Growth isn’t comfortable. Good? Yes, usually. Regardless of the speed or reasons behind the changes, it’s not easy. One thing that is easy is setting aside the core of who you are and why you’ve chosen to be there and do that. The tumult and scramble of quick expansion leaves little time for defining values and instilling them when you’re just trying to meet the demand of clients. Slogging through slow growth, painstakingly pushing your company toward stability and success is all about making it: once you get over the hill, you’ll take the luxury of time to define why you’re on about the things you’re doing.

I’ve been thinking about this lately. We were in a meeting last week, and the potential client asked why he should pick us over our competitors. If he had us all in a room making our pitches, what would set us apart. We don’t have a brief list of values or buzzwords. We don’t have an official mission statement that we tuck into our website and hand out to new hires. What we do know is this: We do outstanding work, and we do it the hard way. All the research and writing and time it takes? We do that because that’s how you do the job right. Are we the cheapest or fastest in the marketplace? Nope. And that’s okay. It’s better than okay–it’s fantastic. It sets us apart from the quick-fix crowd.

Our semi-annual RefreshWeb planning meeting is this week, with Jill coming in from the Houston office. We’ll talk about where we are, where we want to go, and how to get there over the next few days. I’m not sure what all we’ll emerge with, and how we’ll go after it, but we’ll make those decisions and chart our path out of our core. We’ll make sure that we deliver the same quality of work at 2x the number of current clients as we did when we started with a handful.

I don’t have a statement from the CEO that I can put on an index card and use like a guiding mantra through my workday decisions. I do know what our values are, and how those play into doing the work. My phone can ring, and I’ll be able to judge how to handle the call since it’s been modeled and spoken a hundred different ways–”This is what it means to provide good service and do good work…”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 10:28 am and is filed under seo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.