We are in the people business. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the banking business, your customers, you’re in the people business, and it’s how you treat people. I grew up with the thought that I wanted to treat people the way I’d like to be treated, and I think if you do that, it’s pretty hard to go wrong.
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Nolan Ryan on comparing his cattle ranch business with working with ballplayers.
Nolan Ryan on comparing his cattle ranch business with working with ballplayers.
Adi
on 16 Oct 10on comparing his [b]cattle ranch business[/b] with working with ballplayers.
Michael Wurzer
on 16 Oct 10The golden rule is best stated as treating others as you’d like to be treated, if you were them. The problem is most of us have a really hard time putting ourselves in others’ shoes and so we cast our own wants in place of theirs, without even knowing we’re doing it.
Daniel
on 16 Oct 10The real question is of course: Who are your customers?
Like David once said of enterprise software: It’s steaks and strippers. Your customers are people who sign the big checks – not the actual users of the software. But I’m sure the folks who are buying stakes and strippers for their customers would say they’re in the people business to (in more ways than one, you could argue).
That you customers are people, and that hence you are in the people business, is not much of an insight, unless either plants or animals (or robots) start having disposable income. The real insight (or maybe “choice”) is to figure out who your customers are; who is your business about?
Peregrine Solus
on 17 Oct 10Michael Wurzer,
You are correct – It is always best to treat people the way that they want you to treat them – the challenge is determining how, exactly, that they want you to treat them.
MC
on 18 Oct 10Is it just me, or is there something wrong with the first sentence of the quote (at ”..., your customers, ...”)? As written, it’s not making much sense to me. Sorry for the nitpick. Otherwise, thanks for the overall great posts on SvN, I really enjoy them.
@funny
on 18 Oct 10Totally unrelated to the quote above… I was reading an old post by david “You’re not on a fucking plan” and noticed this comment by “funny”
“2003 Apr 07
it’s funny that someone who has lived in the Metro US for a few years knows everything about the country.
I’m glad I do not use any of 37 signals products. I’m glad I did NOT jump on the rails bandwagon.Three years from now, we’ll all look back and say “Well, they were cool, but ego’s got in the way”. Oh well, there’s always someone brighter and better ready to fill the void.
This discussion is closed.