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Quick! What are your firm’s core values? What about core purpose? Mission? How about your ideal client profile?
Like most advisory firms, your answer is probably along the lines of, “We don’t have them documented,” or “They are written down somewhere, but I’d have to look it up.”
The importance of having a carefully and thoughtfully considered strategic direction and documenting it cannot be overstated. After all, if you don’t have a clear idea on why your firm exists, what business it’s in, what it stands for, who your customer is, where it’s going, when and how it will get there, don’t expect your people to show up to work inspired about your “vision” because, well, there is none.
Thus, if you don’t already have a documented strategic direction, and you want your firm to break through to the next level, set aside some time to think critically about your firm’s identity and trajectory. However, if you’ve already thought through and documented your firm’s strategic direction, yet it wasn’t exactly a life-altering experience for you, now is the time to bring this direction to life.
But how do you do it? How do you make your strategic direction come alive and inspire you and your people to row together in unison in the same direction?
Although Plato’s book, Phaedrus, is a dialogue on the nature of love between Socrates and Phaedrus, it contains a discussion about the written word versus oral reasoning – asking questions and interrogating people about the soundness of their ideas. To Socrates, the written word is silent and mute in response to his questions and interrogations. He cannot have a discussion with the written word to uncover its logical framework and underlying presuppositions. Here’s what Plato wrote:
I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
You may have your firm’s core values, for example, written down, framed and hanging in the lobby of your office. To be sure, values like “integrity,” “hard work,” “leadership,” “teamwork” are admirable aspirations. But if they are never discussed, rarely communicated, and no one knows them by heart, they are no different than “writing” in that, like painting, they “preserves a solemn silence.” The written words mean nothing; they inspire no one; they do nothing to spur anyone to a selfless act; they make heroes out of no one.
After all, Enron’s “Visions and Values” statement began, “As a partner in the communities in which we operate, Enron believes it has a responsibility to conduct itself according to certain basic principles.” Its core values – respect, integrity, communication and excellence – were conspicuously displayed in its lobby.
