Saturday, October 23, 2010

Twice the size

In a world where we are exhorted to get CLOSER to colleagues, staff, stakeholders and customers – the ‘transparency’ thing, we can come so very easily unstuck.

I was walking through town one day last month when the Chair of a local mail order group stopped me to say that she wasn’t sure whether her son, one of her divisional MD’s, could join the Herefordshire Directors Forum. I replied that this is no problem and that we would probably be starting another group in the New Year and that might work for him.

The Chair went on, “Yes, he’s twice the size this year.” Now I know Steve fairly well and I would have said that he is already what the clinicians call obese. Twice the size in a year would make him physically enormous. So I was just about to reply, “Well I am really sorry to hear that, is this a medical problem do you think?” when Helen continued, “it’s been a great twelve months and our new CRM system has worked a treat.”

I shut my mouth like a clam, stared hard at the space over her head and stammered something about yes how important the right technology is.
A very close shave. I think we need to realise that the closer we get to people that might once have been ‘merely’ business acquaintances, the chances are that we will make mistakes and we will tend to polarise people into those that like us for being what we are, and those that don’t.

That’s OK isn’t it?

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