The Final Golden Business Rule: All Business is about Relationships

It is easy to become confused in a rapidly developing digitalized, global environment, where it may be possible to receive Trumpian, borderless attention and broad visibility in an instant. Surprisingly many business executives keep on pursuing that kind of lottery ticket, trusting in social media and digital marketing, forgetting what the essence of their business is. Successful and sustainable business is developed through excellent long-term management of relationships. Great achievements come when people co-produce achievements and interesting content. The big opportunities will only emerge when doing that.

The most important value is produced in the interaction between people. Technology driven ventures often try to push their products not realizing that you can only develop appealing offers and service when adapting your solutions to the needs of your customers. Yet too often we try to sell what we produce even if most of our customers reject it. Scalable growth can only be achieved when your customers are satisfied. That means that product development and production must conform to the requirements that come from sales. The best sales people understand and can discuss their customers′ business logic. That kind of skills are needed to integrate new innovations to customer needs.

Marketing is about creating interest for value that key customers can receive. Marketing is also about providing support to the interaction between decision-makers and to facilitate the dialogue. Value-co-creative dialogue result in shared understanding of the potential of the services offered. At best a shared vision can be developed and a long-term partnership can be started. Each such customer case provides us with key factors for scalable business and helps us create lean processes. You rarely succeed when you try to reverse the order of actions.

Why do so many keep forgetting that brand equity and brand value is primarily produced in the interaction between people, and significant value is added only when expectations are exceeded? Brand value processes should be managed primarily through existing relations and the flow should be outwards. In our attention-seeking, social media driven, hubris creating global environment executives get lost in attention.

The basics of business is simple. A customer′s voice is the truth. So why not adapt you offering. Giving value is always rewarded. Logic rarely fails. Simplicity wins. Clarity is attractive. Trust must be achieved. Eye to eye. Hand in hand. With a smile. Business is easy. Yet processes tend to become bureaucratic, complex, time-consuming, controlling rather than supporting, suspecting rather than trusting. And suddenly there is no sustainable logic that would keep it all together.

Amateurs never break new records in any game. To become a professional in any field you must go through extensive training. You need to understand the basics of mathematics before you can solve complicated equations. To win a Nobel prize you must see patterns more clearly than anyone else. Picasso was an excellent artist in a conservative sense before he found his ways of expressing himself. You can do shortcuts in every business, but only when you have developed sustainable technical and functional quality for your key processes. You can become an artist in your own business when you have good management processes. You can become a Leader when you know your game and can support your professional Executives in their work.

Are you a Leader?