What Purpose Driven Strategy Looks Like in Practice for a Specialist Consultancy with Belden Menkus

Belden Menkus is the Founder of Menkus & Associates and host of The Purposeful Strategist podcast. Belden started his career at McKinsey, where he worked with clients across the UK, Europe, the US and Japan, before going on to lead consulting and venture businesses in London. He founded Menkus & Associates over twenty years ago and has spent more than thirty years working at board and ExCo level with regulated utilities, infrastructure bodies, professional institutions and law firms, what he calls businesses with a public remit.

In this conversation, Craig and Belden explore why purpose only works as a driver of strategic action when the business model is genuinely lined up behind it, why alignment between a consultancy and its clients creates both speed and trust in a commercial relationship, and why most away day decisions never survive contact with the organisation. They also dig into the difference between a consultancy that is stalled and one that is stuck, and why distraction has quietly become one of the biggest issues most organisations are dealing with.

This is a considered, practical conversation with an advisor who has spent decades helping leaders cut through complexity, find the conditions for action, and turn strategy on paper into something that actually moves.

Host: Craig Herd, MD at Consultancy Growth
Guest: Belden Menkus, Founder at Menkus & Associates

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You describe purpose as the power source for strategic action rather than as a value statement on the wall. What do most leaders mean when they say they have a purpose? And why does that rarely translate into strategic action?

SPEAKER_00 0:14

One of the things to me, when I say purpose, I mean so what's it all about? And of course, for most businesses, money fits in there somewhere. But I think for many consulting firms, professional services businesses, there's a sense of how are we trying to make the world a better place? And I think if you've got that, then it drives people's action. If you don't, I've been through the experience of saying purpose and hearing back our values are. I can buy the proposition that our purpose is to be a particular type of organization in the world that's distinctive and different. And just in doing that, while we're making money, we're making the world a better place. I can buy that. But if that isn't really a distinctive and b richly lived, it's just stuff on the wall.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah. Do you find that a lot of companies you're working with really have thought about or been able to capture what they uniquely do, or is it very often buzzwords?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

I hate to say it. I think some of it comes from who does it. So I was actually interviewing someone from my podcast recently, and he was saying he'd been in this organization forty years. He's been chief exec maybe. He said when he became chief exec, he tore all the value statements off the wall. He said, This is just words. And then came up with three simple statements that he said, I think this is what we're all about. And then of course there was work, you know, internally and where it comes from the heart of the organization, you know, the people who are actually there and they're trying to express what do we care about? What's important to us about the way we work with each other, the way we engage externally, makes a big difference. If it's driven by a comms crowd, with all the best will in the world, I think they just miss it sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

And so for those listening to this podcast or consultancy leaders, you know? And often consultancies are 20 million pound consultancies. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: UK-based. And often a lot of them have grown through personal relationships, as you can imagine. And there often comes a point where they go, we should get a bit more systemized and a bit more structured, and we should grow up as a firm. And then they start to look at things like what are their values? And they probably take a couple of attempts to go together, right? And then the idea of purpose is also what is our purpose? Why are we doing all this? Why are we working so hard? Aaron Powell To start us off with that. What would be a working definition of per difference between a purpose and your values? Just so the audience can contextualize.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Very simply, I'm probably going to repeat what I just said, but I'd say purpose is what's the difference we're trying to make in the world? What's the why? The values usually, I mean, you you know, you can put anything in there you want, but often is more a statement about how do we want to behave and interact with each other, other human beings, the planet, you know, how do we want to do that? For me, one is sort of where we're trying to get to, what's the destination? The other one is about, and along the way, how do we want it to be?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

And it's interesting what you talk about with the idea of making money and the idea of purpose and values. And I think sometimes some firms separate the two as almost their juxtaposition. Like somehow we're either making money or we're focused on a purpose.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

