A couple of weeks ago, I received a message through Facebook Messenger.
It was a short “thank you” note from a public figure whom I had become acquainted with recently. She thanked me for being a “fan” of hers.
I replied, but something didn’t quite sit right with me. There was nothing particularly suspicious about the message itself, yet somehow, the tone didn’t sound like her.
Perhaps it was the way she addressed me. Perhaps it was simply because I had interacted with her enough to have a sense of how she normally communicated. Whatever it was, I had a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
So I clicked on “View Profile”.
The page was gone.
I then sent my friend a text message directly to check.
She replied within seconds.
“This is not from me. I don’t address the people who support me as fans.”
That was enough confirmation. I reported the account to Meta and thought little more about it.
It could have been an attempted scam. It could have been a prank. Fortunately, nothing happened beyond receiving a rather strange message.
But the incident did make me think.
How did I know something was wrong?
It wasn’t because I had some special ability to detect fake accounts. I simply knew enough about the person to recognise that what I was seeing did not fit the person I knew.
And that brought me back to the last of Sun Tzu’s Five Factors that I have been exploring through this series: Consistency.
More Than Just Doing Things the Same Way
In The Art of War, one of the Five Factors is commonly associated with Law (法). Depending on the translation, it can refer to methods, organisation, discipline, regulations, or established order.
Where, by alliance decree, the forces of Liu Bei and Sun Quan fell under the operational jurisdiction and martial orders of Wu’s Supreme Commander, Zhou Yu.
Picture courtesy of https://www.asianwiki.com
“Consistency” isn’t a literal translation of Law (法), but I see it as one of its practical manifestations in business.
It can show up in the way employees respond to customers, how decisions are made, how services are delivered, how processes are followed, or even how a brand presents itself.
When these things are repeated over time, people begin to know what to expect from you. Those expectations gradually become associations, and those associations eventually contribute to reputation and market positioning.
In other words, people learn who you are partly through what you consistently do.
But there is a catch.
When the Brand Experience Doesn’t Match the Brand
Imagine a premium fashion boutique positioned around exclusivity and a personalised experience.
The doors open, customers rush in, there is no system to control the crowd, nobody knows who should serve whom, and the place quickly becomes noisy and chaotic.
Apart from the possibility of merchandise being damaged or even stolen, the bigger problem is that the very people looking for an exclusive experience may simply walk away.
The products may still be premium. The price tags may still say “luxury”.
But the experience is saying something else.
The same applies in the opposite direction.
I once visited a speciality beauty and cosmetics retailer looking for a particular perfume. The products were genuine, and some of them were priced lower than what I had seen in boutiques.
But the moment I started browsing, the sales personnel kept buzzing around me, aggressively promoting one product after another. I became increasingly annoyed and eventually left without buying anything.
The retailer was, in its own way, very consistent.
Its people were consistently focused on pushing products to walk-in customers.
The problem was that the consistency was reinforcing a sales-driven behaviour rather than the experience I was looking for as a customer. The team had clearly been trained around selling and commissions, but perhaps not enough around understanding what the customer actually wanted.
So when I look at consistency, my next question is usually quite simple:
Consistent in what?
Consistency does not automatically make a practice good. It simply makes whatever you repeatedly do more recognisable.
When Consistency Becomes a Comfort Zone
This is where I think many established SMEs should take a closer look at themselves.
Some businesses have been operating for years without what I would call a proper operational loop. Their consistency comes from practices that have simply been passed down, repeated because “this is how we have always done it”, or maintained because nobody wants to disturb what appears to be working.
But is that really consistency?
Or is it inertia?
A practice that worked ten years ago may not necessarily work today. As I mentioned when discussing Climate earlier in this series, the environment around a business changes. Customers change. Competition changes. Technology changes. Expectations change.
Consistency without relevance can eventually become a barrier to progress.
There is a difference between having discipline and refusing to adapt.
Then I Saw the Dominoes Fall
I was reminded of this during a consulting engagement with an accounting company of around 50 people.
The company wanted to grow and reposition itself beyond traditional accounting into a more integrated business advisory.
