Elie Kochman on Business and Networking

I was reading about a company, I believe it was in The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (Amazon Affiliate link), in which the owner of a company discovered a locked cabinet in one of the offices which contained office supplies. He immediately cut the lock, stating something to the effect of that in a company, we have to trust the employees. (The company might have been HP, but I’m not sure. Please inform me if you know the correct origin of this story.)

There are, in general, two attitudes that can be taken toward trust. The first is that you don’t trust anyone until they’ve earned it. The second is that you trust everyone until they lose it. Which attitude is correct?

There is, of course, the third attitude best expressed in the Italian Job: “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.” It is this attitude that I believe best reflects reality in the workplace.

Ideally, an employer should trust the employees, and vice versa. Employees should trust their boss to tell them what they need to know, and to keep them informed about the environment in which they are working. On the other side, employers should trust their workers to do their jobs, not steal from the employers, and so on.

In reality, we’re dealing with people, and therefore with human nature. Not everyone is trustworthy, but in an environment in which we work together, there must be some level of trust. How you define that level of trust is a personal issue, but it must exist.

In a healthy work environment, people trust one another, but also look out for the bottom line. An employer will trust his employees, but he will also be careful balancing his books to ensure he is not being stolen from. This isn’t an issue in regard to a particular employee, but in regard to all employees as a whole.

Likewise, workers may express trust in their managers to keep them informed, but that doesn’t excuse them from keeping their eyes and ears open about changes that they have not been told about.

The issue of trust should not exist on a personal basis, but on an environment basis. When asked if you trust a particular individual in the workplace, the answer should be yes. (If the answer is no, questions should then be raised regarding why that person is still in the workplace.) When asked if you trust the organization as a whole, however, the answer should be along the lines of as far as I can see them.

I came to a realization last night that my various commitments will eventually cause time to run out if I’m not careful, and I suspect that I am not alone in this situation. In fact, anyone who is working a full-time job alongside some moon-lighting, factor in a family, and some time for friends, not to mention some relaxation time, and your day becomes filled up pretty quickly.

This is nothing new, and in truth, I’ve discussed this issue in the past several times. However, last night some parts of my personal schedule slipped, and in hindsight, there was no reason for it.

When relaxation takes priority over responsibility, trouble is in the making.

If you find yourself spending time relaxing when you could be completing a chore, and find this habit repeating, you need to take a step back and evaluate your behavior. When you find yourself spending time that could be spent with family with your nose stuck in a book, or eyes glued to a screen, you need to stop and think about what you’re doing, about what opportunities are being wasted.

Success is more than just making money. Success is when you achieve happiness in your life as a whole (and yes, money might be  a part of that). The best way to be happy is to be around happy people, and to interact with them. If that means that other aspects of your day need to be compromised, then so be it.

The sooner you come to this realization, the sooner you can re-evaluate your days. How much time do you spend doing each of your daily tasks? Is your time being used as effectively as possible? Could you possibly save some time by being better organized?

For this reason, no matter how simple your day is, try to keep an agenda of what you need to do. Include tasks such as spend time with your family, or spend time relaxing by watching TV or reading a book. But try to stick to your schedule, or you may find that it’s those things which are most valuable in the long run which suffer the most in the short term.

To anyone who thinks that I am referring to something they said or did, be aware that the incident triggering this article did not, in fact, involve me in any way. A story was told to me in which some of the topics in this article were brought up, and I therefore decided to write this.

It’s been a crazy week, and not just for me, but for many of the people with whom I have contact with on a daily basis. One of the common themes of this week made me think of a saying: Business is business.

Courtesy of T-KONI on Flickr.com

I suppose what that saying is to be interpreted as is that when it comes to business, it’s not about the people involved. What matters is the context and the content – the participants, however, can be swapped around without any implications (okay, maybe not, but you get the point). We’re told not to take such things personally – it’s about business.

In reality, few people can actually deal with business this way. At some level, there is still personality involved – and there needs to be. A motivated and driven person will interact differently than someone complacent. If you compare two such people in similar situations (professional of course) you will see them act differently. The personality of the people involved is what makes and breaks deals.

What this also means is that what is said in a professional environment will ultimately be taken personally. Whether that impacts the context is not relevant – regardless, it has had an effect on the two (or more) people involved and their ability to interact.

For this reason, it is crucial that despite the saying that business is business, one needs to be cognizant of the potential ramifications of the things they say, and how they might be perceived by someone else. This is the reason that we are also told to act like professionals – always be polite (even, or especially, when we don’t want to), always stick to the subject at hand (even if the person did talk about you at the water cooler last week), always give the benefit of the doubt.