rather than waiting till the problem is egregious. (Values, Courage and skill -- that's a heck of a package to ask of managers!)
5. A focused strategy around selective market segments and services, so that there are lots of opportunities for people in different parts of the organisation to interact and hence build up trust through repeated experiences of working together
6. Abandonment of measurement systems that report individual or small group results, and which create pressure on people to worry primarily about their own performance rather than the success of the institution.

This is not a complete package, but I hope it's enough to stimulate some discussion. What do YOU think it takes to create a "High Trust Organisation?"

Can You Say No?

Today I posted a new article on my website entitled Strategy Means Saying "No".

I won't try to summarise all of the arguments here, but will just point out that the article is about the difficulty that all companies and all individuals have in turning away the opportunity for short-term cash in order to stay focused on their declared strategy. (The article is an explicit follow-up to my earlier article Strategy and the Fat Smoker.)

One of the saddest mistakes businesses make is that by stressing growth and volume (goals that are almost sacred in most companies) they are inescapably, unavoidably inevitably led to compromise their own strategies and turn themselves into undifferentiated organisations that look like everybody else.

If you stress growth and volume above all else, then you'll end up, strategically, with the posture of "We'll do anything you ask, just pay us and we'll do it." And you know what that reminds you of, right?

Being strategic is hard. It requires you to focus on what makes you truly differentiated and special, and truly delivering on that promise. You do achieve greater volume and profits because of your excellence.

But there's a difference between "Let's make money by delivering on our strategy" and "let's make money any way we can."

Too few companies (or individuals) have the courage and ambition to do the former, and too many companies (and individuals) come across with the latter clearly as their operating philosophy: "we'll do anything for the money, just ask."

The Power of One

I attended the graduation of an employee, Fiona, from university. The commencement speaker was Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities and many other works. I've been a fan of his work, especially his earlier non-fiction writing, for a long time.

As a speaker, he did meander a bit, covering many of the themes he has previously written about. However, his main point was very effective.

Using the examples of Jesus, Mohammed, Marx, Freud and many others, he pointed out that the world has frequently been changed profoundly through words, offered by an individual without an institution to back them up.

I'm not sure how the graduates reacted to his point, but as a writer without an institution around me, I, of course, found it very inspiring.

There's nothing like flattering your audience into thinking they could be compared to great people.

His point also reminded me of Peter Drucker's often quoted message that, in business and elsewhere, nothing ever happens except when it is created by "a monomaniac on a mission."

A little less flattering an image to accept for oneself, but equally accurate.

My version?

Whatever it is that I want to see happen -- it ain't up to THEM. It's up to ME.

The Keynote Speech Charade

A significant proportion of the phone calls I receive enquiring about my services are invitations to speak at in-house conferences and meetings. I actually get hired for only a small proportion of these, because I am, it appears, a demanding and difficult person to hire.

The problem derives from the fact that, in choosing when and where to get involved, I try to select engagements where I have a chance -- at the very least, a chance -- at doing something meaningful and purposeful, and making a difference through my presentations.

However, I am constantly astonished by what a small percentage of people organising conferences and meetings actually want this, or have even thought about it.

Most of the time, they want a speech that is entertaining, informative, stimulating and motivating. What they don't seem to want is anything that specifically addresses the way they run their firm or the real-world changes they are really trying to make.

They don't, it seems, want anything that appears challenging, provocative, controversial or potentially divisive. They don't REALLY want to address the topics they ask their speakers to talk about.

For example, I recently received an enquiry asking me to speak about the topic of True Professionalism, and convey to the audience the importance of living up to the organisation's "sacred values." They wanted me to be inspiring.

However, when I asked if I could take votes at the meeting as to how well everyone thought the organisation was currently living it's values, the organisers were terrified -- "No, that would stir up things too much!" they said.

I also discovered the problem in the few months that I experimented with working through a speakers' bureau. I met with their agents to explain the type of work I was willing to take on. I was astonished to discover that this was a relatively unusual request for them -- most speakers and most clients operated on the principle that if the date was available and the date was free, then a booking was made.

The idea that a discussion should take place, to see if the speaker could be used to further the organisation's goals, and fit into other changes that management wanted to bring about, seemed to be an uncommon desire.

Of course, the clients' experience with speakers could have contributed a lot to this situation. Many speakers have only their "fixed" presentation, and make no attempt to custom-tailor it to the specific situation.

Whoever is at fault, the fact is that, most frequently, meetings and conferences are organised as "stand-alone" events, with a life of their own, disconnected to the firm's progress.

This is also evidenced by the fact that, most frequently, it is not someone in management who calls me, but a "conference planner" or someone in "administration" -- people who are not in a position to discuss what changes the organisation is really ready to tackle.

Most meetings, and most keynote speakers, have agenda topics, but no clear goals. I wrote an article called Meeting Goals, available on my website, on the possible goals of a meeting -- but to this day, most of the calls I receive are from people who haven't begun to think that through.

I think it's perfectly valid to want an entertaining speaker, and I've tried throughout my career to be both entertaining and inspiring in my style. But the thought of being JUST an entertainer no longer excites me -- there's so much more that could be achieved with a conference presentation or seminar, if companies only had the courage to plan that version.

Getting Others to Give You What You Want -- new managing videocast & audiocast

In this, the 9th episode in my live videocast and podcast series, I put forth the proposition that everything in life must be willingly given to you by another person. We will explore relative merits of two very different ways of engaging with other people.