If you don't mind, let me just make a comment about values and purposes. And then we'll come into the one you're talking about there, because that's a persistent kind of topic. I think where people haven't spent much time thinking about those questions, they'll often find trying to write it down difficult. Where I think it's in the conversation, it's being lived every day. The exercise of trying to write it down is much more straightforward. So, you know, at one level, if you didn't ask me, do I have any advice, but if I did advice a leader of a consultancy, is if you've decided to work on that and you're not finding it pretty straightforward, stop. Stop trying to write your purpose statement. Start questioning why are we really here? And by the way, if it's just to make money, fine. Stay within the law, provide a good service, have repeat clients. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think for many organizations, it leaves something on the table. And that sort of comes back to, you know, there's making money and then there's our purpose, our whatever. I think one of the most insightful things I've heard, and actually a number of the guests, again, on my podcast, have mentioned this, that if you have a purpose, make sure your business model, your way of making money lines up with that. You know, and once you've got that, then all that kind of goes away. And it's never perfect, right? Every consultancy, every professional services firm always has these debates about this bit of work we could do for a client, and it's not really quite okay, fine. But within that, we've got some clear sense of where we're actually trying to get to and the kind of work we want to do and the kind of difference we want to make.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

From the clients that you've worked with, where those two things are really closely aligned. So how they make money, the purpose, their values, when it is all aligned, what is the upside of it? Like what happens to the person or the firm when things are aligned?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Aaron Ross Powell My observation, you know, other people's experiences may be different, but the level of creativity, the level of energy, the ability to attract great people who believe in the same stuff you do into the firm goes up. And if you're really clear about that, I think there are some clients who will go, if that's what you're about, that's not what we're about. And they will select out. And you'll find yourselves working with clients who sort of care about the same stuff you do.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yes. I would echo that. I've seen it in our own business. I've seen it in clients' businesses where they've got one or two clients out of their client list that take 80% of the time, cause 80% of the problems. You know, knowing what you know about yourself, knowing what you know about them, would you sign them as a client today and they go no? So I think there is a speed to it. And I think in terms of growing a consultancy, my encouragement would always be to make alignment part of your qualification or disqualification process in your sales process, you know? Are we connecting with this person?

SPEAKER_00 6:11

So as an example of that, the kind of clients we want to work with are businesses with a public remit. So right from the off, that's a live conversation. What's the public remit? How are we making money? How do they line up? How are they different? So we like to work with law firms, and I'm sure there will be law firms who say, no, you don't understand. A, we're not a business. It's like, okay, so if you're not a business, what are you? You know, there is a business-like quality to a law firm. You provide services, you get paid. There's some money left over between the cost of providing the services and they're getting, you know. Feels a lot like a business to me. But then also some I think will say, no, we have absolutely no public remit. So long as we stay within the law, our job is to serve our clients. Fine. I'm okay with that. I just don't think they're going to be a great client for me. I don't think I'm going to be. I'll keep raising questions they don't want to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, yeah. I remember learning this for the first time. And we had a client where we decided not to work together. When we decided that, if I was honest about six months earlier, I was certain that we wouldn't be working together in a year. I was like, there's not a word of what I say goes in. And I used to leave the calls tired and go, What am I doing? And somebody in the team goes, Do you think we've got a future work with this client? I said, No. And then for some reason, probably money at the time, I said, Well, let's see. Maybe they'll start listening. Inevitably they did not. And you know, whether I was right, whether they were wrong, or vice versa. I think it was just alignment.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

You know, I'll add one other thing to it. I think when organizations, when consulting firms can be clear about what's their purpose, they can articulate it to potential clients. And not just to clients, but the whole range of people who actually are part of how clients ultimately hear about you.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

There's a compounding effect too as well, in terms of referrals and recommendations often. I see. So if your best clients will recommend clients like them. And I think that's transferable to just about any business. But your troublesome clients, they will recommend similar characters.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Aaron Powell Well, and sorry just to underscore, because you sort of picked it up and I'd agree with it, that alignment creates speed, but it also creates trust. And there's always bumps in the road. Whereas if you go into that kind of going, we're on the same side here. You know, that's a very different conversation from we have a transactional relationship.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

