Where is your reputation? How do you rank in creditability, ethical standards and keeping commitments? The way others view you and your organization add up to your preeminence. Higher preeminence yields higher success.
Your organization has worked hard to be the best it can be and achieved a high level of preeminence. We know that respecting the individual, exceeding customer expectations, and developing value-added relationships is the keystone to any successful long-term business. Your team consistently adds value to many people and situations, earning you a reputation of high integrity. In short, you are the best at what you do. Clients see your team as a trusted advisor, which is why they return time after time for your advice and direction. As each interaction repeatedly conveys the quality of your actions, relationships grow stronger and an even higher level of preeminence is achieved. When preeminence is high among all parties a “best-fit” scenario takes place, which leads to a level of success and efficiency that is unsurpassed. Our interactions with “best-fit” customers streamline all facets of the organization. Best-fit customers recognize value and minimize disruption because they understand and choose to do the “right thing” in every situation. A customer, who consistently pays late or makes unreasonable demands, puts a strain on our ability to keep and raise our preeminence with our best-fit customers. Best-fit relationships are more about mutual understanding and working cooperatively through challenges.
This becomes even more challenging as we struggle through difficult times. We often rationalize that “hard times call for drastic measures.” The pressure to do more with less and take shortcuts wherever possible, if unchecked, could lead to lower preeminence. Taking reckless shortcuts and embracing people of lower preeminence might appear to be taking the road “now traveled” but will result in long-term disaster. Sacrificing product quality to achieve lower costs, compromising values, mission-vision strategies and abandoning growth strategies are all short-term trappings that not only spell long-term disaster but also steal from the foundation that makes us who we are and the best we can be.
As a young boy, I watched my mother wash dishes at our kitchen sink. There was no electric dishwasher. Just mom, a sink-full of water, floating soapsuds and a drain stopper at the bottom. As mom washed each dish by hand, crumbs sank and collected by the drain, while the suds remained floating atop the water. I watched as she pulled the drain stopper. Water and crumbs spiraled, then disappeared down the drain. On one such occasion mom found a remaining unwashed cake plate after she had removed the stopper. She quickly replaced the stopper, added more water and began washing the remaining plate. The suds were still in tack and rose as she added more water, but the crumbs were lost forever. My mother never missed an opportunity to teach me a lesson from even the most common of circumstances. She told me that everyday we make a decision to become or associate with either crumbs or suds. At times, especially tough times, it’s easier just to follow the weight of a situation and be crumbs, however when circumstances improve you are still lost forever. An association with individuals of low preeminence and putting aside your own core values is an invitation to move from suds to crumbs.
To stay afloat during these tough times we must:
- Turn organizational challenges into initiatives that focus on keeping and raising preeminence.
- Constantly seek best-fit scenarios.
- Avoid temptations to reduce standards.
Our ability to find quality solutions is much more successful when we value best-fit relationships and avoid toxic interactions. Indentifying toxic relationships that lower preeminence is the easiest part of the mission. Finding people who share values takes bit more attention.
Who decided that human interaction is a laborious task?
Innovations are designed to take laborious tasks and make them easier, faster and more efficient. In our efforts to be suds and find best-fit individuals, we have turned to technology as a rapid way to achieve quick, large numbers of successful encounters. We’ve figured out how to touch more people, easier and faster through e-mail and electronic social networking. But a touch is only that, a touch, it is not a hug. Only through a close interaction - a “hug” - can you understand levels of preeminence. Personal letters have evolved into direct mail; direct mail into junk mail. Electronic mass mail has evolved into spam mail.
In our efforts to contact more people, we sacrifice quality interactions and use technology in a way that actually creates distance. What is equally ironic is that as we create more ways to touch more people, better ways to avoid this massive sea of touches are introduced. Better spam filters block more unwanted touches and the emails that do get through are deleted without ever being read. This unwanted “nuisance contact” fails at meaningful communication and the originator is often viewed with lower preeminence. Much more successful is an introduction from a high-preeminence person who communicates your value to their trusted relationship.
How do we find people with high preeminence?
It’s difficult in these hard times to find that “trusted advisor”. Trusted advisors:
- Are people who share your values.
- Are at the top of their game.
- Are individuals that seek to help their contacts by introducing someone who truly has value.
Successful introductions raise everyone’s preeminence. This may equate to the more you receive, the more you give. This is not a mission of seeking large numbers. Too many “trusted advisors” will diminish your ability to interact regularly and with quality. So avoid the trappings of more is better. That will only send you down the road of touches. The relationship must go deeper if it is to be successful.
When we choose to replace a personal visit with a phone call, and replace a phone call with an email or text message we are settling for mass contact rather than quality interaction. When we skip out on quality interaction, we may be missing an opportunity that could possibly put us on the path of understanding levels of preeminence. I am not proposing that we do away with electronic forms of contact, but rather that we understand these methods should only be used as a first step. Email and text messaging are not replacements for understanding each other’s reputation or values.
I once attended a sales seminar that’s title intrigued me: “How to use LinkedIn and never have to cold call again.” The presenter made a point that if you could link up to lots of people they could provide you with enough contacts and leads that you would never have to make another unsolicited sales call again. As he boasted how he had over 1300 people in his LinkedIn network, I quickly did the math. I determined that if he sent three emails everyday, he would touch everyone once every three years. Can you really maintain that many close-valued, preeminence-building relationships? If it were possible, at what point would you max out on your ability to maintain an environment of high preeminence?
It is the quality of what we do and whom we associate with that become the key to success in difficult times. When people with high levels of preeminence come together, obstacles are minimized. Mutual understanding, similar values, trust, creditability and recognition of abilities all minimize the fear of taking action and moving forward. Times are difficult for sure. But it’s time to raise the bar, not lower it. |
