What It Takes To Write Your Positioning Statement

This week, I re-wrote the positioning statement that defines my specialization, and I posted it on my website.

Here it is for your convenience:

MetaHelm specializes in strategic narrative for established companies. We guide CEOs, Founders, and Business Owners to align people and accelerate the adoption of innovation.

I am proud of it because it’s ruthlessly efficient.

Those two sentences follow a very particular pattern that I learned from my coach Shannyn Lee, at Win Without Pitching; a pattern specifically designed to claim the position I want MetaHelm to hold in the market and in people’s minds.

So, it’s the 5th time in two years that I have updated this statement. There were two-to-three-word updates each time. But they were updates that had a massive impact on how I sell and operate my business.

However, I’ve been working on this statement for much longer. First, the work started a bit over 20 years ago when I accidentally discovered the positive impact of a shared strategic narrative on the velocity of innovation. Second, I’ve been exploring and weighing the meaning of each word intentionally for the last 602 days. I did this in the coaching program of Philip Morgan, The Expertise Incubator.

I am telling you about this because I learned a few lessons you may want to consider:

1. The format of Shannyn’s statement works for every company. This could include yours, of course.
2. Working on your company's focus takes constant work. So, this is probably not the last version that I’ll have on my website. I chose each word in connection to the current context and context changes. So, the statement will continuously evolve. But hopefully, it will be at a slower pace than in the last few months. In any case, the statement reflects my strategic narrative, and as I always say, your strategic narrative is never done but always due.
3. Nobody else can do this work for you. DO NOT delegate this work to an agency, a freelancer, or even your intern. Don’t abdicate your responsibility to look for the true significance of your company. You have to do it on your own. But as my example indicates, you don’t have to do it alone. I had two coaches and Philip Morgan’s TEI peer group to provide feedback on this.
4. Your positioning is only as strong as the work you put into defining it. What you see here is the tip of the iceberg. What makes it as solid as a rock (and hopefully not as solid as ice) is the work I invested in researching and testing it during the last 602 days + 20 years.
5. You can only specialize if you specialize in one thing: persistence. I think this one is self-explanatory.
6. To find out if it works, show up every day in front of the people you love, you understand, and you can help. This last one is about you. The meaning of what I do takes shape while writing seven days a week to this email list. So, thank you for signing up. I am forever grateful for your permission to let me clutter your inbox daily.

As always, I hope this will help you build a better narrative for your company and the people who need to believe in it.

Have a great weekend.

Guillaume