Sharing with you the third of four emails to our company, to help them understand the IS of our strategy and of who we are as a company...
Dear Colleagues:
I hope that everyone had a special and reasonably restful Thanksgiving weekend. Amidst this sprint to the end of the year, I wanted to continue my communication to those of you out there reading them, about EMG’s strategy and how we are approach our company and our strategy.
We’ve now shared how we see our company as a team on a mission.
We’ve talked about our strategy - to become the most accurate, consistent and timely provider of technical assessments and project management services for owners and occupiers of properties in the United States. I hope that I have provided some context as to why growth is such an important part of our plans, and how we see that bringing value over time to our clients and to our team.
I appreciate your messages and responses. I am thankful that so many of you are reading and considering these messages, and I hope that they are providing you with a greater understanding of how we think, and why we are confident and excited about where we are headed.
There is nothing easy about growing a company or about executing with excellence. We realize that growth is demanding – it introduces new challenges constantly and puts us in a position of having to solve them to succeed.
We are growing through our efforts, together, and what we are accomplishing with everyone’s effort is exciting and it is humbling.
Today, I want to share a little bit more about the essence of EMG. The “seed” that defines who we are, makes our lives challenging, and gives us the confidence that we will ultimately succeed. Our unique differentiating value and the essence of EMG is the concept of “technical excellence in a scalable way”. Hopefully, through these paragraphs you will have a greater appreciation and understanding of those words.
GREATNESS is born from TENSION…
When I first joined the company a decade ago, I felt the stress in our company and within our team. There were those that fought with pride and passion for EMG to deliver the most accurate and technically correct product possible. Those people who grow anxious about quick turn arounds, when we have to increase the number of people on a program, when we consider cross training, when we speak about growth. These were the individuals that wanted the most excellent product that we could produce, and all of the other “stuff” compromised it.
Then there were others who wanted to focus on training, who wanted to make sure we were using the local resources, who wanted to introduce technology, who wanted to push on cross training and more resources. These were the individuals that wanted to make it easier for us to supply the volume and the speed that our clients were demanding, and all the things they wanted drove more scalability.
We battled kind of like the old Miller Lite commercials… TASTES GREAT!!!! LESS FILLING!!! TASTES GREAT!!! LESS FILLING!!!! TECHNICALLY EXCELLENT!! FASTER (MORE SCALABLE) EXECUTION!!!
The tension was palpable and the points of view were shared passionately. While we have matured some through the years, that tension still exists. And, we don’t want it to go away. We just want to better understand it, embrace it, and be propelled by it.
The thing that we all need to understand… what we need to internalize and OWN, is that THE TENSION FOR TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE IN A SCALABLE WAY is what MAKES US GREAT! From talking to people in our industry, NOBODY struggles, NOBODY fights, NOBODY reaches for that optimal balance as we do. And, as a result, the very largest owners of real estate, the very largest lenders for real estate, the very largest retailers in the country, and the very largest housing authorities… COME TO EMG because they appreciate and acknowledge the value that we provide, as a RESULT of what that the tension brings. They see the product and value that we create from our “tension”… and, while not perfect, many clients see it as more valuable balance than what any other company can deliver.
Some companies can provide a richer technical product. Some companies can execute faster for a single report. But, nobody can deliver the technical level that we deliver, the quality that we deliver, on the number of properties, across the number of services, across the entire United States. And, as we go forward, we want to do it better, and we want to do it faster. Great strategy, we believe requires constantly pushing to the next level…
- more digital data collection in the field to drive consistency…
- a better scheduling tool to see more clearly who is where and more optimally select our teams for execution…
- an on-line training platform to provide easy to access and comprehensive training …
- a more transparent and configurable cost database that keeps the integrity of its source while allowing for our industry intelligence to be value added…
We are far from perfect, but we are better than we’ve ever been as a company, and moving in the right direction. There is NO company that can execute the quality that we execute at our pace across our geography… And that comes from our “tension”… that comes from your passion! And, our passion is also to do it better and better over time.
We need to change the flavor of the tension from making us anxious to making us proud, to making us more creative, to making us more appreciative! It is our constant push for the very best balance that makes us continue to improve… it encourages us to introduce technology, to invest more and improve our training, to communicate more often and more clearly, to find new and better ways to strike that balance.
In Spanish, the word COMPROMISO, means COMPROMISE, connotes something very different than it does in English.
In English, COMPROMISE means to give something up, to reach agreement by making something less perfect, less good. In English, compromise, most often means lower integrity. That is why finding the balance between two things makes us feel like we are somehow “cheating” someone out of something.
In Spanish, COMPROMISE means a COMMITMENT, A MUTUAL PROMISE reached between two parties. “Compromise” in Spanish connotes the COMMITMENT / PROMISE ACHIEVED BETWEEN TWO FORCES / PEOPLE. When you have a “compromise”…, it means COMMITMENT, an strong and unshakeable COMMITMENT.
What GREAT accomplishment, what great company, what great feat does not include some level of compromise? Think about it…
What GREAT achievement DOESN’T COME from the healthy tension between more than one variable, reality or need? Our desire for uncompromised integrity is naïve. We need to embrace VALUE ADDED, INTELLIGENT, DIFFERENTIATING COMPROMISE. I always say that “the perfect information delivered 1 week after the client needed it is useless information”. Our clients have timing and cost limits that are real and define in many cases what they can and can’t do. Our value as a company is to give them the optimal deliverable, a better deliverable than anyone else can, within those constraints. And, by far, more often than not, WE DO!
The needs of people, and companies, are multi-dimensional and multi-variable. The very best products and the very best services achieve a great “PROMISE” between the things we need. NOT a PERFECT SOLUTION, but THE VERY BEST MUTUAL PROMISE available in the market! And, the market decides if the very best promise is good enough. And, how quickly you grow is a measure of how well the market values your solution.
All be it challenging, we are having the biggest year ever in the Project Management Division AND in the Asset Management Division. We are having our biggest year ever as a company. And, our story is just starting to be told and just starting to unfold. It is exciting
As a company, we battle for great in all that we do. Our tension most often comes from our desire to maximize or improve upon an aspect of what we do. But, reality and life and business requires compromise…
THE MORE WE CARE ABOUT EACH ASPECT OF OUR VALUE, THE MORE WE FIGHT FOR THE VERY BEST, THE GREATER THE VALUE OF OUR “COMPROMISO” : of technical excellence in a scalable way.
What we MUST understand that our battle for technical excellence in a scalable way is not about pitting one AGAINST the other, it’s about balancing and optimizing one WITH the other.
What we MUST understand that the battle is not PUSH and PULL, it’s more of a PUSH and PUSH.
The moment we see the tension in what we do as constructive and collaborative making us STRONGER is the moment that the stress changes flavor. We stop thinking that we are battling for a win-lose, and instead battling for the biggest possible win.
We need to be more grateful for those that challenge the way we think and help bring the balance to our execution. We need to realize that we are all ultimately battling for the same thing by coming at it from different perspectives.
Think about how this shows up and where it shows up in your role, in your work, in your stress, in your value. And, help us continue to define it, improve upon it, and deliver it!
The essence of EMG, of our company, is a formidable “COMPROMISO”, or more appropriately in English, it is the PROMISE of technical and executional excellence in a scalable way. It is who we are. It is what our clients value and see in us. And, it is what we are going to continue to invest in, excel in…. and deliver better than any other company in the market. Keep the passion and tension STRONG! And, realize it is what sets us apart and makes us GREAT!
Excited and Grateful,
Nestor Benavides