Audio Timeline

00:40 -- Introduction
01:07 -- Anything you want in life must come from other people
02:14 -- The difference between them and us
02:51 -- The difference between relationships and one-night stands
03:52 -- Conclusion

You can download Getting Others To Give You What You Want or sign up to receive new videos automatically with iTunes or other video players. (Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to subscribe.) My seminars are always available for download at no cost.

Thank you

I'd like to pause the proceedings for a moment to thank the growing community of friends who participated in the conversation here in the month of April with your comments and trackbacks.

Commenters

1styearassociate, Stephanie West Allen, Angel, Annette, Debra H. Bender, Mel Bergstein, Friedrich Blase, Bren, James Bullock, Shawn Callahan, CarSinger, James Cherkoff, Curt, DUST!N, Ed Dodds, Doug Fletcher, Tristan Forrester, Edward Gabrielse, Michelle Golden, Andy Havens, Huda, Josh, Steve Kaplan, Rita Keller, David Koopmans, Moe Levine, Howard Lovatt, Karen Love, Bruce MacEwen, Greg Magnus, Markkleeberg, Mike O'Horo ("The Coach"), Mike, Rob Nance, Mike O'Horo, Orikinla Osinachi, Bill Peper, Ric, Roman Rytov, Jon Sacker, Tired Secretary, Carl Singer, David A. Smith, Nut Suwapiromchot, Charles Tippett, Ian Welsh, Mott Williamson

Trackbacks, for my readers who are non-bloggers, are a delightful practice peculiar to the blog world where fellow bloggers let you know when they are writing about your ideas -- something like the blog world equivalent of an academic footnote. (For more details, please see the lengthier explanation of trackbacks I posted last month.)

Trackbacks

Adam Smith, Esq.
Adventure of Strategy
Anecdote
Casual Fridays
Community
Legal Marketing Blog
Legal Sanity
Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR
Oplossingsgerichtmanagement
SoloBlawg by Ben Cowgill
Spooky Action
The Bell Curve Scar
The New View From Object Towers
www.votala.com

Thank you to all of you for contributing your opinions to these dynamic conversations.

And for those readers who haven't left a comment yet, please consider yourselves officially invited! I'm looking forward to getting to know you and hearing your ideas, too.

Sinning Gurus

When and if I am ever tempted to write another book (and I will be, I will be), I'm going to keep by me "The top 12 sins of Marketing Gurus (and their books)" the May 15 blogpost by Uri Baruchin, an Israeli marketing consultant based in London.

As a brief summary (read his post in full for explanation) his top 12 are

1. Anecdotal evidence:
2. Best practices:
3. Sweeping generalisations:
4. Sweeping negatives:
5. 100% evangelism (or "I'm converted, let me go"):
6. More bulk for your buck:
7. New marketing is old marketing and vice versa:
8. Rebranding of jargon:
9. Fundamentalism:
10. Evoking the geeks:
11. Cliches:
12. Round numbers:

I hope I don't make too many of these mistakes in my writing, but I'd like to offer some defence of some of these practices.

First, the reason that so many authors and consultants use anecdotes, best practices, sweeping generalisations and sweeping negatives in their work is that clients, readers and other audiences want exactly that.

As someone who has written both anecdotal and "present-the-evidence" books, I can report that no-one wants to spend the time to follow a refined chain of logic, and no-one wants to be forced to wade through the accumulated evidence just to have the conclusion justified.

Instead, clients and readers are always asking for the key message, something they can absorb quickly and turn into a corporate mantra. Clients keep telling me they have a new strategy, when all they have is a new slogan, slightly adapted from the latest fad management book.

Yes, consultants (including me) make all the mistakes that Uri identifies so well, but I think that this is one time when the blame must be shared.

It's not just consultants who are responsible for creating management fads and inventing new jargon and "pushing" them onto a reluctant audience. Just as frequently, if not more often, the clients and the readers (again including me) are "pulling" the fad approach by implicitly asking authors "What have you got that's new, exciting and can be conveyed in a keynote speech?"

Number of RSS Feeds

An administrative note: For those who pay attention to such things, this blog has had available, up till now, four different RSS sub-feeds (Strategy, Managing, Client Relations and Careers), as well the aggregated "global" feed containing blog posts in all four categories.

I'm changing that, so that from now on there will be only one global feed available. Since the vast majority of people signed up for that, the sub-feeds didn't seem to serve much purpose.

You don't have to do anything. It's just that if you only subscribed before to one of my sub-category feeds, you are going to start receiving posts on the other subjects, too. Sorry!

Why Should I Help You?

A reader asks:

I'm currently working on the definition of a body of knowledge that will ultimately be submitted to the International Standards Office as a global standard.  As part of the process, it's necessary for me to approach a number of experts in the field and persuade them to join an advisory body.  What is the best way to approach those experts?  How would you recommend that we best persuade them to contribute their time and support to what will inevitably have to be a compromise document (which may not entirely agree with their particular beliefs and methods)?

As a frequently published author with some reputation as a consultant in my field, I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of (many, many) requests like these, so I'll answer from that perspective.

It's always amazing to me how many people contact me, suggesting we meet immediately ("You don't know me.  How's Friday?") or telling me precisely what a significant benefit it will be to them if I were to give them my time and attention.  ("I'm contacting you because you can be really helpful to me.")

It strikes me as odd that people don't think they have to give me a reason to help them, other than what's in it for them.  Even if the person you're contacting is immensely charitable, isn't it likely that a person in a position to do a favour for you probably has had other requests for assistance?  Shouldn't it therefore be obvious that you have to make a (credible) case as to why they should help you?

