EF News
We asked - you answered!
As part of our Big Question feature, we asked four Forum members: what was your business' original mission? How has that mission evolved in the time since?
Jennifer Freeman, Be Found Be Chosen
Our original mission was to provide an open and transparent service. This hasn't changed and has become a defining factor in who we are. We don't pitch dreams to win your business, we tell you how it is. We love our clients and serve them, not ourselves.
Emma Gaudern, EMG Solicitors
When we set the firm up, I had no idea about what having a mission meant! I knew that we liked to help people, and that we could turn that into a business. Over time, we have been able to broaden our emphasis from supporting only our clients, to supporting our colleagues by offering them fulfilling roles to fit their wider lives, and in 2019/20 we expanded that by moving to support the wider community by contributing to projects that are close to our collective hearts via our own Community Fund. I think that “support” is the right term for our firm - we seek to support all our clients to achieve their goals, be it buying a house or moving on from a relationship that has ended and in particular we see ourselves as scaffolding around our injured clients, enabling them to lead the lives they want to live.
Our vision is set out as “Supporting Clients. Protecting Assets. Changing Lives.” That is a big ask of any firm, but we take small steps in the right direction most days. For me, the concept of being able to help someone change their life for the better has to be at the core of what we do. We can change our clients’ lives, but also our colleagues - I thoroughly enjoy seeing work colleagues blossom and develop a career to fit their personal and professional desires.
The final step has to be in helping bring about a change in the lives of people in the communities that we live and work in. I try to be a force for good every day and it’s important to me that the people who join the team want that same thing. It can be hard, when you’re in the middle of the day job, to remember that supporting people is what it is all about. I want to spend the next couple of years ensuring that the firm is fully focussed on this mission. If we can gear everything we do around it, I really believe that the rest will take care of itself.
David Cliff, Gedanken
Our original business mission was expressed in the phrase, 'Keeping the humanity in the busy world'.
We are on a journey together, whether in entrepreneurial fields or indeed other aspects of life. Our ongoing development, whether for example, in leadership, business ability, as employers, inventing, or going it to market, is a vital part of that. Compassion, insight and developed thought we maintain are central to effective personal and/or organisational growth.
We now use and more focused "Challenge, Think, Change" in our marketing, but Gedanken’s original mission remains subsumed within this however, embodying we believe, durable values despite changing times.
John Burns, Diamond Group
Diamond’s original mission was to provide quality, cost effective reprographic equipment and this evolved, with the addition of IT and Telecoms expertise more than a decade ago, to the provision of a complete, managed technology solution for business.
The pandemic has accelerated the needs of businesses to make better use of technology both in an office environment and for remote-working and subsequently Diamond’s hosted services have become a preferred solution for many. Diamond’s mission is to help businesses use their technology to work efficiently, safely and flexibly, safe in the knowledge that quality, responsive support service is here to help.
