April 1966

To the clients of the firm:

Clients sometimes ask us what we are for. It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that we are for very little that anyone can see. When we have done our work properly, nothing happens: a meeting is held and nobody outside it knows what was said; a decision is made and nobody knew it was coming. We are paid, in effect, for an absence.

The word our trade uses for this is prudence. It is an old word and an unfashionable one, and we use it on purpose. Prudence is not timidity. It is the habit of considering, in advance and in detail, everything that could go wrong, and of arranging one’s affairs so that it does not. It is the virtue of people who expect to be in business for a long time.

There are now, in this city, people who can hear what you are thinking from the next building, and people who can tell what you will decide before you have decided it. Some of them work for your competitors. Most of them are perfectly pleasant. We do not object to them. We simply arrange matters so that, in your case, they are wasting their time.

We do this by measuring, and by placing people. We will not tell you more than you need to know about either, and we will not tell anyone else anything at all. We do not advertise, we do not name our clients and we do not discuss our work at dinner. If you are reading this, someone thought you should.

G. RunciterGlen Runciter