Why doing good is good for business…
By Terry Gault
A recent article that I read in Fortune magazine fits nicely with previous posts about transparency, our ethos as a company and the skills that we teach in our Complete Communicator, Consultative Sales, Consultative Communication, TeleSales Mastery, and Conflict Resolution workshops.
There are several excerpts that I wanted to highlight:
The world has changed, (Dov) Seidman argues, and winner-take-all strategies are obsolete. He contends that the rise of information technology has made good behavior more important because it has become increasingly hard to hide bad behavior. (Ask Wall Street.)
Ultimately, the only way to enjoy a good reputation is to earn it by living with integrity. "We can't control our stories," Seidman says. "We can control how we live our lives."
(NY Times Columnist Thomas) Friedman credits Seidman with inspiring some of the arguments in his 2008 bestseller, Hot, Flat and Crowded. "It's too bad Tiger Woods never read How," said Friedman, speaking from the sidelines of December's climate conference in Copenhagen. "Today people can see into your life farther, faster, and cheaper than ever before. Dov really helped me understand the behavioral implications of that: You are on Candid Camera, so be good."
(Seidman) makes an economic argument: Globalization has made it increasingly difficult for companies to differentiate themselves based on their products alone. Whatever your product or service might be, chances are that someone on the other side of the world can copy and sell it for less money. And if money is the only bond between you and your employees, they will quit the moment another firm offers them more cash.
All the more important, then, for companies to compete at the level of behavior: crucially, how they treat customers and employees. "It's about who has the most trust in their relationships, and where most people want to work," Seidman told me. "This will be the soft currency of the 21st century."
But can you really measure the impact of good behavior? One promising area of research is around trust.
In his book Seidman discusses Jeffrey H. Dyer and Wujin Chu's landmark 2003 study of buyer/supplier relationships among eight major automakers in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. Dyer and Chu found a strong correlation between trust and procurement costs. The least trusted buyers in the study incurred procurement costs that were five times higher than the costs of the most trusted buyers.
Moreover, the least trusted companies in the study were also the least profitable. And companies that trusted each other were more likely to share valuable information like new product designs. "Trust between companies leads to more trust," Seidman says. "It sets off an upward spiral of cooperative, value-creating behaviors."
All these principles that Siedman preaches to companies apply equally to individual “brands” as well.
Do you model integrity and transparency?
Article Source: Why doing good is good for business
photo credit: spettacolopura
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