Often organizations make judgments about what has value.  They attempt to attract and retain people who have the greatest ability to contribute to the success of that firm or club.  Three factors that they often overlook are:

Context

Capacity to harm

Value for the individuals

What does this mean?

People often forget that value exists in context, rather than in absolute terms.  The attributes that have value in one situation, are meaningless in another.  The characteristics that are desirable in times of great change, are worthless if one is seeking stability and continuity.

With the ability to help, people also have the ability to harm.  Can one exist without the other?  At a minimum, people may find harm in the individual’s decision to remain silent.  An unhappy customer is likely to tell others about a supplier.  This issue arises in other contexts as well. 

If the relationship is one-sided, both parties are likely to resent the situation.  Sustainability requires that both parties find value in the relationship.  Value can take a variety of forms, by the way.  Sometimes, it is financial.  In other cases, it is friendship or referrals. 

For relationships to have value, the people have to find value in the metrics which are used.  Think about that for a minute.  Suppose that, instead of money, your customers used Peanut Butter as the medium of exchange.  How would business work?

Customers would, of course, pay with…  Peanut Butter!

If you needed Peanut Butter, this might be a good exchange.  For example, it is great in peanut butter cookies, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and similar items.  After a while though, you would probably have more Peanut Butter than you could use. 

Then you would want to trade the Peanut Butter for something that others valued more.  Or, maybe, you would want to trade the Peanut Butter for something that you could store for unlimited periods of time.  Perhaps, you also would get tired of shortages of Peanut Butter.

Thankfully, we don’t have to deal with Peanut Butter as a medium of exchange.  Can you imagine how much space would be required at a bank to store Peanut Butter?  Instead, we have money as the medium of exchange.  At the end of the day, money represents value.

Filed by Coleen Davis at 5:14 pm under Business Acumen, Negotiations, Networking, Solving Problems