Notice, this isn't about finding the right pick-up line.  ("I've heard of you, you've never heard of me, but I know we have mutual interests and can be of assistance to each other if we can meet to get to know each other better.")  (Yes, all these quotes are real experiences I've had)

Instead, before you make contact, you need to think about and come up with a substantively valid reason, why it would be in that person's interest to help you (among others) out.  That reason has to have emotional meaning for the person from whom you want the favour.

It sounds a bit blunt, but every human being, when asked for something, is always going to ask themselves "What's in it for me?"  This doesn't mean that they are always venal and selfish -- it might just mean that it furthers a cause they believe in.  But if they are going to respond to you, it's going to be because helping you is going to make them feel good in some way, not because it's going to make you feel good.

So, what are the possibilities?  Well, I won't be able to list them all, but here are some of the appeals (some noble, some not so noble) that have worked on me at various stages of my career.  (Disclaimer:  I give no guarantee that they will ever work again!  Don't take this blogpost as an open invitation to call me and ask for a favour!)

a) It will advance a cause you believe in

b) It will give you a chance to work with people you respect

c) You will meet interesting people who you might not otherwise have a chance to interact with

d) It will help spread your name and fame

e) You'll be helping the next generation avoid the mistakes you made

f) You don't want to be left out and let other people set the agenda

g) You'll learn a lot by participating

h) Your friends are involved

i) You're enemy/ chief rival is involved

j) This is your chance to leave a legacy that will live on after you

k) It's a way to get feedback on your ideas before you have to commit yourself publicly

l) You'll be publicly thanked and recognised as a prime contributor

m) It will introduce your ideas to a whole new group of people

n) The people seeking your help are especially deserving because they are neglected or disadvantaged

There are more, but that should be enough for you to be going on.

Hey, everyone!  What appeals have worked on you?

Working Internationally

Since I work around the world, I am frequently asked if the business issues I discover tend to differ from country to country or region to region.

The answer is that while the business issues tend to be very similar, the style with which you respond to them must change a great deal.

It is always true that to have a successful company, you must energise, excite and enthuse your people. However, it turns out that the way that you excite a Brit is not the same way you enthuse an Australian. (They even show their enthusiasm in different ways.) In fact, it can vary regionally: the best way to get through to a New Yorker doesn't always work best in the rest of the US.

The same lesson applies in client relations. When I sent my article Marketing is a Conversation to a prominent UK lawyer, she observed that aggressive attempts to get to know the clients (at least in the fashion I described) would be considered very counter-cultural in the UK and Europe. The intentions and the motivations might be the same, but you would need to have a very sensitive ear to pick up what was being received well.

None of this says one cannot work well in foreign countries. It does say that a key to success is the need to pick up social clues quickly and integrate them into your style (a form of emotional intelligence). But then, that's true domestically anyway!

What Does Client-Centricity Really Mean?

One of the most common and confusing terms in business today is "client centricity" or "client focus." Many businesses claim to have it. Few are clear about what they mean by the term.

Charles Green has a wonderful analogy. He points out that many companies have the client focus of a vulture -- they pay close attention to what the clients are up to, but only in order to figure out the right time to pounce and tear at their flesh!

This is a very apt description of many company's "client relationship plans" or client relationship management (CRM) systems. They are not really plans to build a relationship at all -- they are just a list of activities trying to tell the clients about the wonderful things we can do for them. A sales plan is not a relationship-building plan.

But what could client centricity really mean if we were to take the term seriously?

I suspect that there are levels of client-centricity or client focus.

What follows is my attempt to describe increasing levels of client focus (and possibly of marketplace effectiveness.)

Level 1: We do a better job than our competitors at listening to customers and work hard at finding out what they like and don't like about dealing with us.

Level 2: We have a better understanding (than competitors) of what the experience is like of being a client

Level 3: In designing our operations and activities, we focus on what the client wants to buy, rather than what we want to sell

Level 4: We have ongoing tracking methods (quantitative and judgmental) to assess the quality of the clients' experience, as judged by the client.

Level 5: We treat those client satisfaction / quality metrics as equally important (if not more so) than financial scorecards in evaluating groups and people.

Level 6: We have provided experiential training to everyone who deals with clients on how to be a better counsellor, helping them develop their interpersonal, psychological, social and emotional skills and ability to interact with others.

Level 7: We continually use our better understanding of the experience of being a client in order to enhance the quality of the experience for the client in dealing with us.

Level 8: We are able (and do) treat customers as unique, adapting and responding to each with a customised approach, rather than adopt standard methods of dealing with all clients.

Level 9: We have thoughtful, well-executed plans to invest (without fee) our own time and money in growing the relationship with key clients, earning and deserving their trust and future business

Level 10: We place a greater emphasis in our measure and reward systems on growing existing client relationships rather than pursuing new accounts. Relationships are more important then volume around here.

Level 11: Clients believe that if it is ever a trade-off, we will put the clients' interests ahead of our own.

******

OK, reality time!

How well would you rate your company's client focus on these criteria?

What have I left out or got in the wrong order?

Why Don't Advertising Agencies Advertise?

There is an absolutely marvellous blog and discussion about why advertising agencies don't advertise here.

The argument (and the discussion) could be extended.

Why don't the branding agencies have branding campaigns?

Which PR firm trying to break into the blogging / social media services marketplace got a lot of bad publicity because it didn't have a blog of its own, yet held itself out as ready to advise others?

We have already discussed paradoxes like these on this blog under the title of The Shoemakers' Children.

