Relevant & sustainable

I remember being on stage at a Baker Tilly Partner Connect and sharing the following with our team:

“The competition here is with ourselves. How do we become a better version of us?

At the center are our clients. Not our competition. We are not here to beat our competition. That is not why we are in business.

We are here to help our clients…to enhance and protect their value.

We are not playing to win. We are playing to keep playing. To remain relevant and sustainable.”

Relevant and sustainable...

The two words that should serve as the holy grail for any company.

If you can remain relevant and sustainable, you can continue playing the game (and likely thriving along the way) for years to come.

But what does relevant and sustainable mean, and how do you know if you've achieved it?

Relevant...to whom?

Relevancy is a reflection of your standing in the marketplace.

You don't get to decide if you are relevant or not; your prospective clients, current clients, prospective employees, current employees, and others in your profession will decide it for you.

Being relevant is about being invited to the party—you don't get to invite yourself.

Here are signs of relevancy I look for in professional services firms:

• Being in the conversation for major client opportunities

• Appealing to the best talent

• Strong social engagement and following

• Consistently winning meaningful work

• A sought-after voice on industry topics (speaking engagements, interviews, consultation requests)

Relevancy is in the eyes of the beholder.

How do you increase your relevancy?

Well, I'd boil it down to two things:

1) Delivering a service or product that is both needed and valued

Good luck being relevant if you're delivering something no one wants or needs. If that's the case, your solution won't be valued and you're essentially an afterthought.

If this is the case, there's likely some adjusting that needs to be done with your service offering, who your target client is, or your messaging.

2) Building a brand for yourself / your company so that you are known (by prospective clients, in the industry, and by the best talent)

The greatest company/service/product that nobody's ever heard of? Not a formula for relevance.

Companies that are relevant have to demonstrate their relevance through marketing, personal brand building, demonstrating subject matter expertise, etc.

Prove that you have value to add to the conversation and make sure that your brand is known so that when it's time, you get an invite to the party.

When I left Baker Tilly, remaining relevant was important to me.

Sure, I wanted to share the principles behind our collective success, and I also wanted to remain part of the conversation to continue advising and stay in the mix to be considered for future opportunities.

For me, remaining relevant has meant showing up consistently and with something differentiated to say.

I’ve been posting daily on LinkedIn, sending a weekly newsletter (what you're reading...), appearing on podcasts, speaking at conferences and Partner retreats, and coaching/advising CEOs and their leadership teams.

It’s not just that I’ve been showing up though… It’s that I’m committed to stating what many think and few, if any, are willing to say. I have something different to say that’s deeply rooted in experience.

Relevancy is a result of consistently adding meaningful perspectives to the marketplace and delivering a service/product of value.

Sustainable...in what ways?

The best way I can summarize being sustainable is this:

Your growth is systems-driven, not event-driven.

Sit in a pond full of fish long enough, and one might jump into your boat.

That's an event.

But what about when the fish change habits? More boats appear? Or there's less fish?

Well, if your success was fueled by waiting for the event of a fish jumping in your boat, you might be in trouble. What if that stops happening?

Sustainable organizations are fueled by systems—I call them engines.

Those engines could be sales engines, people development engines, marketing engines, service-delivery engines, talent acquisition engines, etc.

Engines are defined systems and processes that are done with people, for people, and in spite of people to create predictable outcomes that drive strategy.

I wrote more about engines here.

When a company is systems-driven, current success is an indicator of future success.

That's sustainability in a nutshell.

What are signs that your company is sustainable?

You'll know you have a sustainable organization when you are:

• Consistently producing desired results

• Making appropriate investments for future growth

• Acquiring and retaining top talent

• Maintaining high net promoter scores

• Building new engines and constantly refining the ones you have

Similar to relevancy, achieving sustainability is an ongoing effort.

You have to run your business and transform it at the same time.

Just because you are relevant now, doesn't guarantee you will be in the future.

When results are consistently repeated and become predictable, you've achieved sustainability.

Which one is more important?

Frankly, I don't think one without the other gets you too far.

I guess you could make the argument that being relevant at least might earn you the opportunity to build sustainability...

But I'd say they feed into one another.

If you're relevant but not sustainable, you'll win in the short term and then likely fizzle out.

If you're sustainable but not relevant, you'll keep chugging along without growing at a high rate or being a part of the conversation.

It's a both/and—so they should be invested in accordingly.

I can tell you this: it's the relevant and sustainable organizations that will thrive in the future. You're either one of them, or you're on the outside looking in.

If you're wondering how to build either relevance or sustainability, I'm happy to talk it through with you. In my advisory work, I help CEOs and their leadership teams think differently to enable sustainable growth and build scale.

That's it for this week, see you next Sunday.

With intention,

Alan D Whitman