A Business Perspective on The Golden Rule

I have always positioned myself as a "customer advocate".  I have a natural predisposition to see things through the eyes of the client.  In doing this I often take a very simplistic approach to business issues: just take care of the customer and everything will work out.  Sure there are exceptions, but I genuinely believe that in most cases this approach works.  Back in my early days as a quota carrying sales rep (at a company that will remain nameless) where the object was to sell, sell, sell and never let facts gets in the way of closing a deal, my 'customer centric' approach was frowned upon.  Nonetheless, I always hit my numbers so I knew I was on to something.  It wasn't until later in my career when I was introduced to Emerson's Essay on Compensation that I really started to understand why this approach worked.  It seems, if you believe Emerson's theory, that good ultimately does beget good...do the right thing and it will pay off.  So yes, the Golden Rule of "treat others as you would wish to be treated" applies in business just as in life.  

I started thinking about this a while ago when I read a piece in Supply Chain Brain where several thought leaders were discussing the burgeoning discipline of Performance Based Outsourcing.  Kate Vitasek described her vision of this collaborative vendor-buyer relationship as "What's in it for WE?"  I just think that is a brilliantly simple concept.  All the archaic ideas of 'beating down your suppliers on service' or 'sticking it to your customers on price' are in no one's best interest in the long term.  That seems obvious but I suppose it's a little like the idea of partisanship in politics.  If someone doesn't vote the way YOU vote then they are not being bi-partisan.  Well...neither are you if you insist that that your way is the only way!

I'll illustrate this way of thinking with another example.  Staffing Industry Analysts published a survey on July 30th titled: Insights Into Staffing Companies' Attitudes, Practices and Strategies.  One section of this had annonymous statements from staffing industry executives to staffing buyers.  Some of the  quotes that really jumped out were: "Allow staffing suppliers to make a profit...", "Be fair and help keep us in business" and "Please treat staffing firms as a valued partner instead of a commodity".  Ok, I don't want to paint the entire industry poorly based on the resposnes of a few.  And maybe there were specific instances that warranted these reponses, but WOW!   I would reply to these: "act like a partner and you'll be treated like a partner, help your customer stay in business and they will be fair, and enable your customer to make a profit and they will help you to do the same".  That goes to any business who would make similar complaints about their customers. 

It takes two to make a vested business relationship work.  It takes understanding the perspective of your customer and being willing to give in order to get.  Even more, it take discipline to introduce the concept and have the discussion with your business partners about each other's objectives.  Then you can structure the relationship so that no one wins at the other's expense and you can create alignment toward mutual success.  The tactics of doing so are a different discussion; call one of our Business Development people or research the topic of PBO for yourself if you really want to learn more.  But I can tell you this, back to my simplistic way of thinking, it all begins with the Golden Rule.

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