(It takes time to make money. Therefore, time is just as valuable as money and someone should not waste it).

If you work in a PR firm and somebody asks you: "What is your product?", how would you answer?

Me, I would say: "my time."

Just like lawyers or accountants or other professionals, we charge our customers for the time it takes to do what we do best, including:

Media relations and publicity
Corporate image development and reputation management
Issues interception & crisis management
Media & crisis training and coaching
Product launches and brand-building
Marketing communications
Public awareness and consumer education
Stakeholder and opinion leader relations
Social media communications and ‘Word of Mouth’ campaigns
Corporate Social Responsibility programs
Internal communications and employee engagement
Special event and trade show management
Journalist perception audits
Media intelligence: monitoring, competitive research, and analysis
Financial communications
Communications strategy development/creative ideation and planning
etc.

So, if time doing these things is our primary asset, it is important for PR pros serious about their careers to increase the value of their time through education and training so that client money looking for premium quality can finance the fruits of that labour. In my opinion, even in tough economic times, there will always be enough demand from the market to finance the cost of training and compensating staff enough to supply it consistently.

It is pretty straightforward: the higher our ability, the better our quality. If we get that precious thing, then we earn the finest reputation, and new business becomes easier because we get more 'incoming' prospects which we then convert into clients. Indeed, just look at our amazing community of customers from only three fiscal years in business at Tokyo, which then helps us attract great people, thus increasing our ability to attract premium money from the market so we can prosper as a company collectively and individually as well.

Just like this 'virtuous cycle' below...

Time might be money, but the key issue is the people whose time generates that money for themselves and for the company...us, the PR professionals, proud of what we do and always getting better at it because there's premium opportunity where there's premium time.

(comment: there will be no harvest in the fall without planting and tending during the spring and summer. If you indulge only in the pleasures of the moment, then you will eventually find yourself in a difficult situation).

So true! There's nothing wrong with enjoying these 'pleasures of the moment' -- celebrating things important to us like winning a big new business pitch, scoring media publicity, earning a compliment from a client -- but most of these pleasures come from our previous planning and preparation.

The only way to achieve individual and team success in business is to first plan our work, then work our plan. We must always analyse the situation (where we are today), map-out our objectives (where we want to be in future), identify the stakeholders whose opinions and actions will determine the speed and extent of our success, the strategy we will use to guide our efforts, and of course the tactical activities that we spend our time doing within a pre-determined schedule.

Thinking ahead is the key to planning:

Thinking ahead about our own careers and where we need to be in future to be happy and successful

Thinking ahead about what we have to do for the clients whose business is our key career driver and reputation-maker

Thinking ahead about 'things to do'; determining proper priority between them and estimating how long each will take so we can manage our promises and deadlines well

Thinking ahead about what different stakeholders need, when they need it, and how they need it

In my job, I always have to think ahead about two things: securing the future money of the firm and attracting, training and retaining the talent of the future that will serve and attract even more of that quality-driven client money through a progressively higher education-enabled skill level.

That sounds pretty fancy, but everyday it just means things like: going for new business immediately after we win a new business pitch to stay ahead of the money curve (not waiting until we are forced to find money); interviewing talented people who might join the firm in five months or even five years (not waiting until quality standards suffer if we get too much business without enough people); always meeting media every week to build relationships that will help secure coverage in future (not waiting for a specific assignment where it might be hard to generate ink with a journo we don't know)

It is really boring and lazy to just sit around and wait for things to happen and then react. Instead of being reactive and passive subjects of change that other people drive, the idea is for us -- our group -- be the masters of change through addressing the future everyday by devising and following a plan that is designed to get us where we want to go.

The world's most famous ice hockey player (and my fellow Canadian), Wayne Gretzky, put it well when he said: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."

Honesty is always the best policy for building a leading PR business. Honesty to clients results in the best advice and the best results of that advice. Honesty to colleagues results in trust and a team spirit. Honesty to the media makes for the best coverage. Honesty to yourself results in self-improvement and a reality-based perspective that makes for maximum happiness.

Honesty is a key attribute of the mature and successful professional. Dishonesty is the hallmark of unhappy or envious people who have no other way to win but to lie. Over the years when I have heard inaccurate rumours (as in 'smear campaign'), usually they come from self-serving people who can't win by building themselves up through earned merit, so they try and beat others by knocking them down with lies.

It is important to never be reduced to such base conduct because the true PR professional should be far more occupied with setting a new PR standard for quality-improving excellence. While others are busy reaching new lows, we should be achieving new highs.

Honesty to clients is appreciated because they are so close to their businesses, they need our objective perspective as PR agents. When clients ask us for the truth, we must deliver the truth...about why the reporter did or did not write the story...about what the journalists really think about the new product...about what is the correct price for our services.

