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Fish and Visitors
How was your Christmas?
Did you have any interesting visitors?
Benjamin Franklin reckoned that Fish and Visitors smell after three days.
I was reminded of that bit of wisdom at a recent Relationship Management Workshop just before Christmas. There were a couple of dozen people in the room. These were tough people. Many years at the top end of the construction industry had hardened them into formidable contract managers.
Take-no-prisoners, and shoot-the-stragglers sort of people.
I asked the participants how they planned to manage their relationships over the Christmas break. There was general agreement that ‘dealing with the relations’ during Christmas was something of a nightmare. Innocent sounding phrases like “Her side of the family” and “Helping with the drinks” took on an aura of dread. There were strict instructions issued about which subjects were to be ‘Not Mentioned’. Lips had to be buttoned and acts tidied up. It could be done, but only for three days, and with considerable discomfort.
The good news was that managing relationships is something that we can all do.
For three days.
Managing an Alliance or Partnering Contract uses many of the same skills, but goes on for years. No wonder burn-out rates are high. Fortunately for us, Tony Lendrum’s 0-10 Relationship Management system of tools, techniques and frameworks makes this difficult task manageable. Tony has been developing the system for over 20 years, and is showing no sign of burn-out yet.
He hasn’t started to smell either.
Check out Tony’s stuff at 0to10rm.com
Happy New Year.
Jock Macneish
Where’s your loyalty?
There’s a heap of stuff written about customer loyalty.
And it’s all pretty much rubbish.
This is one of the rare exceptions: Your customer won’t take a bullet for you
People do not establish relationships with organisations. People relate to people.
On a recent trip to the UK, I came across a fine example of loyalty.
A colleague working for a building company received a letter from one of their suppliers. The letter said that their top salesman was leaving the industry to pursue other interests. It said that he would be very hard to replace, as he had been a wonderful employee, he had done excellent work, and that he was leaving with all the best wishes in the world. My colleague was somewhat bemused by the letter, and unsure quite what to do with it. When he phoned the supply company a few months later, he asked about the letter.
The response was unexpected, but upon reflection unsurprising.
The supply company said that they had many, many calls about that letter.
They had replaced the salesman with a younger person with little experience, and had expected sales volume to drop significantly. What happened was quite the reverse. They were swamped with orders for work. When they asked their customers why this was so, the replies were all the same.
That letter. The one about your salesman.
The customers were simply choosing to do business with a company that respected and acknowledged good people.
This is not about a relationship between a customer and a business.
It’s a relationship between people who choose to do business with people that share their values. And they are loyal to those that respect those values.
Who are you loyal to?
Effortlessness
Certain people make difficult tasks seem effortless. How do they do that?
Some years ago my colleague Ben Tursch was at a conference near a Flemish seaport. Ben watched an elderly man sail a 15 metre barge from the quay out through the harbor to the open sea. It was an object lesson in effortlessness.
The lone sailor's first action was to light his pipe, which was then parked on the roof of the wheelhouse. He then moved leisurely from one end of the barge to the other, unhitching a rope, adjusting the tiller, hoisting a sail, and punctuating each action with a passing puff on his pipe. Each action seemed to require a minimum of effort, and was perfectly timed. The enormous barge moved slowly away from the quayside, maneuvered it's way past numerous moored watercraft and headed steadily out to sea. As far as Ben could tell, the pipe never had to be relit.
My guess is that effortlessness comes from years and years of practice. Maybe natural talent has a part to play. Maybe not. But after years of practice, most people figure out the best way of doing things. The best mental models, the best methods, and the least amount of wasted energy.
The story prompted me to ask myself “Which of my regular work tasks require the most effort, and what to I need to do to make them effortless?” Answering that question changed the way I did many onerous tasks.
What do you put most of your energy into doing?
