Victory attracts new and more powerful challengers. If a company does well in the marketplace, competitors will arise to try and capture its business. There is no rest for the successful.

For a company that humbly started with nothing when we incorporated three years ago this month, Edelman Japan has been fortunate to experience notable rapid successes as a young company during its early phase. We are aware of it, but so too are our competitors: our web tracking software shows higher traffic from more and more PR agencies all the time.

Especially because many of the foreign-owned PR agencies have been experiencing slow or even no growth in recent times (or so I am told), people have really noticed that Edelman is the fastest-growing international PR firm in Japan these past few years.

Under pressure from their advertising conglomerate head offices who worry about impatient stock markets (whereas we have the luxury of being privately-held focusing on a PR-centric approach in partnership with long-term client relationships), I think some of our competitors have been asking themselves what we are doing right to enjoy such solid results in such a short time.

Because they have seen our investment in intellectual capital, our 'doing PR for PR,' and our laser-like focus on quality -- in this, the most quality-focused country in the world -- there are signs that our approach us leading to imitation. That is very flattering, but it also means that the competition is going to get tougher and try to copy our thinking and better leverage their longer years and larger staffs.

Therefore, at Edelman we are re-doubling our efforts to leverage our assets to build our careers by building our firm. Here are the kinds of values that our company especially emphasizes:

Speed: being nimble and quick; responding to stakeholders and getting things done fast to stay one step ahead at all times.

Influence: we are a rising and respected operation in our global firm; Edelman Japan is working to become a PR consulting powerhouse, earning a higher profile and more marketing muscle than any other foreign PR firm in this country.

In addition to leveraging our strengths, at Edelman Japan we are also addressing our weaknesses as we try even harder to recruit and retain the talent we need, to improve systems and processes, and to deliver on the Quality promise consistently at all times on all accounts.

We have tackled a lot of tough problems so far; it was not easy for us to create a firm of 30 people in three years, but the nice thing is that we did it with our own hands and hearts here in Tokyo, creating a office designed not just to import world-class money, people, and ideas, but to export those things as well.

(Most people are as happy as they make their minds up to be; this proverb echoes that sentiment).

Mark Twain once said that every person's mind is a "...suffering machine and happiness machine combined."

In my experience running PR agency offices since 1995, usually people who let their 'happiness machine' do most of the mental work are the ones who make the most successful team members. I think the same applies to entire offices and companies, too.

Having PMA [Positive Mental Attitude] is a key ingredient to enjoying a really successful career in public relations. People who enjoy overcoming challenges rather than being defeated by them usually do well in professional services. That's because clients do not want to pay a lot of money to hear about problems they expect the agency to transform into solutions.

Co-workers seem to feel the same way usually. People in any office -- in any country -- almost always gravitate towards the active person who is happy and excited to get the job done, rather than the passive person who is afraid to take action and just sits around complaining like a victim.

Some people in life -- a small minority I hope -- almost seem to enjoy suffering thoughts and are never happy even when things are going well. I try really hard to spot such people in job interviews and through EQ testing so that we can avoid 'suffering a perennial sufferer.'

One way to detect and to avoid hiring someone 'wired to be negative and suffer all the time' is to see how they handle rejection situations. If someone seems to pro-actively reject -- almost like "I am going to reject you before you reject me" -- then there's a good chance this person would not accomplish too much here. We make money by pitching new business and pitching media. We face rejection all the time. With a PMA, we can learn from it and increase acceptance plus winning. People with a NMA [Negative Mental Attitude] invite losing and then constantly experience it over and over almost as if the suffering were being unconsciously enjoyed.

I am not a psychiatrist, but a friend of mine is, and he gave me this insight which I thought I would share because I think he's right. Our experience here at Edelman Japan shows the positive results -- we are the fastest-growing office in Edelman globally during the past three years -- of deciding in advance to think about what we do in a positive and constructive way as we look for happy victories rather than set out to encounter sad defeats.

This proverb encourages people to be patient when accumulating savings or combining many small efforts...patience and persistence will ultimately lead to success.

A few days ago, I was making the point that if we make too many small mistakes in our work, in clients' minds these can add-up to a negative perception of one big mistake in hiring a PR firm. So, knowing that, it is pretty dumb -- and there is no good excuse -- if we keep making the little mistakes that needlessly distract from our overall quality and devalue hard-earned accomplishments in the client's eyes.

