Strategic Approach

• We have integrated strategic agility" into our organizational fabric in order to thrive on continuous waves of change, remain flexible, and transform ourselves without losing momentum
• We have an enduring purpose or mission—a reason for being - that goes beyond just making money.
• We limit our primary arenas of activity to those for which:
  • We have great passion
  • We know what we can be the best in the world at
  • We can create profitable growth
• We keep things simple.
• We embrace cultural duality: freedom and responsibility, discipline and entrepreneurship, rigor and creativity, continuity and change, values and results, cohesion and autonomy, endurance and urgency, financial control and innovative spirit, focused strategy and adaptability.
• We have no more than six values to which we honestly adhere, no matter how much the world changes around us.
• We are clear on the difference between our core values (which should never change) as distinct from our operating practices, cultural norms, goals, strategies, and tactics (which should remain open for change).

Leadership

• We are ambitious first and foremost for the long-term greatness of our company and its work.
• We inspire others primarily through inspired standards – excellence, hard work, sacrifice and integrity.
• We deliver substance over style, integrity over personality and results over intentions.
• We are clock-builders, not just a time tellers – we are building a system that can prosper beyond our presence.

First Who, Then What

• We focus on ‘who would be the right person to take responsibility for this?’ rather than ‘what should we do?’ when confronted with any problem or opportunity.
• We have the right people in the right roles.
• We recruit self-motivated people, and then manage the system, not the people.

Culture of Discipline

• We believe that greatness is first and foremost a function of conscious choice - and discipline. It is up to us.
• We understand that we have responsibilities not “jobs”.
• We can answer the question for each significant activity, “Who is the one person responsible?”
• We have the discipline to say “No thank you” to big opportunities that do not fit within our strategic concept.
• We are equally disciplined in good times as in bad times. We never allow prosperity to make us complacent.

Momentum

• We create traction through the development of compelling insights, compelling value and compelling equity; and we deliver momentum through offering vibrant satisfaction, vibrant retention and vibrant engagement.
• We create new value for customers through innovation, ingenuity and most importantly by seeing things from a customer perspective.
• We build greatness by a cumulative process—step-by-step, action-by-action, day-by-day, week-by-week, year-by-year.
• We pursue consistency of purpose, values, strategic approach, high standards, people, and so forth.
• We have immense flexibility and adapt well to change - but always within the context of our overarching strategic approach.
• We have an unwavering faith that we can and will prevail in the end.
• We never feel comfortable or feel that we’ve arrived, no matter how much we achieve.
• We make excellent use of data, metrics and hard tangible evidence to assess external threats and internal weaknesses.
• We use technology as an accelerator of greatness.
• We are building for long-term greatness; we manage not for the quarter, but for the quarter century.