Unambiguously unrelenting, unyielding, undeterred and undaunted

The question "What does 'good' look like?" was close to the surface of my brain when I was asked to get on a conference call about writing an introductory statement to an annual report. The proposed theme was "Shaping our own future." I was given a list of key messages that began with a statement about staying "ahead of the curve" despite "unprecedented economic challenges."

On the call, I said I wasn't very interested in asserting that we were shaping our own future, but I could get interested in exploring what "good" looks like in a time of unprecedented economic challenges. My friends gave me an hour to come up with something, because it was 11 o'clock on a Friday morning and the design concept would be presented on Monday afternoon.

This is what I wrote:

In the face of unprecedented economic challenges, what does uncommon achievement look like? We believe it's unrelenting client focus and unyielding pursuit of service quality and operational productivity, powered by undeterred associates, enabling an undaunted growth agenda and leading to financials that are undeniably solid, and unquestionably stable. Unambiguously.

I averred that the repetition of the prefix un- was an appropriate way to state positives in an off-the-charts bad year. When nobody is setting the world on fire, pressing on with undeterred associates and an undaunted growth agenda looks pretty good.

The Un- concept was presented as an alternative to Shaping our own future, and Un- won.

Oh, and why was the question, "What does 'good' look like?" on the surface of my brain? Because I had just finished two very fun days with three colleagues talking about how to translate leadership intentions into organizational behaviors in a time of upheaval. One of the levers we had settled on was to answer the question "What does 'good' look like?" in the new world we're trying to create. More on that later...