But let's peer through the other end of the telescope and look for positive insight; the same concept works when we do small things well. Every day, we communicate lots of content to numerous stakeholders via multiple communications channels (e-mail, SMS, IM, mail, fax, face-to-face, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Each of these hundreds of unique 'touch points' (collectively the 'dust' of a positive image) makes or breaks our reputation. If we ensure a positive result with no mistakes per 'transaction', each small thing we do well becomes part of a big sense of accomplishment and quality in the minds of our clients.

Spell check, double-checking, margin alignment, planning headers logically, use of one consistent font per client relationship, making sure bullets and numbering are the same throughout, imagining a timeline from start to finish and scheduling time accordingly, dressing well for meetings (one level up from the client to show respect), always phrasing things verbally in the target audience's interest...the list of small but significant tips goes on. These are all modest and minor things on their own, but if we apply a sense of fine craftsmanship in our conduct of each, then mistakes and pressure will be replaced by achievement and pride.

Here in Japan, quality matters most, and quality comes from a mastery of the small things. I always ask our employees at Edelman to help me help them continue to make our firm better through everyday personal observance of this fundamental professional services principle.

At Edelman we are aiming at being the best we can be by doing our own small personal part to accumulate the everyday 'dust' that will create a new PR standard of excellence in Japan.

Inattention to detail can be the source of considerable problems; attention to detail can be the source of considerable success.

Earlier this week, I visited the website of the Canadian PR consultancy I co-founded in 1994 (www.environicspr.com). I noticed that the characteristics that agency values look unchanged since I moved on some eight years ago:

Meticulous attention to detail
Writing excellence
Business intelligence
Common sense
Client service excellence
A sense of humour
Team player

I was a true believer in that fine firm's culture and so our staff in Tokyo will recognize in these concepts the things that Edelman Japan emphasizes every day, and indeed these are the things that I have often talked about in training our staff. The first one -- 'meticulous attention to detail' -- is close to my heart because way back during my H&K days in the early 1990s when I got in trouble for being a typo-prone SAE, I found out through hard experience that stakeholders really value the small things.

Clients value documents from PR firms that are perfectly formatted, nicely designed, with no spelling mistakes or inconsistent punctuation. Why? Because such documents earn the reputation for Quality and documents that are the opposite are an insult to the money they are paying to finance our salaries.

Prospects value meetings where smart questions are asked that evidence the fact that we have thought about them and done some research beforehand. Why? Because these are busy people who don't want to waste time teaching us the things we should already know as 'big brain' information-worker professionals.

Journalists value pitches that match their area of assignment with story angles designed to cater to their audience segment. Why? Because media are even more busy than prospects and if we waste their time with pitches that show we have not thought about their needs and done some basic research beforehand, they will think the PR firm is ignorant and amateur and never listen to them again.

Colleagues value it when other co-workers meet deadlines and provide adequate notice before the deadline if more time is required. Why? Because missing deadlines without pre-extension is unprofessional and immature and sends the message that 'this person is incompetent and disorganized.'

Everybody values thank you notes especially -- one of the smallest but most important communications gestures. Why? Because sending thank you notes after somebody has spent precious time with you shows we consider them important, shows we are good communicators and shows we are not selfish rude people.

I suppose none of these things are individually huge, but failure to do small things right makes the fact of failure seem to be a much bigger deal. Plus, neglect of small things can be habit-forming and create a resistance to learning from mistakes, which can be bad for one's career in an industry where not repeating the same mistakes is so important to success.

The point becomes clearest of all when you consider all the 'touch points' between Edelman and the stakeholders we deal with. Thousands of times a week, stakeholders get e-mails, phone calls, faxes and documents from Edelman (plus face-to-face meetings). The thinking we use in the e-mail, the manner of our answering the phone, the name spelled correctly on the cover sheet we use with the fax, the writing of the documents and the friendliness of our greeting for guests collectively make or break our reputation.

Of course, that reputation for Quality -- which comes from all of our employees doing those thousands of small 'touch point' things right all the time -- draws the money from the client marketplace that pays for things like salary increases, so paying attention to the small things has economic consequences, too...both as a team and individually.

So, we plan to keep doing the exact opposite of that American saying that I disagree with so much: "Don't sweat the small stuff." One of the great things about Japan is the finely detailed work of small things that makes the great Quality reliable and valuable product: be that product a car, consumer electronics, or the PR consultant's time.