How Managers Should Spend Their Time -- new managing videocast & audiocast

There exists a great imbalance in the responsibilities of a professional group leader. While many are expected to manage, serve clients, and generate revenue, too often the lowest priority is management or coaching. In this, the 8th episode of my live video and podcast series, we will discuss why this is a terrible economic decision for most firms and we'll explore tactics aimed at restoring this balance.

Audio Timeline

00:39 -- Introduction
01:16 -- The economical mistake of neglecting management in favour of revenue
04:38 -- How managers should spent their time
08:11 -- Conclusion

You can download How Managers Should Spend Their Time or sign up to receive new videos automatically with iTunes or other video players. (Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to subscribe.) My seminars are always available for download at no cost.

Are You Being Mentored?

The concept of being mentored sounds like something that happens to you when you're young and on the way up. The truth, however, is that, at any age or stage, we all need a loving critic, a friendly sceptic, a coach, a mentor to help us make sense of the world.

Do you currently have someone who:

1. Is reliably, dependably on your side but is not afraid to critique you?
2. You can rely on to tell you the truth -- gently, but nevertheless the truth?
3. Helps you understand how you are perceived, inside your organisation and in the marketplace?
4. Helps you extract the right lessons from your disappointments and failures?
5. Keep you from getting carried way with too much enthusiasm about your successes?
6. Watches you and lets you know when you are failing to keep things in balance?
7. Acts as your sounding board for your new ideas before you launch them, so that you can refine them (and sometimes abandon the crazier ones?)
8. Suggests new things for you to consider?
9. Helps you see things from fresh perspectives, and helps you think things through, without substituting their judgment for yours?
10. Helps you understand the politics of the organisation you are in or have to work with?

We all need to keep our eyes and ears open at all times for people who might serve one or more of these roles for us. It's not true that we only need one mentor, or that one person can do everything on the list above.

If you don't currently have people who play these roles for you, then you have work to do. Go make a mentor or two (or three or four.)

Some people look for a mentor who will be their champion, helping them get the best opportunities, supporting their cause and smoothing their way up the ladder. However, such relationships are rare. They are usually the eventual outcome of a long-term relationship, not its starting point.

The best way to think of a mentor is as someone who will be your confidante and guide. Someone you can go to in order to try out ideas, get feedback and advice. The mentor is thus your coach, not your champion. He or she doesn't create your success for you, but helps you create your own success.

Finding, creating and sustaining a mentor is just like any other relationship: you get out of it what you put into it, and you cannot wait for the other person to seek you out. You have to work actively to develop and refresh your network of mentors.

Mentors do not have to be your superiors at work. In my case, former clients have been invaluable as people I can talk about my work with. Even though our time together began with me advising them, they are often delighted to "reverse" the relationship and help me. If you let your clients get to know you as a person, and the things you face in your career, many will respond with friendship.

Other sources of mentors can be colleagues with whom you have previously worked. (I owe a significant debt of gratitude to Charlie Green and Patrick McKenna, who, to this day, still take the time to preview my writing and make suggestions. I try to do the same for them.)

As always, you build a relationship by earning it with small gestures of goodwill -- finding ways to be helpful to the other person above and beyond the call of duty. Show an interest in them, without rushing to get what you want out of the relationship. Start small. Don't expect a caring relationship to occur immediately upon your initial interaction with someone. Try to be useful to them even in a small way, whether it is helping on an internal project, providing work to a new client, or exploring a mutual interest.

Get to know your possible mentor, then begin slowly asking for their advice. Don't expect them to spend an hour with you after a one-month project. However, they would probably gladly spend 15 minutes talking with you about their experience, or giving their advice on a career issue you are facing. The key is to make it easy for them to help you.

So, here's your action list for today.

First, reflect on what aspects of being mentored (using the list above as a starting guide) you could usefully use more input and guidance.

Second, reflect on who you have met recently (or deal with regularly) who might be in a position to help you get better.

Third, start to build a relationship with those people (it's almost certainly more than one person) earning their goodwill and trust by finding a way to be helpful to them.

(By the way -- a message for top executives and corporate readers -- all this applies to organisations, too. How well mentored do you think your firm is? What could you do about that?)

Who Can Help?

The CEO of the consulting firm was giving a speech to his assembled troops, young and old, encouraging them to get involved in business development early, citing one of his own successes as a young consultant.

Noticing that he was being undercharged on his telephone bill, he speculated that the telephone company was undercharging many of their other customers. So, he wrote a letter to the telephone company's CEO, identifying the opportunity for the telephone company to make money, and landed an initial assignment that grew into a significant consulting relationship.

Quite a creative, impressive piece of initiative for a young person! The only problem was that, while the majority of the audience was incredibly (and appropriately) impressed by the CEO's piece of autobiography, only a minority thought they would have had either the ability or the courage to do something like that.

The behaviour seemed very forceful and aggressive to many of them -- they questioned whether they would ever have the courage (or the wisdom) to do something like that. It seemed "foreign."

There was a similar reaction to another point the CEO made. He was pointing out the benefits of staying in touch with everyone you went to school with, since your classmates may turn out to be people who, in future years, can hire you.

The CEO's intentions were pure -- he pointed out that the key to business generation was having a sincere interest in people and a sincere desire to help them. He cited the example of one of the firm's great business-getters of all time, for whom there was almost no difference between his social circle of best friends and his customer base.

Again, while the impact of the speech should have been motivating, it was not so to all of the younger people present. Isn't there something false, many of them worried, in staying in touch with people for such mercenary reasons? Do I really want there to be such an overlap between my work community and my personal community? Yes, it worked for the superstars, but is it ME?

