Relationship Economics® Newsletter
The Nour Group, Inc. | November 2006
What is the value of a relationship?
Your personal and professional success depends on the diversity and quality of your relationships with others. Yet most of us don't spend enough time building and nurturing the key relationships we need to achieve success. That's where Relationship Economics® comes into play. Relationship Economics isn't about networking. It's about learning how to invest in people for an extraordinary return. It's about understanding Relationship Currency®, accumulating Reputation Capital® and building your Professional Net Worth®. It's about learning the art and science of relationships to deliver bottom line execution, performance and results!
Call to Action: Find or become a Mentor!
By Tammy Troutman, Sr. Principal
Mentoring is an age old concept. For thousands of years young men were hand picked to be apprentices for older, wiser, experienced professionals in a chosen field. Once they performed many menial tasks, the mentor gradually doled out information gleaned from years of experience that would then provide the young man with his livelihood. In fact, the word mentor began in 1500 BC. The King of Ithica, Odysseus, needed someone to look after his son, Telemachus, while he was fighting the Trojan War. He entrusted an old friend to take care of the boy and to impart his wisdom, values, and learnings. This wise and trusted counselor was named Mentor.
In its simplest form, a mentor is engaged to share with clients, who are smart enough to be guided by someone who’s already "been there," what they already know and what they’ve learned to become successful. Every successful person has a mentor. Most likely they have had several mentors.
For example, most large professional services organizations are very good at providing solutions for their clients. These consultants, accountants, attorneys are very proficient in their areas of expertise. They’re also exposed to clients for long periods of time during an engagement. However, building a relationship with those clients does not come naturally for a lot of these professionals.
The Nour Group has built a mentoring program specifically to address their needs. We work with the partners and leadership teams to assess the issues and to set realistic goals for the mentee. Our program is both strategic and tactical, with short term and long term benefits.
Click here for the top 5 attributes of a successful mentoring program and how to deploy one in your organization
Barriers to Strategy Execution
By David Nour, Managing Partner
According to a recent study, 9 out of 10 companies FAIL to execute their corporate strategy! Is this really a surprise, given the following facts?
- The Vision Barrier: Only 5% of the workforce understands the corporate strategy
- The Management Barrier: 85% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy
- The People Barrier: Only 25% of managers have their performance incentives linked to strategy execution
- The Resource Barrier: 60% of organizations don’t link budgets to strategy
There certainly isn’t a shortage of strategy formulation. Mission Statements about "why we exist" cover most corporate lobbies, but you’ll have to go further into the building and look at the hallway art for the corporate values and beliefs of "what’s important to us." Work your way into the corporate library or museum and you’re sure to discover the vision about "what we want to be." Take a road trip to an off-site meeting, including several rounds of golf and there you’ll discover the strategy regarding a game plan.
Unfortunately, here is where you start running into a few roadblocks:
- No strategic dashboard of implementation and focus progress
- Few strategic initiatives of "what we need to do," tied directly back to the vision, mission, and strategy
- Certainly little to no consensus on personal actions, specifically 'what I need to do" to drive the strategic outcomes the organization is after
Strategic outcomes such as a motivated and prepared workforce, delighted customers, efficient and effective processes, and satisfied shareholders.
Email us for a special report on Strategic Relationship Planning.
Insights: Why Empathy Trumps Sympathy
By Alan Weiss, Ph.D. - President, Summit Consulting Group
There is a profound difference in relationships between expressing sympathy and empathy. The former is feeling as the other person feels. The latter is understanding how the other person feels.
In business, peer relationships (which include customer relationships) most demand understanding. Emotional support is not nearly as important as pragmatic help. In fact, when someone who has undergone a traumatic experience is told, "I know exactly how you feel," the response is often, "You couldn't possibly know how I feel," which is accurate. However, most of us in business DO know how a frustrated customer, overdue vendor, or prime prospect does feel.
In establishing ROR (Return on Relationships) it's important to understand how the other party feels and what the ramifications are for you and your business. A great reason to shop your own business is to try to gain some of that understanding.
Consequently, your most important relationships—with customers, vendors, employees, peers, regulators, volunteers, or whomever—are the ones most crucial to understand and to provide with empathic behavior. If you put yourself in the other person's shoes, try to adopt their perspective, and attempt to identify with their goals, you've come a long way in maximizing the value of relationships.
Dealing with key customers or prospects is no different. There are some "blanket" needs that they all probably want met (financial security, rapid response, assurance of support) but each probably also has independent relationship needs (status, automated renewal, periodic updates). This means you have to differentiate your relationships.
Newspapers do that today with a process called "zoning," meaning that some areas received slightly different editions (more on certain ethnicities, or sports, or schools, and so on). Cable television offers huge diversity for differing relationships, from education to reality shows. The "platinum" level credit cards, airline clubs, rental car programs, and so forth are doing the same.
Empathy trumps sympathy. Understand what your best relationships require and provide it. Segment, differentiate, and stratify. Don't spend more than you must for the appropriate ROR on a given segment. And never be afraid to deliberately end business relationships which have a negative ROR: customers and others who cost you more in profit or stress than they positively provide.
You don't have to actually be in the other person's shoes (sympathy) to understand what route they prefer to take (empathy).
© Alan Weiss 2006. All rights reserved.
Alan Weiss is the author of 25 books appearing in 7 languages, and is considered the major voice for independent consulting in the United States and in much of the world. Visit his web site for free articles on this and other topics.
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