96. No Guts, No Glory

Dear Jan

I am very curious what the entrepreneurial spirit is like at the company you mentioned. I have never given much thought to things like this and the vision and mission of a company as, in the past, I didn’t think it was so important. But I realize more and more how a strong appealing vision can affect the success of a company. My favourite slogan is Mercedes’s – Das Beste oder nichts (the best or nothing). This is clear to customers and suppliers and a great guide for Mercedes employees.We started with ‘The Matchmaker’ as our slogan followed by something a bit more complicated – ‘To constantly increase and use our ability to add value for 1. Clients 2. Candidates, 3. Colleagues and Stakeholders.’ The 3 C’s. And now we are Lugera – The People Republic, Homeland of Talent. I like this one as it makes it completely clear what we do. But it is not as good as ‘Das Beste oder nichts’.

I would prefer ‘No Guts, No Glory’, but I don’t think anybody can link this with our business (permanent and temporary staffing). Our slogan should stimulate and inspire our candidates, clients, colleagues and suppliers, or at least they should understand very well what can be expected and what we have to offer.

We are innovative, some of us have a lot of guts, we are progressive, we are challenging, we provide cost savings to our customers, we help as many people as possible to get a better paid job, we help our customers make more profit, and help our customers to sell and produce more with fewer people. But all this stuff just seems trivial if you communicate it in this way.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with someone who may join us and had heard me talking on the radio. I think he found it rather dull when I answered the question about what we do, i.e. that we are an employment agency in Eastern Europe. The radio program was a debate with a labour union member, a senate member, a counsellor and an entrepreneur. He had a much better idea. To the question – What do you do? You should answer – ‘We do progress’. This makes an impression on the audience and they want to know more right away. Immediately, you have created the conditions for a meaningful conversation.

This was a few weeks’ ago, and this afternoon I had the same conversation with Florian, a colleague of mine in Romania. He began to tell me that we have no vision, no appealing story to tell, no exciting dream to share. All we do is compete against the competitors and work hard for a salary. Our customers in Eastern Europe see little distinctiveness (accept for our websites, which are very unique). In the Netherlands, we are distinctive and we have even had parliamentary questions asked about us to the Deputy Prime Minister, but this is due to the fact that we staff foreign workers in The Netherlands and the left wing parties are against a foreign workforce in The Netherlands and they do all that they can to stop free access to the Dutch labour market.

So, we do progress. Or, we do growth. Maybe we will be able to think up a better slogan before the end of this book which expresses what we do and what we are.

Sincerely,
Gerard