The CEO was sincerely trying to use his experience to help his junior people succeed, and was giving them wonderful advice. But it was the advice of a "natural." He wasn't getting through to his novices and apprentices.

They were not thinking "Oh, now I see how it's done -- that's easy." Their reaction, just when anyone skilled is trying to show you how to do something was "Wow, I'll never be as good and as smooth at doing this as that person, why should I try?"

The truth is that if someone is going to help us learn something, we do not learn best from the "naturals." We learn best from someone who credibly, visibly, "been there -- done that!" Someone who started out struggling with these issues.

If I'm struggling with a drink problem, don't offer me a teetotaler as my counsellor -- they just won't understand my struggle, and they absolutely will not be able to help me. If I'm struggling with weight, don't give me an instructor who never had an extra pound of fat on him or her.

I need to work with someone who knows how difficult it is to stick with the program, what it feels like to get the "midnight munchies" and someone who can give me tips derived from really personal experience about how a NON-natural, a NOVICE, begins to build the new behaviours into a lifestyle.

The best teachers and trainers prove to me that they understand my struggle, and give me tips, tactics and suggestions appropriate to my stage of development -- not just the examples of what the superstars can do.

What do THEY want?

One of our biggest problems is that we love putting people in categories, so that we can use short-cuts in figuring out how to deal with them. We're always looking for general rules.

I remember wasting a lot of my adolescence and my 20s trying to answer the question "What do women want?"

Eventually, I grew up and realised it was pretty silly trying to make a generalisation about a half of the world's population. What I needed was not a theory about what women (in general) wanted, but an ability to detect, as quickly as possible, what the human being I was with wanted.

The very act of generalising was what was getting in the way of me paying attention, getting close, and forming a bond with the other person.

People (even women, it turns out) do not want to be treated as a member of a group, or class, or market segment, or subset. They want to be treated as individuals.

The same, of course, is true in all aspects of human life, business as well as personal.

Any sentence that begins "What clients want is ..." is bound to be wrong. The essential lesson is that there is no one thing that all clients want.

The business challenge is this: how quickly can you or your organisation find out what the specific client wants and adapt to that clients' individuality? How well do you truly listen, adapt and respond?

Really great client service doesn't mean figuring out a bunch of neat things that most people like and then doing those things to everyone. Client focus means being good at figuring out, in real time, what each client would prefer, and adapting as much as you can to those preferences.

Notice that we do not, in personal life or business life, have to adapt completely. People understand that there are constraints and limitations (after all, I'm just a male and there are limits to how flexible I can be.)

However, people really respond well in business and personal life when they see we are TRYING to treat them as specific human beings, not just as a category member. It's so rare that they repay us with their commitment and loyalty.

Stress at the Top

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with an old friend and client who works at an international accounting firm, and who has been charged with providing "Human Resource support" not to the employees, but to the top level of the organisation -- the partners or senior professionals.

This is a healthy initiative. As he points out, there may be a lot of talk about the need for good management of lower-level employees, but the life of senior professionals in most sectors has been revolutionised. The world's gone crazy around them -- increasing client demands, new technologies, the need for greater concern about how junior people inside the organisation are managed. Some sectors like accounting also have a new regulatory environment to contend with.

This reminds me of a speech I gave a while ago, where I was asked to talk about improving the morale of junior people in order to prevent increasingly high levels of staff turnover amid the war for talent. Early in my presentation, a partner in the audience raised his hand and said "Forget about discussing THEIR morale as employees -- what about discussing OUR morale as partners?"

He had an excellent point. The traditional model of the professional business was to say to the juniors "Work hard and, one day, you too can have the life of the partners." Needless to say, if the juniors look at the partners' lives and don't like what they see, this is less than fully motivating, and they are not going to hang around for very long!

The efforts that my friend's firm are making to help their senior professionals succeed and manage the new stressful world can be divided into two groups.

First, there are what I call "off-line" support ideas. These include sabbaticals, leadership development processes and an interesting and innovative "comprehensive medical and lifestyle evaluation" service to help senior professionals find and deal with health issues before they are serious or even symptomatic. Apparently, they find solvable undiagnosed issues in 20% of the evaluations.

The second set of ideas for reducing partner stress is to go back to basics and start managing senior professionals differently through different approaches for normal "on-line" regular, managing. (In other words, start managing them instead of just administering a profit-and-loss scorecard)

This involves getting practice leaders, department heads, and office heads to engage more in one-or-one coaching, helping senior people to find out what activities turn them on, then helping them get rid of activities that do not and get more of the activities that do. Companies and firms have to start HELPING people succeed, not just demanding that they do.

It also means re-examining the way the firm uses metrics so they don't (as is traditional in firms like these) keep holding all senior people accountable for being good at everything, but are able to create super-successful teams by allowing individuals to pursue their interests and make a contribution in a specialised role that, through team management, is integrated into the overall needs of the organisation through effective team leadership.

Needless to say, firms find it a lot easier to throw money and time at the "off-line" support initiatives than they do at holding accountable those with managerial responsibility to start being effective at managing. But the effectiveness would come with precisely the reverse priority.

If the CEO or Managing Partner started asking the office heads regularly "What's Jimmy doing to develop his career? What are his challenges and problems? What have you done as office head to help him?" then the office heads would start getting the message that a new regime really existed, and that they probably would have to start changing THEIR behaviour if they wanted to keep their role as practice managers and leaders.