During one of our meetings at their new office, I happened to see a prospect walk in asking about their services.
Through the glass window of the meeting room, I watched representatives from different departments take turns approaching the prospect.
The problem?
None of them could properly answer the enquiry.
Afterwards, I asked the team what had happened. I discovered there was no proper protocol for handling a sales enquiry. There was no clear guideline on what the company offered, no dedicated starting point for a prospect, and no clearly defined person or role responsible for beginning the sales process.
Historically, all sales engagement had been handled by the Founder.
It had worked when the company was smaller.
But now there were around 50 people in the organisation, and the same arrangement was becoming a bottleneck.
When the prospect walked in, everyone — managers included — seemed uncertain about what to do. They were almost like a bunch of headless houseflies buzzing around the room, each trying to help without really knowing where the responsibility began or ended.
I remember thinking: if you are positioning yourself as a business advisor, what does this experience tell a prospective client?
They could quite reasonably be thinking:
“If you can’t properly train and organise your own company, how can I trust you with my business?”
That prospect never returned.
The company had not simply lost a potential sale. One inconsistent experience had exposed a much bigger problem behind the brand.
This is where I see the domino effect of consistency.
One missing protocol leads to unclear responsibility. That creates hesitation. Hesitation affects the customer experience. The customer experience influences confidence. Confidence affects the willingness to engage. And eventually, a business opportunity can disappear.
One thing leads to another.
“Is This Really What You Want?”
At our next meeting, I brought the incident up with the Founder.
I could have told him bluntly, “You are the bottleneck. Until you change the way the company operates, nothing is going to improve.”
But that isn’t always the most useful way for a consultant to speak to a business owner.
Instead, I asked him a simpler question:
“Is this really what you want?”
It wasn’t meant as a reprimand. It was meant as a mirror.
The problem wasn’t that his employees were incapable. The problem was that the organisation had never been given a system that allowed them to handle the situation confidently.
The Founder had been the system.
That may have been perfectly reasonable when the business was smaller. But as the company grew, what had once been a strength had become a constraint.
He eventually agreed that things needed to change.
Dalmatian subsequently helped the company work through its sales and operational protocols, clarify responsibilities, and restructure the way processes were handled.
That is one of the things I believe a consultant should do.
Not simply tell a business owner what is wrong, but sometimes hold up a mirror and ask whether what they are seeing is really what they want their business to become.
One Factor Doesn’t Stand Alone
Looking back at this series, it is also difficult to separate Law (法) from the other factors.
A company needs the right General to establish direction.
It needs to understand its Climate — the environment in which it operates.
It needs to understand its Terrain — where and how it competes.
And it needs the right methods, organisation and discipline to turn those strategic decisions into consistent action.
As I discussed in the earlier article on Terrain, there is no single “right way” to operate. What works for a premium boutique may be completely inappropriate for a mass-market retailer.
Consistency therefore isn’t about blindly doing the same thing over and over again.
It is about making sure that what you repeatedly do is aligned with who you are, where you are competing, and what you want people to experience.
What Are You Consistently Telling People?
Which brings me back to that strange Facebook message.
I recognised that something was wrong because the message didn’t fit the person I knew.
It was a small inconsistency.
But brands are often recognised in exactly the same way.
Not necessarily through one big advertising campaign or one carefully written brand statement, but through the accumulation of smaller experiences — how your people speak, how enquiries are handled, how decisions are made, how customers are treated, how promises are delivered and whether the experience matches what the brand says it stands for.
Over time, these things become familiar.
People begin to know what to expect from you.
And that is when consistency starts becoming part of your brand.
The real challenge, therefore, isn’t simply to keep the dominoes standing or even to keep them falling.
It is to make sure you have placed them in the right direction before you push the first one.
Because once the first domino moves, one thing will inevitably lead to another.
The question is:
What have you set in motion?
At Dalmatian, we have never believed that branding is simply about making a business look good.
It is about helping businesses Get Spotted — strategically.
And sometimes, spotting what needs to change begins with something as simple as noticing which domino is about to fall.