An old year, a new year

Greetings! Back from a bit of northeastern cultural anthropology via Sun, Reebok and Fidelity. (Unlicensed and untutored anthropology, I should add.)

A very fruitful trip and there's lots to assess, but after traversing tech, fashion and finance for some time I return home to one of my fave topics: Risk.

Tis the season to calculate and anticipate, to take stock and plan for the future. To huddle with CEOs and scribble cheesy words with which to bore the troops before they eat their shrimp and roast beef and chug their cocktails....

After 75 years, we find ourselves affirming and double-checking [the founders] ideas about what [company X] is, and about where we go from here. And we hope we can do them proud.

It seems that 2 questions need to be asked and answered, once again, just to make sure we are who we think we are. And just to make sure we are who we want to be.

The beauty of [company X] is not that it is smart people squeezing extra pennies out of premium dollars. We are not a company of folks who believe that any means justifies a profitable end. Far from it. And also, far from our heritage.

We, of [company X], want to be about something--we want to be known for a standard. But what is is it? How would [the founders] want us to assess ourselves today?

Again, those 2 questions come to mind. "Why are we?" And "How are we?"

WHY ARE WE? Dynamism, Risk, Exploration, Reality, Ambition, Talent, Curiosity and Creation make us feel alive.

Why are we? Well, we, as individuals, are drawn together by our desire to do certain things... We want to create value where before there was none. We are thrilled by the discovery of opportunity. We are creators of hard and soft value. We want to be trusted, and to help.

Since we "know" risk, that's where we start.

Risk management entails protecting what we have against the threats attacking what we hope to achieve.

That's it.

We enable "the future" and secure the ability to "imagine." With our help, risk becomes a non-obstacle. Others are free to play and think. Others rely on our confidence and ability in the face of the uncertain to give them their confidence and hope.

That is it, that is our product. Confidence. And hope. Remarkable things.

And not small things. It's an amazing and powerful idea that we make real. It is a human story of Ambition that a few simple men decided to make real just 75 years ago.

BUT HOW ARE WE? How do we do? Method, Curiosity, Insight, Organization. Realism, Candor, Humor, Proof, Record, Measure and Proof again.

How are we? As curious, ambitious individuals we can imagine that any challenge is within our abilities. That leaves a very wide scope that must be checked and managed. Risk is everywhere, but the risk of over-estimating our abilities or our knowledge is also ever-present.

Our embrace and management of the unknown also demands that we think as practically as possible in planning for the unexpected. This requires us to be students of past and present events and practices in the business categories we claim as our areas of expertise.

Business models, methods and ethics that perhaps only tangentially affect our day-to-day business of this moment can have huge impact on tomorrow's environment. So we must be aware. As smart and stable providers of value to customers we can never afford to respond: "I never thought of that." And so we "think," and we think, and wonder, some more.

Our processes and methods of assessment anticipate trends and risk all at once. Given the pace of business change and the rapid redundancy of whole categories of business thanks to Internet developments or technological change, we must think ahead of procedural change and not just try to copy best practices after the fact.

This is important. By the time we get access to it, a "best practice" often resembles those bad photocopies of jokes that circulate the office. They're fuzzy. They are copies. And we forget them after 5 minutes.

They are somebody else's ideas. For their organizations. And they are after the fact--removed from our caring.

And "our caring" matters because it is our stuff--our essence. Our style.

Because, for that copying, photo-copied, best-practice example, "After the fact" means we are responding to change and its risk factors, and not pre-reading and not pre-paring for them. Not providing OUR take on them.

In that way, we would be ignoring the [company X] Style.

If you recall, our "Why," our reason for coming together for these past and future 75 year blocks of time is not to have the future tell us what to do, but rather, just the opposite.

We are in charge. For our selves and others. This makes the next 75 years a noble and exciting opportunity.

At [company X], we enable "the future" and we secure the ability to "imagine." That is our "Why" and our "How." That is our product. And we make it for ourselves, and for countless others.

We make it for our future--and for theirs. And we do this, because it is a great business. We do it because if feels right. And because it is right, it is who we are.