The Point of Difference

Capturing the difference
that makes the organisation work.

Strategic advisory for founder-led and family-owned organisations across the UK and internationally. I help leadership teams identify, express and build on the point of difference that makes them successful, so it can be protected during growth, succession and change.

Erika Clegg

The thesis

What happens to the point of difference when an organisation grows?

In the early years, people share an understanding: how decisions get made, what good looks like, what the place stands for. Most of it lives in shared instinct alone.

Then the organisation grows. Investment arrives. A second office opens. The next generation steps in. The original founders step back. The thing that made the place specifically itself becomes harder to name, and easier to dilute.

The work is to capture that point of difference in language everyone can use, so it can be protected and built on rather than left to chance.

Junk Values by Erika Clegg on display in a bookshop between Thinking, Fast and Slow and Atomic Habits

The book · Shortlisted, Business Book Awards

Junk Values. The book at the heart of the work.

Junk Values exposes the patterns that have crept, unchallenged, into the systems and processes of corporate values, and sets out the Active Ethos® method for replacing them with something stronger. It is the foundation of every engagement, masterclass and keynote I deliver.

The book is shortlisted for the 2026 Business Book Awards and is available now through Amazon, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble.

Trusted by

Anthropy UK
Vistage Worldwide
Champagne Bollinger
Spear's 500
Business Book Awards
Visit Morocco
The Speaker Awards
Prison Reform Trust
NeoPollard Interactive
Fleet Street Quarter Festival of Words
Anglian Water
The Conservative Party
TEX Group
PDSA Veterinary Charity
Brafe Engineering
HM Prison & Probation Service
Event Supplier and Services Association
Leader Connect
MyBigSky
Lombard Shipping

In their words

Erika has an intuitive understanding for the relevance of ethos and culture in the modern workplace. Working with her helped us to bring our values to life and express them in a way which all our people, customers and suppliers can relate to as practical, demonstrable and sincere.
Charles Downie, Managing Director, Bacton Transport Services

Where the point of difference is most at risk

Growth

Outgrowing instinct

As more people, offices and decisions enter the room, what once made the place distinctive becomes harder to name, harder to defend and easier to lose.

Succession

Holding the line

Founder transitions, generational handovers and leadership change are the moments when a point of difference is most at risk of being smoothed away.

Investment

Coherence under capital

After investment or in the run-up to a sale, the pressure to professionalise can erode the very distinctiveness that originally created the value.

The work

All services
01

Strategic clarity engagements

Working with a leadership team to uncover, express and align around what actually makes the organisation work.

02

Senior leadership off-sites

Half, full or three day masterclasses and retreats to create the foundations for a purposeful, values-driven, authentic and successful team

03

Growth and succession advisory

Ongoing counsel to founders, CEOs and boards through transition, investment, integration or generational handover.

04

Speaking and masterclasses

Keynotes and executive sessions on leadership, culture, identity and the commercial value of organisational clarity.

Speaking

Keynotes, masterclasses and panels.

Sessions for founders, leadership teams, boards and family offices on the commercial value of organisational clarity, the architecture of culture during growth, and the work of preserving what makes a business distinctive.

Speaking topics