A Letter On The Future of MECRO

A Look Under The Hood & To The Future Of Mecro Group

Sep 26, 2024

This week, something a little different. An outline of where we’ve been, what I’ve learned, and where to from here. Taking a page from

Leanne Hughes

’ simple ‘work in public’ idea - and in an exercise of strategic thinking, here’s what I would write to the shareholders of Mecro Group (if they existed.) I probably should have written this a year ago, but life doesn’t work that way. Lessons arrive when the student is ready.

To our (imaginary) shareholders,

Mecro Group is sitting at an important point in its history and is placed well for its next steps. We’ve averaged 150% in organic YoY growth over the last few years which has created a solid capital base. However growth expectations for this FinYr are lower due to both internal constraints and external shifts.

Frankly though, I’m not too worried about that.

A Transition Period

We are in a transition period both internally and externally. Looking broader than us, job cuts, tighter budgets, economic uncertainty and general recessionary pressures have meant that there’s less discretionary spending available for our current and would-be clients. However I’m a firm believer that value is valuable. So when there’s real value at play, it’s no longer discretionary - - money will be found for it no matter the market condition. (I doubt my spinal surgeon lowered his prices over the last 12 months).

No.. it’s the internal transition I’d like to spend more time on today. We get that right, our value proposition takes care of itself. You see, at roughly this time last year, this company was trading under the name “Valuable Change Co.” The idea was simple - - through my career of helping organisations change themselves, a key element was consistently missing - the payoff. So I wrote Valuable Change, and rallied this company around it. We endeavoured to create a change in mindset across leaders: a call that “Delivery is not enough, it’s tangible success that actually matters.” And tangible success is only achieved through deliberate, proactive decisions.

And while I still firmly believe that to be the case, over the last 3 years the market decided to teach us a few things…

What The Market Taught Us

First - for better or worse, the word change has been made completely synonymous with ‘change management’. And that concept, in itself, is tightly wed to PROSCI/ADKAR. (Real credit to Jeff Hiatt for that piece of brilliance in branding). And frankly, I’m not a change manager, and we’re not a change management firm.
We are, however, in the field of strategic change - an interesting delineation, but one that’s next to impossible to position within a market saturated with ‘change managers’. While I wanted to talk about value-led shifts, our prospects thought we were going to help them build a variation of the ADKAR framework. So the name ‘Valuable Change Co.’ had to go.
(Interesting Note- through many conversations over the last few years, it’s also become clear that while ADKAR is the default, it isn’t hitting the mark in many ways for many businesses. It struggles with both approachability and scalability. A genuine opportunity lies there, and its one we are exploring).
Second - our core approach of ‘putting the pieces back together’, standing up for the idea that ‘generalist thinking is crucial for practical success’ has resonated well. However, that’s probably been superseded by my simple, common sense observations on what’s truly needed for success. People are finding real value in our simple, pragmatic ways to make sense of, and strategise for their complex problem sets. However, this is likely tied to the types of businesses we attract - most of our clients are pragmatic, hands on style organisations. (e.g. engineers, electricians, miners, carers). This is a strength that we must continue to build on.
Third - losing contracts hurts. Losing already committed contracts hurts more. And losing 55% of your next Fin Yr’s committed contracts in one week, sucks. Yes we recovered, but four important lessons came out of it:
- Never bet too much on any one or two clients. Key client risk is very, very real.
- Never turn off the marketing machine. Pivot, sure, but never turn it off.
- Although they may say it’s due to internal changes in policy, given we believe that value is valuable, this means we missed the mark for those clients. Something that’s crucial to know and learn from.
- This business is only for the ‘storm the beaches’ persistent. We knew this, but we need to make a conscious effort to better embed that into our DNA as we continue to grow. Because, frankly, the market doesn’t owe anyone anything.
Fourth - We don’t need to be big to be customer oriented. Much of this Financial Year has been combing through my notes, looking at why our clients hired us, what for, and what other similar executives are telling us they’re trying to achieve. The overwhelming theme was one of ‘proactivity’ - ideally attained through pragmatism and simplicity. This proactivity often preceded a new reality they were looking to create, and that they usually needed significant internal alignment on.

Rethinking What We Do

So, at our core, we haven’t really changed what we do. But, we’re clearer on it now.

The word ‘Mecro™’ is one I came up with to represent the layer in between the Macro and the Micro. Macro level stuff is outside of your control, while the micro is the detailed day to day work. It’s at the Mecro level that proactivity is created. It’s at the Mecro level that we translate and respond to our environment. It’s at the Mecro level that effective leaders operate at - where strategy, plans and direction is created.

So that’s our rallying call - proactivity. For those people who are determined to influence and shape, rather than just accept their organisational and market circumstance.

In confession, deep down, we’re still trying to help our clients create valuable change - that is - helping them be more deliberate with value-creation, however we’re now looking at both their operational and transformational efforts.

So Where To From Here?

There are 3 questions that sit before us at the moment.

What are we going to be when we grow up?
At what scale must we be?
And, how in the world are we going to fit into this fastly converging, fantastical 'AI-enabled’ world?

Let’s deal with question 2 first. At what scale.

I have colleagues who run very small consultancies whose personal earnings rival and outstrip many of the ASX100 CEO salaries. But earnings aren’t all there is to this… I’m a firm believer that if you’re providing real value in a sustainable way, then the money will follow. Scale for scale’s sake isn’t the answer. So the true question is how big do we need to be to:

have a tangible impact to the business conversation, and
create a self-propelling business.

The honest truth is that I don’t have the answers on this yet, so as life often tends to, I suspect we’ll overshoot and only recognise it on reflection. But these two points are our guideposts in this endeavour, and are a more meaningful measure than ‘scale’ alone. (It’s worth noting that Simon Sinek, Brenee Brown and similar have had significant inroads into the business psyche over the last 10 years, but seem to only have teams of 10-30 people… I’m not them, but it’s an interesting insight nonetheless).

Ok, now for questions 1 & 3, I’ll deal with them together.

I have no real interest in selling shovels for the gold rush. The space is already filled with both genuine consultants who have been in the area for decades and are now getting their time in the sun… and many not-so-genuine gurus. (I have a sneaking suspicion that all the crypto-bros flipped to be AI-gurus about a year ago.)

But in the name of proactivity, it’s clear that GenAI and LLMs are going to directly change the type of value that our clients need from us.

So, as an initial direction - it seems that AI isn’t yet replacing those crucial in-person conversations. Those ones that directly challenge your thinking individually, and that create alignment across a group. Those have been our mainstay offerings to date, and we’ll be doubling down on those moving forward. We must, however, find efficiencies by being AI augmented. And we have to do it fast.

Further, by their very nature, AI is drawing on what’s known. Opportunity seems to still remain in two areas:

Direct, experiential research and discovery, and
Cross-functional thinking.

Cross-functional thinking has been our life-blood since inception, but number 1 represents an area for potential partnership and exploration.

Our Simple Path Forward

So here’s our next steps. Think of it as a motor, with a kickstarter.

Write my next book on pragmatic approaches to intra-organisational proactivity. (aka, how to be an ‘inside strategist’.)
Use the book along with deliberate marketing efforts to establish Mecro-thinking as a useful term in the business conversation.
Use that credibility to help clients to foster greater strategic proactivity.
Use the money from those clients to build on step 2, and push the thinking and understanding of what effective mecro-level thinking means.
Use step 4 to further step 3.

And most importantly, learn from success and failure along the way.

Something a little different this week. And if you’re down here reading this, I hope there were a few interesting insights for you along the way.

Speak soon,