Honesty to colleagues should come naturally here at Edelman, but we must always remind ourselves of its importance. Honest and open channels of communication between each other results in the most wise decisions and the happiest company climate. Liars lose friends and destroy confidence, resulting in anger, isolation and resentment, which is why there should be no place in a firm for deliberate deceit nor casual deception (nor for telling people what they want to hear to achieve personal ambition). By continuing to be honest with each other, we show respect for ourselves and for the firm in a way that keeps people of quality and integrity warmly loyal to a company (whereas a cold-blooded concern with 'the ends' rather than the merits of the means could lead to departures...nobody wants to work for a firm they don't respect, which comes from a loss of trust, often the consequence of deliberate or opportunistic falsehood).

Honesty to the media wins respect and helps build lifelong relationships built on a foundation of trust. Journalists can spot a liar in a second, and when they do, the publicity can be disastrous. Just one lie can destroy the positive impact of 99 true statements, and it can ruin corporate and personal reputations in a single news cycle. That's why not lying to the press -- always telling the truth we are allowed to tell -- is always the best way forward in every case.

Finally, honesty to yourself. This is key to avoiding an unhappy life in a PR agency. The more honest you are with yourself -- and that's why performance reviews should be transparent concerning feedback -- the more you can leverage your strengths and overcome your weaknesses. Dishonesty only breeds disappointment and alienation.

Telling the truth to yourself, to clients, to colleagues, and to media is a sure way to build one's PR success. Edelman's philosophy is centred upon the 'relationship imperative.' What is key to any successful relationship? Trust, respect and confidence, all of which come from honesty and truth-telling.

I have found that the more intelligent the individual, the more honest the individual. Which is why lies and the liars who tell them are always confronted by the negative consequences of their deceit: the truth always comes out into the open. My father told me when I was a little boy that "you have to have a good memory to be a liar, because you have to remember all your lies." Smart people know that. But the problem is, lying is habit-forming and so the liar usually tells so many lies that it is impossible to remember them all.

At Edelman, and I hope at all PR firms, we need to tell the truth honestly with all stakeholders at all times. I want Edelman to be seen as the most trusted and trustworthy PR firm.

That's why honesty must remain our best policy.

(Emergencies and crises do occur, but you can protect yourself by planning and preparing ahead. Providing is preventing).

Next month, one of my favourite people in Edelman -- Mike Seymour of our UK operation -- will be here to train our team about crisis communications in his role as the global practice leader. It's a timely visit, because we always need to further increase our crisis consulting business to help achieve our commercial objectives by building our reputation for leadership in the corporate space.

We've done some solid work so far, but we will soon be selling deeper premium-grade consulting and at the heart of this is being able to run full-scale crisis simulations (about which Mike is a noted expert).

Like media training, the crisis simulation -- to be distinguished from the essential but more straightforward crisis seminar that is a 'dime a dozen' in Japan -- is an opportunity to showcase PR thinking at its finest to c-suite decision-makers under 'real-life' mock conditions where the authenticity and drama of the training exercise will engrave indelible Edelman-supplied insight into the minds of senior corporate people.

Crisis PR work is far more rewarding for us and for clients when it comes to preparedness rather than response. We might make more raw fees from the drama of an actual incident, but it is much more satisfying to help prevent a crisis in the first place by teaching corporate executives how to identify issues with crisis potential, intercept them, and manage them transparently to ensure positive trust-boosting outcomes with stakeholders.

Crisis communications work is at the very top of the PR food chain, and expanding our mastery of it via Mike's training across the staff at all ranks will help Edelman Japan increase our skill level and thereby increase the demand from the market for our premium PR services.

The true professional always prepares for the unexpected, because as professionals we know that the unexpected can always be expected.

Even the most skilful work will be unsatisfactory if it takes too long to complete. Rather than agonize over inconsequential things, we should try and do the highest quality job within a reasonable period of time.

Speed!

Clients appreciate it when we answer their e-mails instantly. Prospects are impressed by it when we send thank you notes after new business pitches the moment we get back to the office. Media like it when we return their phone calls right away.

The more quickly we do something that someone wants, the more we show that we respect them and that they are important to us. The more they know that we respect them and regard them as important, the greater our reputation and our business growth.

Likeability is one of our most important business assets with stakeholders. Whenever we do something quickly for someone, the more we show them that we like them. The longer we take, the more they might think we don't like them, and that's a sure way to harm our business and hold back our careers.

Perceptions of competence are also closely associated with speed. If we deliver information or a tangible deliverable result fast, people think "Edelman is a competent high-quality firm unlike any other." If we take too long -- especially for basic or easy things -- they assume "Edelman is an incompetent low-quality firm just like some others I had problems with."

PR people are the world's most powerful information workers. When I started out as an account executive in 1990 (when we had more typewriters than PCs and snail mail instead of e-mail), 'urgent' meant 'this week' or maybe 'today.' Eighteen years later, with electronic communication long having eclipsed paper communication, 'urgent' means 'within the hour' or often 'right now.'

There does not need to be a compromise in quality by being speedy. We are accelerating our training even more to make sure of that. That's because service speed is a key driver of client perceptions of quality, so I think a speedy delivery of quality information & ideas & thinking & results should be our focus.

There is a connection between the speed of service and the speed of a professional consultancy's growth and our personal development together with the team.