Meet people half way.  Do not have relationships with people who do not meet you half way.   What is half way?  Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court, when speaking of pornography, said it was hard to define, but “I know it when I see it”.  We have all been in situations where we, or our services, are not valued.  If you move away from those relationships, business and personal, others, better ones, will take their place.  People fear a vacuum, but flowers will bloom there.

There is no such thing as a free ride.  Call it karma.  Call it “what goes around comes around”.  Whatever you call it, you generally want to avoid getting too good a deal in your relations/negotiations with other people.  Why do seemingly successful negotiations gradually fall apart?  The problem is, most people see negotiations as one dimensional.  They figure out what they want, go for it and if they get it, declare victory and go home.  Unfortunately, for them, the job is only half done.  A truly successful negotiation means both sides get what they want.  It is incumbent upon you, once you achieve your goal, to persistently, even aggressively, determine what the other side wants, that you can afford to give.  Why not?  You have what you want, you can afford to be generous.  It is an insurance policy that assures that what you think is a successful negotiation, is indeed, successful.

I knew an employer who, selectively, when he had made a good hire, and after all negotiations were finished, called the applicant the next day and said, “I have been thinking it over, I’m very glad you are joining us, and I have decided to bring you in at a higher salary”.   Speaks for itself.
 
Never, ever, bet the company.   (Bombay)    This seems to be one of those oddities of human nature:  the self-inflicted wound.  It is often fatal and frequently preventable.   Most of these appear to be attributable to two causes:  poor management and personal demons.   Poor management can be mitigated by sticking to basics:  never give up something that is working for something new and untested, especially technology.  When Coach introduced a new $900 bag, they didn’t do it at the expense of their $200-250 bags.  They expanded their $200-250 bag offerings.  Toyota never adopts technology that hasn’t been proven.  Develop a process for calculating the worst case possibility.  Independent advisors who will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.  Carefully calculate the dilution of management time away from the core effort.  Thorough vetting of new vendors.  Three competing bids.  Checking references.

Personal demons is a trickier proposition.   What drives someone to take inappropriate risk?  The answer probably lies in the realm of psychotherapy, clearly beyond our bailiwick.  You might consider this, though, if you are in the grip of an urge to swing for the fences:  most people who have brought a business from conception to viability have paid a tremendous price, physically, psychologically, emotionally and financial.  You have something akin to a moral obligation to consider the welfare of your family, employees, customers and vendors, before you risk losing it all.  Think carefully about the impact on each of them, before succumbing to what could amount to a cheap thrill.

Get your ego, or get what you want.   Everyone has a favorite story of the blowhard at the airline gate who winds up not boarding, or sitting in a middle seat while others board and get upgraded.  The failure here, on the part of the passenger, is understanding who has real power in this equation.  I knew a service advisor who wrote up repair orders in the driveway of a Mercedes-Benz dealer.  He took special pleasure in occasionally sending selected customers “to the moon”.  After I personally witnessed one of these he told me, “that guy owns ten McDonald’s”.

For more years than I care to think about, I have enjoyed getting up early and reading The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and my local newspaper.  Delivery service, to say the least, has gotten erratic in the last couple of years.  Long gone is the neighborhood kid on a bicycle.  More often than not, it is someone trying to supplement their income, like the retired couple who presently deliver my newspapers.  Some of my neighbors fret, complain or intermittently cancel their newspapers when the service breaks down.  I have made it a point to get to know the carriers, and their supervisors.  I tell them I understand how difficult the job is, having done it long ago.  I know how expensive it is for them to put gasoline in their car, and what a drag it is to stop their car, and bring the paper to my door.  I let them know how much I depend on the newspapers and appreciate their effort and I tip generously.  These folks are not servants, they are power brokers, with the power to get my day off to a good start or a bad one.

In lots of sales offices, the sales secretary has the power position.  She takes messages from clients and prospects, prepares proposals, processes orders and prepares commission vouchers.  It never fails:  some of the reps are patient and courteous and sometimes pay for her lunch, others stamp their feet, make a ruckus and are generally disagreeable.  Guess who gets the best service and the occasional leads that come her way?

I know a successful investor who says, “I will happily wear a blue jacket with big yellow letters that say JANITOR all day long, just pay me the money”.  This is someone with his ego well under control.  Schadenfreude is a German word for the guilty pleasure one feels at someone else’s misfortune.  There was plenty of it to go around, deserved or not, when Martha Stewart went to jail for insider trading.  Keeping you ego in check goes a long way towards getting you what you want.  One CEO I know adopts a “low risk pose of calculated incompetence” when asking for help in some situations.

I have gradually come to observe that it isn’t the strong egos that give people the confidence to get things done, that is the problem.  Rather, it is the fragile egos that can’t tolerate any threat to their status.  On the other hand, you can let it all hang out.  Someone said, “you can’t put a price on a good time”.