We regard the Corporate Executive Board as an unusually mission-driven
organization. This focus runs so deep in the firm that we think of it as
programmed into our DNA-as a matter of corporate strategy and as a specific,
ongoing choice about the kind of firm we're trying to build in support of our
members.
Our mission has, as its center, the ambition to increase the effectiveness of
our member executives and of their enterprises, and we evaluate every external
publication and internal management decision and investment against this
standard. This mission is also reflected in a set of tenets that stand as values
of our organization and that guide the work that we produce. Notable among these
are:
The Force of Ideas
We believe that strategies founded on great ideas win-that they will prevail
every time over strategies based on simply being big, or rich, or cunning, or
hard-working-and that our job is to find the best ideas for our members,
wherever they are being tried, across industry and around the world.
Spirit of Generosity
We use the language of membership to remind ourselves every day that this
organization is centered over our members' interests, and not our own-that we
achieve our objectives only as a result of building value into long-term member
relationships. For this reason, we suggest that our members interact with us as
if they held an equity or directorial stake in our firm, as if our staff were
their staff. Our company is founded on an assumption of generosity, of
extraordinary sharing and support and concern, and not of meanness or scarcity.
Economies of Intellect
We believe that a network-based model such as our own creates more value for
its participants than does the traditional advisor-or consultant-based approach.
The collective experience and insight of the tens of thousands of executives in
our global network has the potential to achieve discontinuous personal and
corporate performance improvement and breaks the traditional compromise between
cost and quality of information presented by traditional advisory sources and
services.