Done this way, things would change fast. However, without this change in managerial behavior (not just speeches) from the top, I have deep a scepticism that change can be brought about through off-line support initiatives.

If management wants other people to change, then management needs to figure out how they personally need to change in order to elicit the new desired behaviours from others. Change only happens if the people at the top change. We keep asking too much of those in support roles -- they cannot patch over bad practices by line management.

Is Blogging Dead

Andrew Lumsden communicated with me quoting from a piece written by Guy Rundle at www.crikey.com.au

It was 1977 and my friend Todd had saved for six months until he finally had what every 11-year-old wanted -- a CB radio! For a year after he got it, we would tune in and roam the frequencies only to find ... airy nothingness.

I was reminded of this recently while trawling the blogosphere which is increasingly taken up with blogs that appear to be dead, dying from neglect or stillborn, with one or two initial entries, now years old.

As with CBs, what thrilled people with blogs was "the ecstasy of communication", the pure fact of being out there in the wide cyberworld -- in other words, the form rather than the content.

What most realise is that blogging is the illusion of connection, publishing into a void and thus doubly isolating. Those blogs that survive will and are evolv(ing) into multi-person sites, some with collective and decentred ways of uploading, others with hierarchies essentially identical to paper editing.

This repeats the birth of newspapers out of the "pamphlet wars" of the 17th century -- the latter a product of the creation of a cheap, single operator platen press. This may be the necessary stage of development required to create a media sphere which genuinely overturns the mass media model -- one in which a range of well-edited moderate circulation outlets can charge and get subscriptions. Whether they could turn into full news-gathering organisations remains to be seen.

Andrew then asks: Is blogging already dead?

Andrew, I don't think blogging is dead. What's rapidly disappearing is the illusion that being successful with blogging is quick, cheap and easy. That all you have to do is "build it and they will come." That's never been true with any other business issue, and it's not true here.

The simple fact is that creating an interesting blog that entices people to want to come back and enter into conversations with you is a slow, time-intensive and hard process. It's no less hard work than writing a book, a series of well thought out articles, or (to switch analogies) building a network of close friends who want to have a committed relationship with you.

If you are looking for instant gratification (and many, many people are) then the fad of blogging is going to fade quickly.

The same is true for those who wish to participate in blogging mostly by reading, rather than creating their own blog. As we have all discovered, it's not that easy to find the "soul-mate" blogs that make you want to come back again and again and continue discussions.

There are two reasons for this. First, and foremost it has always been true that you have to go out on a lot of first dates to meet someone you really want to have a relationship with. It's hard work, isn't it, to search for sites that consistently contain interesting commentary and match your interests.

To continue Guy Rundle's analogy of the CB Radio, it turns out not to be that helpful if you have to scan the frequency every time you want to find something interesting. You and I want shortcuts, and that's why we lapsed back into listening to broadcast radios with stations at pre-set locations and frequencies. The time cost of searching gets too big for the low-probability of a beneficial payback.

The second, related reason is that the technological tools to help us with our search for "simpatico, interesting" people (such as blogrolls, trackbacks, del.icio.us, carnivals) are still undergoing evolution. They reduce the search time, but do not really make it manageable.

Blogrolls are filled with indiscriminatory "friend of a friend" listings that are no guarantee that you'll find the new blog (or person) interesting, and because someone made one interesting comment doesn't mean you want to listen to everything that person has to say.

The lessons? Well, just like your parents told you, it is worth making new friends, and it involves a lot of false starts -- you have to go to a lot of boring parties, hang out in places you don't really like on the chance that you will meet someone, talk to a lot of strangers. It's a pain, but if you want a social life, you've got to do it.

Unless, as Guy Rundle suggests, someone comes up with a way for each of us to decide where to go that maximises the chance that we find like-minded people. That may be a "new" approach, or it may be, as he argues, just a modern equivalent of a preset radio station or print media magazine that targets a market segment and serves both the readers and the advertisers by establishing a clear market position.

(By the way, everybody, I suffer from this problem as much as anyone else. Let me ask all of you out there a question: based on what you tell of my interests by reading my blog, what other blogs should I be reading regularly? It's like those reviews in music magazines -- if you like this CD then you'll probably like that one. Help me out here, folks!)

Finally, for those interesting in writing blogs, more parental advice you probably received -- find something you are passionately interested in, stay true to your vision and keep at it! If you want people to seek you out for ongoing conversations, then you can't just occasionally say something interesting or fun. You have to try your best to make it worth people's time to come back to you again and again. Even here in the blogosphere, this is about relationships, people, not a frenzied search for quick hits!

Quitting Time

Being good at relationships means more than knowing how to start them and maintain them. It also means knowing when and how to end them.

The time will come -- you will find yourself in the wrong job (or working for the wrong client, or even employing the wrong person) and will need to break off the relationship. How you do it matters.

Maybe you are not the one who is initiating the separation, but you can see it coming. In such a case, remember the old slogan "If they are going to run you out of town, dash to the front and lead the parade."

If you suspect the other person is wondering whether or not they want to stay in the relationship with you, you don't want to be caught holding on desperately. Assuming you have made reasonable efforts to make the relationship work, you'll have a lot more options (and make better decisions) if you take the initiative.

Take charge and get out as soon as possible. People will often be grateful if you save them the awkwardness of ending a bad relationship. It's better to plan your exit when you are the one choosing the timing and the style of the separation.

It is often tempting, once you have decided to move on, to switch off or wind down -- to give up working on your relationship with your employer, client or employee. Don't. Do your best right to the end. Regardless of what happened before, or how long you were together, you will be remembered most for the way you leave a relationship.

