Our Principles and Values

Principles

It is critical that we behave with absolute integrity. We will aggressively deal with people where integrity violations occur. Any sense of us operating without integrity will destroy our business – clients don’t want to engage with people they can’t trust.

One of the key things that already differentiates us is our Authenticity. Some of our people who have come from other businesses have commented on how genuine people in the business are – even when we debate, there is generally the sense that people are being straight about what they believe, and there is very limited politics and agenda. We want this to continue.

Respect is also key. While we expect people to be candid with others, this must be done with respect for the individuals in question. People should, as a matter of course, think about how they frame their views in a way that is respectful for the individual.

When we talk about Citizenship, we mean both internally and externally. Internally, people should be helpful in supporting the good of the organisation. But externally, we are also looking for people who are seeking to do things that have genuine benefit for others – while the money is an important factor, it’s not enough. We should want to make a difference through the things we should do.

Values

Open, candid and constructive, with absolute integrity.

This one probably speaks for itself. Nonetheless, we are expecting people to be open – not hiding information, or their views. We expect people to be candid – straight – with people, particularly in management where it is critical that people know what their managers think of them. It is important that being candid does not stray into being rude or unpleasant. We therefore want all engagements to be constructive. If an individual is giving negative feedback, it should be done so in a way that helps the recipient improve.

Passionate about client success.

This should also be reasonably obvious. We are expecting people to be passionate in a table thumping way about clients’ success. The importance of this can be seen in the alternative – if we don’t care particularly about our clients, we won’t compete or keep them for that long. We won’t develop new propositions, and the clients won’t share useful information with us. The best test of this is whether the clients feel our passion, and that's how we’ll gauge it.

Demanding our best, intolerant of mediocrity.

This is intended to bring together a number of themes. We should be stretching ourselves and each other to be the best we can be. We expect to demand more of our people and we are committed to helping them achieve excellence, and to doing this constructively.

It is not enough to be excellent if we are still not fulfilling our potential. At the same time, we should be disgusted by mediocrity. It is not just about avoiding poor performance, it’s a simple question of standards. We expect people to express candidly their disgust for anything that is mediocre, be it client work, performance, or internal process.

Creative – involving, challenging and convincing others.

Creativity is critical to our value proposition. We need to keep re-inventing ourselves to achieve our business objectives of growth and avoid commoditisation. This is best achieved by bringing together diverse people to debate issues. We are therefore seeking to reward people who are creative, who involve others to get higher quality input, and are comfortable challenging. In all this, we understand that, if the business is to have great people, these people won't be told what to do, but they can be persuaded. Therefore, in debate we do not recognise hierarchy, only the quality of argument.

Commercial in all that we do.

Commerciality to some people means absolute focus on profitability. To us, while profitability is a key component, commerciality means more. It is key when engaging in client relationships that this is done in a way that works for both the client and our business. We should not be taking on risks in relationships that we are not being adequately rewarded for. Equally, we should not be engaging in relationships that only work for us, as the client will ultimately wake up to this and it will hit us reputationally.

Commerciality also relates to how we behave on a day-to-day basis. For example, how we organise our time, prioritise our work, look at new projects and developments, should be done with the interests of the business in mind. Ultimately commerciality is about how we balance risk and cost against potential reward.