The standards we hold
A value is only meaningful where it carries a cost — an engagement declined, a difficult assessment delivered early, a shortcut refused. The commitments below are held on every engagement. They are the origin of the name: strategy, held to a monk’s discipline.
Five commitments
The client’s interest, ahead of our own
Our advice is independent of our commercial interest. Where an engagement is unnecessary, where a smaller scope will suffice, or where a proposed position is not worth the cost of pursuing it, we will say so. An adviser whose revenue depends on the persistence of a problem is not well placed to resolve it.
Say the difficult thing early
Projects in difficulty share a common feature: the divergence was visible early, and was not raised. A design decision that will not price. A programme that no longer represents the works. A forecast that has ceased to reflect the position beneath it. A position identified in month two is a negotiation; the same position discovered in month eighteen is a dispute. Judgement withheld serves no one.
Rigour is not negotiable
Notices served within the contractual window. Records that explain not only what was built, but why it took longer. Design decisions documented at the point they are made. Forecasts reconciled against the contract rather than against the last report. Evidence assembled to withstand scrutiny, because it may one day be required to. This discipline holds irrespective of the pressure a project is under.
Only people we would put our name behind
Where StratMonk fields a person, that person has been selected for the role, not allocated to it. This applies equally to a contract administrator, a project controls engineer, a design manager and a project director. We would rather decline an engagement than resource it with someone unprepared for it. Seniority carries responsibility: the more senior the appointment, the more directly its holder answers for the outcome.
Outcomes over presentation
Success is not measured by the volume of reporting produced. It is measured by what the work secures — the entitlement preserved, the design brought back within budget, the programme recovered, the forecast that finally holds, the contract reset that endures.
Beneath all five sits a single disposition. Transparency, in that the position we report is the position as it stands, to the client and within the project team alike. Integrity, in that we advance nothing we would not defend under examination. And ownership, in that our people are engaged to hold a position rather than to comment on one — to take the work as their own and remain with it until it is resolved.
These are not qualities a firm can claim once. They are practised daily or not at all.
Standards, applied
We are pleased to discuss how these standards have been applied on past engagements, including instances where upholding them carried a commercial cost.
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