If you have to divorce (a client or a spouse or even an employee), there's no point sniping. Resist the temptation to tell people what you really think of them and why -- even if you have lots of good arguments and just cause.

Remember that friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. Be kind, say thank you for the good parts and move on. Why make an awkward situation worse?

Avoid burning bridges. It's more noble -- and better for you -- just to walk away, head held high, mouth shut. You'll be glad you did it that way.

Excitement -- new managing videocast & audiocast

In order to maintain any successful, motivated, and forward-thinking organisation, the people must be excited and turned on with regards to the tasks they face. In Excitement, the 7th episode in my live videocast and podcast series, we are going to dive into the virtues of excitement and examine the types of managerial efforts it takes to maintain this crucial element.

Audio Timeline

00:40 -- Introduction
01:00 -- The difference between being happy and being turned on
02:13 -- Why it is imperative that people be excited
04:09 -- Managers: People of principles vs. people of expedience

You can download Excitement or sign up to receive new videos automatically with iTunes or other video players. (Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to subscribe.) My seminars are always available for download at no cost.

They Just Don't Get It!

Early on in my consulting career, I remember having a hard day with clients and coming home to my wife, saying: "Those stupid clients just didn't get it." My wife, very gently, said "You mean that today, just today, you weren't able to help them understand?"

My first instinct was to throw something at her, but my second instinct was to realise she was right. The lack of understanding might not have been my fault, but it was certainly my responsibility to make sure I was being understood.

This isn't a moral point, but one of simple survival. If clients don't hire me because they are too ill-informed to recognise the brilliance of my insight, it's me that loses the job. If I'm trying to advise them to do something and they just won't take my advice, they are going to view me as less than completely helpful. It may be their fault, but it's my problem.

I get questions about this all the time. Everyone has stories of "dumb" clients or people who just won't listen or cooperate or let you do the job you were hired to do. And it's so easy (since it's so often the truth) to lay the blame on the other person and throw your hands up in despair. It's so unfair, we think, that we have to work at being understood when it's their fault.

The crucial first step -- taking ownership and responsibility when you feel that you are not being well understood -- is a huge challenge for most of us, personally and professionally. How often have you had a disagreement with a family member, only to give up in frustration when they "just won't listen to you" or "see your point of view?"

Yet only by taking responsibility for the effectiveness of our communications can we obtain the influence or the results that we want. We have to stop attributing blame, and start viewing the situation as a problem to be solved. We have to learn to get people to engage with us, not just take opposing sides.

We have to ask questions like "Why does this person believe what they believe now?" "Why is it in their interest to defend the point of view that they are making?" As Steven Covey says, one of the keys to effectiveness is "Striving more to understand, and less to be understood."

Note the paradox here. The better you are at understanding the other person, the clearer it will be as to how you might engage them in conversation, have a chance of being understood, and lead them to a different conclusion. Striving first to understand is not (just) a moral or social point, but good pragmatic advice.

Next, it's necessary to make the obvious point that understanding something yourself is one level of accomplishment, but being good at helping someone untrained in your field to understand it is another. This requires a whole new set of skills.

I have a client who always says to me "Explain it to me as if I were a six-year old." He doesn't mean it quite that literally, but it's a helpful reminder that what he wants from me is not just answers but understanding. The skill of helping people understand complex issues is not that common among highly trained, technically qualified people.

And as we know, a free market rewards what is scarce, not necessarily what is inherently valuable. A superior ability to help a client understand your field may be a real point of differentiation, as an individual or as a company.

Of course, this applies to all our relationships, not just those with clients. If your administrative assistant doesn't fully understand what you want, you won't get back what you want. If your boss doesn't understand what you've done, you haven't done it.

Learning to communicate so that people understand you better is a vastly neglected skill.

The New Marketing Director Speech

On http://www.lawmarketing.biz/ there was a request from a new marketing director of a law firm who had been asked to give a speech at a partners' retreat about "what it is that I do, and how it equates to dollars in the door"

There's a temptation in this situation (and every new relationship) to rush to prove yourself (or the worth of your subject area) by making claims for what you can offer. After all, that's what you're being asked to do.

However, the image of being thrown to the crocodiles comes to mind. You can just see the sceptical lawyer audience listening with an "Oh yeah? You've just been added to my overhead costs? You better be good!" mentality.

In this situation (as in a sales situation, or as in all new relationships) the best thing you can do is apply a variant of Shaula Evans' approach and make sure that you clarify your mandate, and make sure there are no misunderstandings about where you can and cannot help. Use this opportunity to get the relationship off on the right foot and you'll save a lot of future grief.

So, in this situation, my advice is that the new marketing director (or HR director, or IT person) should stand up, take a deep breath, and say something like the following:

"As your new marketing director, my job is to support YOUR efforts to attract, win and retain clients. I cannot do that for you; I can only help you do it better.

"If you are energised and motivated to want to get involved in developing your practice, I will be available to offer advice customised to your practice, your personal situation and your ambitions. It will not be the same advice across the board, because each of you is different, and I must learn to serve you as individuals, not as clones of each other.

"I'll try to be a trustworthy counsellor to each of you. Tell me your objectives, and I'll try to help you accomplish them, if I can.

"I can offer advice and execution assistance on a wide variety of marketing activities, including seminars, articles, speeches and so on. I can help you make each of these more effective. However, I will not give blanket recommendations about which of these tactics to use, nor how each of them can best be used. In all cases, the best technique will be one that both fits you and will appeal to your clients. We will discover what these specifics are through personal discussions, or not at all.

