Adventure of Strategy

Of Counsel magazine, a journal aimed at the legal services market, has an article titled Survey of Consultancies Yields Some Helpful, Some Curious Findings in their January 2007 edition that places Edge International amongst the Top 3 strategy and management consultancies to law firms. The article reported on recognition and perception research done amongst managing partners of law firms of 100 + attorneys. The article focused on the North American results, so excluded the fact that the survey results also indicated a very high level of unaided name recognition for Edge International amongst law firm managing partners in the United Kingdom, but less so in continental Europe.

To quote from the article:

"[Edge International] did have a 56 percent positive rating among respondents, 25 percent neutral, 19 percent no perception and 0, that's ZERO percent had a negative perception."

The other two firms amongst the top three were Hildebrandt and Altman Weil. Interestingly, the market showed a distinct clustering at the top, with a large gap between the Top 3 and the No 4. This is identical to the market profile revealed by similar research undertaken several years ago, too.

According to Altman Weil's Ward Bower (one of the true veterans of the law firm consulting field):

"I think one thing that the survey might demonstrate is the difference between a commitment to being the biggest as opposed to being committed to quality. I think that Edge has that commitment (to quality.)"

Thank you, Ward. There is no higher praise than that from a most respected competitor.

Unfortunately, Of Counsel is not available online so I cannot provide a link to the actual article. If you'd like a copy, please contact me and I'll see what I can do about getting a copy of it to you.

Rob, congratulations to Edge.

I thought you might enjoy this post with recommendations on how to talk about your competition:

http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2007/01/love_thy_compet.html

Or here:

http://snipurl.com/lovecomp

I especially like this quote:

"The word competition literally means, 'seeking together,' and 'choosing to run in the same race.' Great people and great brands don't care about their competitors. They don't define themselves by competitive movements. They are simply not on the same track (mentally)."                           
                                                   — Tom Asacker

Thanks, Stephanie,

I think that Tom Asacker is partially but not completely correct. Yes, it is clearly self-defeating to be preoccupied about one's competition, or to define oneself by one's competitive movements. But .... I don't think that it is correct to say that great brands don't care about their competitors. Does Ford care about Toyota or Chevrolet? Does the gold medal Olympic athlete care about her closest opponents? Of course they do!

The athlete analogy is a good one, I think. Edge has some competitors (Ward Bower is one; David Barnard at Blaqwell is another) for whom we have immense respect and liking. As with competing athletes, our "win-lose" is restricted to the playing field. Off the field, there is much that professionals can (and should) do together, to their mutual benefit. This, of course, is the whole basis for the existence of professional associations and these cannot operate except where respect and a desire to collaborate exists between competitors.

Even on the 'playing field', today's competitor can easily be tomorrow's collaborator. It is very common, for instance, for competing consulting engineering firms to collaborate on major projects. In today's complex world, the best expert for a particular consulting problem is often in a competing firm. If one REALLY cares about prioritizing client service, how can one NOT collaborate with that person?

Conversely, trashing the competition is COMPLETELY self-defeating and says nothing good about the person or firm doing the trashing!