Skip to main content

On Relationship

Build relationships, network they tell you. (Business context all through)

If  you have a great relationship you can absorb a lot of shocks.

Sounds good, but it sounds a bit like the event manager who thinks he can get away with crappy work because he knows the guy who controls the purse strings. While this is true and people did work like this once upon a time, it is a process that is not sustainable.

Here comes the training guy asking the same questions again and again. Here comes the training guy asking for a meeting again. You see where this is going.

Relationships are a by-product.

Read that again. Relationship is not a hi-bye relationship, but something that is a result of visceral engagement and solving a business problem. If you solved a business problem, you have a relationship.

It is like buying a product. Each time you bought the product, the product delivered. You wont buy a product that does not deliver.

Ditto for relationships.

Focus on work, relationships will follow.

I dont do relationship management, I often say, I work. If I am not having a relationship with someone, it just means, we are not doing any work for them as a team.

Just got off a conversation where a sales guy taught me how his industry was changing - and couldnt help relate to this story from my own experience.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mintzberg triangle

At a recent training, someone spoke about the Mintzberg triangle. I located it here . Image from that page reproduced here. The page linked above has a better explanation of diagram above, but what intrigued me was that the triangle exists for practically anything. The facilitator referred to this in the context of facilitation. Of how facilitation has science, craft and art to it. That is so true,  I thought. Worth a thought! Need to read of Mintzberg though...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

The above titled book by William Rosen (and I am still reading it) has set me thinking. As it goes through the industrial revolution (rather, the beginning of it) - it explores as to why the industrial revolution happened when it happened. Rather, how a lot of factors came to play in making it happen. For that alone this book is worth a read. It is worth reading how a 'dotcom' kind of ecosystem existed in England with the combination of tinkerers, rich patrons, correspondence and of course, the right kind of institutions. When one studies engineering, or even science, what we hear are the rock star stories. For instance, we know that Archimedes had a 'Eureka' moment. Likewise, in this book, I realized how a 'Eureka' moment helped James Watt resolve the problematic steam engine into a workable design. While it is very romantic to believe that discoveries happen accidentally, the fact remains that somebody like a James Watt (or others) slogged through many man...
Post a Comment
Read more