Working with friends

Working with friends is nice.  I love to call the people I work with friends.  There are advantages like you know the person’s skills, intentions and you can trust them.

There is a problem however.  You don’t tend to call BS on your friends.  You will be more hesitant to call them out on poor or slow performance.  You don’t want to throw your friends under the bus.  Of course, this is just as much your bad as theirs.

What do you do about it?  Well if you are the boss it’s easier than if you are not.

I’d have a private conversation and tell them you what you are seeing.  Ask for them to fix it – for you and the rest of the team.  Don’t be shy.  Afterall, if they are your real friend they wouldn’t want to let you down – right?  You have to communicate.  Don’t wait until you blow up about it.

Have you put up with bad behavior or performance from people because they are your friends (or family)?

For the competitive – enemies make you better.

If we are honest, we can see that our enemies made us better by forcing us to get better to deal with them.

If we had no enemies or competitors, we’d be lazy and complacent.

A primary feature of capitalism is that it has providers trying to out do each other to win the consumer’s business.

This effort makes the providers stretch, innovate, try harder, and get creative to win.  The consumer is the winner as they get more for less, and better stuff. 

Among the providers, the ones whom the consumer doesn’t like, starve and go out of business. This is how things get better.  The consumer is in charge, and providers try to be their best choice.

How has having “enemies” or competitors made you better? 

What did it make you do?

Leaders – Weak and Strong

Weak leaders silence voice and shoot the messenger.

Strong leaders welcome voice and thank the messenger.

Great leaders build systems to amplify voice and elevate the messenger.

Which are you?

Bad apples

Think about each one of your employees.  Do you have a low performer among them? 

A complainer?  A bad attitude?  

Would you hire this person again?

So why are you holding onto them and making their coworkers suffer by having to work with them each day?

Make room for someone better.

Important questions to ask your customer.

What are three very important questions to ask your customer?

Questions that would unlock their reasons for buying or reasons for not buying….

Questions that would tell you what you have to provide to earn their business easily….

Like – What is most important to you when you are in the situation to need a product/service like this?

What would be your ideal solution to your problem?

Craft three questions – and ASK THEM!

Make sure your salespeople are asking them too.

Gather the answers, and reinvent your product or service if you have to.