I'm just thinking of personal experience, but I remember my first hand experience of it is you can say the same thing again and again with potential clients. And the ones where you have to explain it a few times, it's a sign of like we're not speaking the same language here. So moving on just a little bit. So you know you argue that people are open to change when they can see a clear way to contribute. You know, what do you do when the direction itself is contested at the top and there's really no clarity to offer yet?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Aaron Ross Powell, you've got to take the time one way or the other to figure out why are we coming out in different places. And sometimes we want to kind of argue that through, which is fine, you know, but I think more often it's because you care about certain things and I care about somewhat different things, and we've never really surfaced that. Or we have a different map in our heads about the way the world works. Okay, fine, the world can work in lots of different ways, but if you can't articulate your results chain, your theory of, you know, your sense of how we get from activities to results, whatever those activities and results, if you can't articulate that, you can end up in a lot of useless kind of disagreements. Whereas if you can begin to spell it out, you can go, okay, I get your bit, and now you get my bit, and we can come up with a better kind of takes in all of that, or it's like, hmm. And I've seen that, I think sometimes this is the right answer. Like we were talking about consulting firms and clients. Sometimes it's like we're in the same organization, but we're not actually on the same journey. And so let's figure out what we want to do about that.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Well, it's funny you say that. So years ago when we started as a company, we said things like, we're a marketing agency, we generate leads for consultancies, like all these things that I thought made a ton of sense. And then from doing a bunch of engagements with clients, what I learned was it is more complicated than just more opportunities in the top equals a growing business. And a lot of the areas where things really got stuck was at the leadership level, where I was like, these guys can't agree on what this engagement should be. They don't agree on are we going to productize, are we going to scale through people? Like all these really core scaling decisions. Um, what I discovered through our was people businesses are more complex.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Aaron Ross Powell Well, as you know, we've talked about this. I've always been very wary of people who approach me with, you know, we'll get you X number of meetings. It's like, so I'm going to walk into a meeting. I don't know who this person is. They probably don't really understand what I do. It's not going to drift down the funnel. Where the sense I get is your approach is very different.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Aaron Ross Powell One minor bit of work we often do now is that a light, well, who are your best clients? Not just let's add 20, is actually what does your great ones look like? And let's get more of those.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

And my guess that comes into the same thing we're talking about. Are your clients lined up with you about what you're trying to do and what you care about and how they think the way the world works.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Aaron Powell Well, it came about from error where we gave our clients more clients initially, and they were like, it's not what we do. And you go, well, okay. But that's interesting. So could you say more about some of the common examples you see at that maybe leadership level of the areas where you really help with that clarity piece and some of the common challenges you see, perhaps?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Aaron Ross Powell One of the biggest challenges, I think, is people just don't spend enough time talking and thinking about it. So whatever you want to call the top group, when we get together, we spend most of our time talking about where's the revenue, is somebody's leaving, how are we going to you know, a whole bunch of very important, but very operational conversations and often not enough stepping back and kind of thinking, let's say we've got this business. So we've got clients or customers, whatever they give us money. We've got suppliers, including our employees, we give them money. We do something in the middle that's supposed to make what we give these folks more valuable. What's that all about? Like which of these do we want? You know, to push it beyond what we want good clients, not helpful.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

I think often do you see this? They conflate size of client with good. So large clients are better than small ones as a default answer.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Yeah, I can certainly see a tendency towards that. But this isn't answering your question. But nevertheless, my experience is big clients are often very difficult to find the people who relate to the topic I can help them on. And so the road to get to that person or that group can be very difficult, sometimes almost impossible in a big organization, whereas in a smaller, I mean, I have the privilege to work mostly with CEOs, execs, and boards. You know, and if you can find them, that's great. They're a lot easier to get to in a medium to small, whatever those words might mean, business organization, than some enormous, huge, you know. Now, if you sell to a different role, a different party, well, then it's fine, it's a different thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Absolutely. So talking about the board and the C-suite, the execs, you know, boards and executive away days, you know, have a reputation for producing decisions that do not survive contact with the organization. How do you design them so that something changes when people get back into the flow of things?

