As listed companies finish reporting their second quarter results, the leading contender for this year's title of most overused word by business leaders is: relentless.
On an investor call at the end of July, the CEO of Diageo concluded a discussion on corporate belt-tightening by committing to a “relentless focus on costs”. That same month the CEO of the Guardian newspaper’s holding company said his company “must focus relentlessly on reducing underlying operating losses”.
If this trend continues during the second half of the year, the adjective—synonymous with incessant, unceasing, interminable and unrelenting—will take the crown from last year's choice descriptive for vague and meaningless corporate strategy: “laser-focussed”.
This latest buzzword is admittedly flexible. It is used to describe relentless leaders, relentless intellects and even relentless accountability. It can mean job creation and job cuts.
In May this year President Obama spoke of his “relentless focus” on creating jobs. A month later, following a clear out of staff, the editor-in-chief of the UK newspaper The Telegraph said the title was “focused relentlessly on two things: producing truly distinctive quality journalism; and ensuring this journalism is seen by the largest possible audience”.
Poster boy for the phrase is Alan Mulally of Ford. In press coverage he is described as being a relentless optimist and relentlessly cheerful. He once said, “Running a business is a design job. You need a point of view about the future, a really good plan to deliver that future, and then relentless implementation.”
Mr Mulally retired at the end of June—bringing to an end his 45 year career of being relentless. Ford honoured the event by establishing a $1m scholarship fund in his name, once again praising the exiting CEO for his “relentless implementation” of the car manufacturer’s turnaround plan.
But with Mulally gone, now may be a good time to give the relentless pursuit of everything and anything a rest—or at least question what it actually means. A commitment to being relentless is essentially a slippery way of avoiding any firm commitments. It makes a CEO sound strong, driven and steadfast while shirking the basic responsibility of any corporate strategy to set out a clear timetable for delivering on actual targets. It is, moreover, a questionable character trait, and textbook hyperbole.
In truth, few things in business are genuinely relentless; nor should they be. CEOs retire. No company—including the mighty Apple—can deliver relentless growth. Type relentless.com into Google and it brings up Amazon’s website. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, registered the domain two decades ago as a potential name for his books-to-cloud storage conglomerate. At the end of July, Amazon announced its second quarter results: widening losses on top of growing sales confirmed its relentless refusal to book a profit—but even that will eventually change.
There are only a few companies that can legitimately have a relentless strategy. Foremost is Coca-Cola Enterprises. Back in 2006, around the time the former CEO of Ford took up his post, the European-focussed bottling company launched ‘Relentless’—a new energy drink to rival Red Bull’s dominance of the caffeine-stimulant market.
Relentless was initially a big success. However, it has since been eclipsed by Monster, a brand owned by the Monster Beverage Corporation, which Coca-Cola distributes in its European markets under license. Although Coca-Cola doesn’t break down the underlying sales of its energy drinks business, there are reports that sales of Relentless are being cannibalised by its aptly named stablemate, Monster.
Management at the company made no mention of relentless during their latest financial results. Proof, perhaps, that all good strategies run out of energy.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited (EIU) or any other member of The Economist Group. The Economist Group (including the EIU) cannot accept any responsibility or liability for reliance by any person on this article or any of the information, opinions or conclusions set out in the article.