"Part of my job will be to help you understand what it will take to accomplish the goals you say you want to achieve.

"Occasionally, this will mean that me pointing out that you are aiming for unreachable goals, or that the amount of effort and resources you are willing to dedicate will not get you where you say you want to go. While I will do my best to help you achieve your goals, I will not encourage you to launch half-measures if I don't think they will work.

"In order to serve you well, I will need the privilege of giving my opinion and sharing my knowledge about what works. I will be your advisor, dedicated to your success. I will not just do what you tell me to do if I think you will be wasting your time.

"It's not my job to tell you to get involved in business development. If you do want to get involved, then I am here to help. If you don't then, as your employee, I cannot and will not try to force anything upon you. I will only give my opinion and advice when it is asked for.

"So, please give me a call so that we can meet one-on-one, and I can truly understand what you want to accomplish with your career and your business. I promise you that, if you do, I will do everything in power to assist you in accomplishing your goals. Thank you very much."

Re-engineering a Professional Business

When doing strategy work with professional businesses, I sometimes ask the people in the firm (senior and junior) to choose the four or five key things they would work on changing if they became their firm's czar or czarina. Among the possibilities:

1. The range of services (more or fewer)
2. How we compensate people
3. Which clients / market segments we serve
4. Ownership structures (Equity v. Partnership, etc.)
5. What we train people in
6. How we are organised
7. Financial controls/measures
8. Performance appraisal criteria
9. Degree of specialisation of people
10. How we decide investments
11. Use of technology
12. Degree of worldwide integration
13. Change way we staff projects
14. Disseminate knowledge and skills around the practice
15. Use of paraprofessionals
16. Approach to dealing with underperformers
17. Who we hire
18. Number/location of offices
19. Approaches to R&D
20. How we market ourselves
21. How we train and coach
22. How we choose managers and other practice leaders
23. How we gather market intelligence about what clients want
24. How we price services
25. What we invest in
26. Use of Methodologies rather than treating each assignment as unique
27. Retirement policies
28. How we do quality assurance
29. How we use support staff
30. Management of overheads
31. How we hire

This is obviously not a complete list.

But if you were concerned about strategic strength (and not just short-term profit gains) which 5 would you pick to focus on?

When Are You At Your Best?

Bill Peper wrote in to ask:

I wonder what you think of the underlying premise of Positive Organisational Scholarship, a hot topic at the University of Michigan Business School these days. In particular, I am curious of your opinion of the Reflected Best Self exercise.

Thanks for drawing this to my attention, Bill. By way of background, the Reflected Best Self exercise is a way of getting feedback from those you have worked with (or family or friends) asking them to relate stories about you when you were at your best and made your largest contribution. It's worth checking out.

The underlying idea of the approach is that, as Marcus Buckingham pointed out in a series of books (starting with First Break All the Rules) a person's success is usually obtained not by working at correcting weaknesses, but by finding out their core strengths and building upon them. (This is the source of the word "Positive" in the name of the area of research.)

It's too soon to know whether this particular method of self-discovery is the best approach, but I am very sympathetic to the insight that most of us, for better or for worse, have a package of strengths and weaknesses, probably very hard to alter.

Two very important conclusions flow from this. First, know thyself. And second, find a way to play a role that fits who you are, not some organisation's generalised statement about what we all need to be good at.

(The conclusions are critical insights in managing someone, too. To help someone succeed, you must help them find a role where they can flourish, not fit everyone into a cookie-cutter set of standards)

Don't worry about what you're good at. If something turns you on, you'll be good enough. If it doesn't, you won't. Your "strengths" are irrelevant: What you like is critical.

One key to discovering what you really like and love is to ask yourself what are the things you don't like to admit. "I don't like to admit it, but I need to be the centre of attention." O.K., find a career path that will let you show off. "I don't like to admit it, but I don't like dealing with other people." OK, then devise a role that will let you make your contribution through things done at the office, such as intellectual creativity and true technical superiority. "I don't like to admit it, but I really want to be rich." Fine, go out and build a business. "I don't like to admit it, but I'm an intellectual snob." That's all right, so find a career path that will allow you to work only with smart people. Play to your "evil secrets." Don't suppress them. You are a lot less flexible than you think.

Goldman's Secret

There is a special report in this week's Economist magazine (issue dated April 29-May 5th 2006) on Goldman Sachs. It is essential reading for anyone who is interested in professional businesses.

The summary quote from Goldman's CEO, Hank Paulson, is a brilliant insight. "Goldman", he says, "is a hard place to be hired, a hard place to be promoted and a hard place to stay." As the Economist's writer observes -- "And if you want an explanation of how Goldman endures, that, perhaps, is the best explanation of all."

The article is rich with details of the intensive hiring process (a vice-chairman had to endure 150 interviews before being hired), the tough promotion process and, the enforcement of high standards even among the firm's most senior people. The article says "Often enough, someone important is asked to leave. This is one of Mr. Paulson's most critical roles."

What all of this proves is that, in professional businesses the essence of strategy, the keys to ongoing success, are not primarily the choices of which markets to compete in and which services to offer. Such decisions, important as they are, are secondary to having processes in place which force the firm, and the people within it, to live at (and to) higher standards than the competition.

Goldman does not preach different philosophies than most other businesss would preach -- commitments to client servoice, teamwork, being a place for the best and the brightest -- it just has THE DISCIPLINE and the COURAGE to achieve consistently higher standards on those principles, with fewer compromises.