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Aaron Powell Some of it's not in the design. Some of it's in the quality of the conversation that happens. There's a tendency at those things to use a lot of words, talk about ambitions and you know, which is very vague, but it's like, okay, good. So two years from now, we want to be here. Let's now take some time to walk backwards from there. If that's two years from now, if we're eight months out, what's going to be true? Often a lot of away days, workshops, whatever sort of end at the point of where we want to be in two years. It's not helpful at that point. You've got to walk it back to sort of, okay, so what do we have to get done in the next six weeks? And coming out of here, who's going to do what by when? If you can nail it down to those first few starting steps that people are going to take that are connected, nothing's guaranteed, right? I think the other is to have an honest conversation about we're here wherever we are. It's nice, it's quiet, the phones aren't ringing. Tomorrow, what's your world like? So how are you going to create space in that world to do this stuff which you've just talked about? Because otherwise it won't get anywhere. Those conversations often just don't happen.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

That's interesting. The great criticism of consultancy consistently is and it's not to say that consultants act this way, but this is the fear from buyers is that yes, they're intelligent, yes, they're switched on, they're going to come in and say some clever things, then leave, and we're going to be left in the same situation as well. So it seems like the ones that are really retaining clients are exceptional at implementation of what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yeah, there's sort of two versions of that, Craig. And I tend to be more oriented towards one, but there's lots of good work that gets done the other way. And one is, okay, we're going to understand your situation, we're going to figure out an answer that we think is going to work, we're going to tell you what that is. You're going to say yes, and then we're going to do it for you. Again, nothing wrong with that, except and this is not so much from the consultant standpoint, but from the client standpoint. At the end of all of that, you have the new system or the different inventory management approach or you know, a different brand. You have whatever you've got, but your people haven't learned how to do that. And consulting firms will talk about skills transfer. It's very difficult. I think often just doesn't happen. A different approach is I don't tell clients what their answer is. I help them figure it out. And then usually help them think through what are the conditions that have to be in place that we can do this ourselves. And sometimes the right answer is we need to get an expert in on this. We're going to do this once every 20 years. It's very technical. Our people don't really need to build skills around it, but where the skills are thinking through what our products need to be, or you know, how are we engaging in a particular relationship with things like that? People need to know.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

I think that's right. The trend, I think, for those that are really growing quickly is consultancies and enabling their clients to stand on their own two feet. I think that's valued. And I think the the misconception about not doing that is, well, if they don't need us, they don't need us.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

But actually, well, for many consulting firms, the growth model is pyramid, pile more at the bottom. So we've got to find things that that bottom level can do that's usually not helping the client figure it out for themselves. You know, I can understand the temptation to help a client in a way that means doing it for them. And again, there's nothing wrong with that, but I think you've got to think about the longer-term trade-offs.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

So you describe direction from the top getting dispatched through a fragmented management model as the reason most change initiatives move too slow. What does it take to diagnose that problem in a firm and where do you start fixing it?

SPEAKER_00 17:17

So I could hear two things in that. One is how do you know it's not going fast enough? That's the easy one. The more difficult one is how do you know it's a fragmented management approach? My thought would be you're going to see it lots of places. It's not just, oh, we've got this change initiative that isn't going, it's like we've got too many times we drop the ball, we've got too many places where people are kind of fighting internally, very politely perhaps, but fighting internally by, okay, great. What something's not right. We've not thought about the activities we need to do to generate the outcomes that we want. And then how do you package those activities in a way that makes sense? An idea I kind of like a lot is the idea of a resource contract. So I'm a manager, you've given me a pile of people and systems and whatever else. Thank you very much. Here's what I'll give you back. And if that's a very easy conversation, you've probably got the management structure in a good place. If it's like, well, I can kind of do it, but then I need to and and and uh it's a sign that it's at least worth a thought.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

I think what would be greater hear is when CEOs or C-suite or or companies get that right, you know, they're able to implement some of the things you're describing in the last say 10 minutes. You know, what are some of the case studies or stories that come to mind when you think actually what a difference that made to that CEO or firm?

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Actually, but probably one of the biggest differences, and this may not be sort of the area you're thinking about, people relax. Okay, I can see how I can deliver for this business and I can help my people grow and develop, and I can do a bunch of things I wanted to do in a not distracted way. I mean, I do think distraction is one of the biggest issues most organizations deal with. They got way too many things going on. I'm about ready to get something to happen, and then now there's this other thing, and then there's this other thing. I think if you get it put together well, people can kind of relax into the work they need to do. Aaron Powell Can you speak a little bit more about that distraction piece?

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Just first-hand accounts. Like what do you keep seeing in organizations as it relates to distraction?

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Aaron Powell That's largely not self-inflicted. It is sometimes the world's getting more complex, the world's getting more chaotic, and the level of expectation about what businesses will do and the well that they'll behave and the way they treat their people is all going up. And there's lots of evidence that the level of trust is going down, and that leads to wanting to put in place systems and forms and procedures, and there's always somebody coming up with a new one. In response to something that's very real perhaps, but I just there's a phrase, and I love to say I came up with it. I'm sure I didn't. I'm sure But is that people create work for other people. So, you know, you hire somebody into your HR area or IT or whatever, and they're going to want to deliver value, make good things happen, improve things. They're going to come up with a program, a thing, or whatever. To them, this is really important. They can see very clearly the benefit. That's fine if it's one of them. If it's 20 of them, they'll just choke the organization by throwing too much change at it.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

We see that a lot. Often the sales marketing function within a consultancy, the marketing person or people will want to do more. Like a butcher selling meat, you know, like the more is better. It is through the best intention, I think. It's I want to contribute, I want to be helpful. So we should do webinars, we should do posts on LinkedIn, we should be writing more blogs, all this stuff. Those with a number to hit is more conversations equals better. And I don't think either is particularly aligned with what brings growth. Often they're fully capable of helping the firm grow, but it lacks alignment. And it just more is rarely better. You know, one thing I would be curious about is and I'm often curious about is when company CEOs get stuck. And this familiar story is we're stuck, I'm stuck, I don't know how to grow it. I don't know where we take the company from here. And so they just do en masse.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Aaron Powell Can I suggest a slight difference in words? I would argue there's a difference between stuck and stalled. So I've seen organizations, and you've seen organizations, I'm sure, when I say they stalled, they're working harder and harder and harder and harder. So it's just not making that much difference anymore. So I get that as a version of stuck. But for me, the more dangerous one is when we're kind of trapped and don't realize it. There's a decision we need to make, and we're just not getting around to making it. You know, I'd call that stuck. Where, you know, one is we're doing more and more activity, we're not getting more and more. Results. There's a kind of response curve that we've maxed out on somehow. We haven't even realized it. The other one is we're we're going down a road and there's a roadblock of some sort, and it's usually in people's heads. There's a decision they need to make, they haven't realized. There's a disagreement that they keep dancing around. The stalled out is annoying, but if you can diagnose it, you can do something about it because you can see it. You can see that's happening. Stuck often is invisible.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Is there an example without naming names or companies or anything like that? Is there an example where you worked with a CEO or a company where they were in fact in that position?

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Aaron Powell The most common ones that come up is where you realize I gotta change my team. My top team's not what it needs to be.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Say more about that. Like what does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Aaron Powell To be honest, the most common one I see is I've got some B plus players on my team, and I actually need A players, and I don't know which one to start with. I'm worried that if I move one out, what happens? You know, and you can just track around waiting for the perfect moment to make that change.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Aaron Powell That's interesting. I've witnessed that a lot. I sat with a consultancy leader a couple of days ago. And he said just that. He said, you know, there's a version of this business where it is just these core people and not these other people. And it's we make less top line, but we make a bunch of bottom line. Yeah, exactly that. And he says, if only if I had the balls to change to that, I would.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, what I think you've touched on there, and this is why also organization sort of fits in this, is where there's a decision that needs to be made, and it feels like a bet-the-range decision. It feels like a non-reversible, if it all works out, it'll be great, but it might not work out. It's definitely worth taking some time to think through. Is there a lower risk way? Is there an incremental way we could get at this? But sometimes you just have to take the best counsel you can and decide you're gonna go for it.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yes. Fortune favors the bold is the phrase that I like to do.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Well, sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, but I can't I might come at it a slightly different way. And this is why it's to some extent why I focus so much on what I call purpose. We're born, we live, we die. That's it. The big question of human existence, I'd argue, is what do you want to do in the middle? What do you actually want to do in the middle? And if what you want to do is spend 20 years almost, it's fine. Don't make the leap. But if you're willing to, and this is, you know, you almost have to say, I care enough about this that I'm willing to make the leap. But if it doesn't work out, I'll pick myself up, I'll dust myself off, be really embarrassed, and I'll have lost some money. Fine. On we go.

unknown 24:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

There's a phrase from I think it's Jeff Bezos. It's not my it's not my name. I think it's a Bezos phrase. He talks about a two-way door. And I think the famous example was Amazon Prime or the streaming service, I forget what it's called. And he was the only one at the Amazon board that thought it was a good idea. And I think today it's the most profitable part of what they do, or it's obviously a thing that they've kept doing. And he said, no, this is a two-way door.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Yeah. We can try it. If it doesn't work, we can back out. So definitely people should question whether it's a two-way door or not, because sometimes they spend way too much time worrying about going through it. But equally you need to understand, no, this one's a one-way door. There's no coming back from this. And it's worth thinking about, can I turn this, what looks like a one-way door, into a two-way door? But sometimes it's just that's just where you are. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

And so when a leader, let's say a CEO, finds himself in that this is quite clearly a one-way door, like this this one direction here, what advice do you give them? What guidance do you draw upon when their next step is just action?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

To be honest, at that point there's not much guidance I can give them except to go, well, you got a choice here. Choice fundamentally is irreducible. You know, you can't do more analysis on it. I will say that a framing I sometimes give people, which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't, is just asking a very simple question. Which universe do you want to live in? You can live in the universe where you never do this. And in that universe which you have chosen, you might have missed the very best thing you could ever have done. There's that risk there. There's a different universe where you take action. Might be that universe. By the way, you will choose that that universe, but it might also be one where it doesn't work out. But you're never going to know till you make the choice.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

I like that. And I mean, we've covered a lot of ground, Beldon. There's a couple of things that really jump out at me here. I would love to know how much time you've spent thinking about your own purpose in all this. It doesn't need to be a buzzword-filled line that you can serve to people. But like what is it that drives you in doing all this work? Like where do you find your purpose?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, a big chunk of it, a really big chunk of it is it's back to this thing, you know, we're born, we live, we die. People spend a huge amount of their time at work. You can be engaged in something that matters or not. And I've got a lot of time for people who end up in this place. Work is a way to earn money so I can live my life. What I really care about is my family, my kids, uh some civic activity, whatever. That's fine. Be clear about that. Those don't tend to be the people who end up starting businesses and being CEOs. So many of the people I talk to are not in that category. And usually there's something they want to do that's beyond just making money for themselves and for the business. I think I can help that happen. That's what I care about.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Aaron Powell Being a CEO running a company is too difficult to just do it for money. Often you'd be better off just being your number two or number four person at a large firm. Aaron Ross Powell And I mean our audience is I think almost exclusively that boutique or specialist consultancy. It's not I don't think the KPMGers are listening to this particularly. So it is that often consultancy leaders who have grown up in the KPMGs or the whatevers and then going, I want to do something more purposeful. So I think that's going to resonate a lot with all they're hearing. Trevor Burrus, Jr. So I one final thought, really, to finish all this off. You know, if a consultancy leader came to you tomorrow and said their strategy exists on paper, but really nothing is moving, where would you tell them to start?

SPEAKER_00 28:02

I'd ask them to think about how did they get to that strategy? What was the process they went through to get to it? Because often the way they get to it doesn't create the conditions for action afterwards. We went away for a half day, we wrote down a bunch of stuff, we turned it over to a graphics agency. Well, okay. When you talk about it that way, it's pretty obvious why it's not working, right? One way or another, I think if you say, How did we get to it, and did that create the conditions for success or not, that'll lead you into understanding why it's not happening.