Beware Old Sayings in Business Many Are Outright Lies

I first became suspicious of ‘sayings’ when I read somewhere that ‘”All roads lead to Rome”…and I remember thinking ‘Well if that’s true, how do you get out of the place?’

Seriously…let me begin by stating that I am not against ‘sayings’; in fact I have derived both pleasure and value from many maxims over many years. What I am strongly against though is blind devotion to them…without an ounce of thought as to whether they may be right or wrong.

While it is obvious that we in the business community of today should take on board great lessons, thoughts and ideas from the past, we must also accept the courage and responsibility to throw overboard the nonsense and false notions that have been bequeathed to us from people of yesterday.

Some of the ‘myth-understandings’ handed down go back many decades, and some are very recent. I am sure that none of the creators of senile and specious sayings had anything but the best of intentions, but their worthless words must nevertheless be identified and buried. Here are some of the better-known sayings…with some thoughts on how they can be viewed with more truth and relevance in our era…

• “The customer is always right.” Right about what though? With no doubt, customers are the best judges of whether our ‘service’ is good or bad, but they are not now and never will be the experts when it comes to the products and services we sell. To accept this saying then is to risk renouncing our ‘position’ as advisers, and to therefore perceive customers as the authority on how to achieve the best results with the products we sell • “Knowledge is power.” Really? Well how come there are so many people who know so much and do so little in business? The power is not in ‘possessing’ knowledge; it is in the enthusiastic presentation of knowledge…which we can call selling. This is why very successful people learn at a faster and greater rate than all others in business; they ‘need’ new knowledge because they keep running out of stock of the knowledge they have sold • “Act enthusiastic and you’ll become enthusiastic.” So does this also mean that if we act intelligent we will become intelligent? Imagine ‘acting’ like an artist, doctor or engineer and hoping to turn into such gifted people. If you are miserable at heart then OK, act enthusiastic and do us all a favour, otherwise please come to terms with the fact that people need you to be valuable…and when you take this path you will generate enthusiasm without even being aware of it • “The purpose of business is to make money.” I could accept this if you work for the Mint, but if you don’t…would you be happy to put this statement on your letterhead and business cards, and to make this point before you begin discussions with customers and prospects? Perhaps not, because ‘making money’ is not the purpose of business; the purpose of business is to deliver [increasingly] pleasurable results to people…at a profit! With the truth to hand it is possible to make more money and feel good at the same time • “Work on the business, not in the business.” Would this not be just as dumb as saying ‘work in the business, not on the business’? Surely, good business practice demands that we work in both areas. Take the extreme but simple case of a good author: working in the business to him or her would mean creating good books, and working on the business would involve the management, profitability and growth of the writing enterprise. Try the second path without the first and see where you get in business…and if the point is not clear, ask Bill Gates and he’ll tell you about getting back into the business • “Give…and you will get.” This is pure drivel and must have created much confusion and doubt for people who ‘tried’ giving their best and got nothing in return. How long must we live before we appreciate that some people we ‘give’ to will take what we gave and pour scorn on our offering, or use what we gave for their own benefit and offer not a word of gratitude? The truth here reads as follows: “Give…and you will get better at giving.” In the final analysis we must take care of our own business contributions, and what better way could there be than to give our best to everyone we meet…and in so doing treat every contribution as a rehearsal and a means of self-improvement • “Give customers what they want.” But what if they want more or less than they actually ‘need’? Customers of businesses, like patients of doctors, have little or no idea how to diagnose their precise needs for our products…and if they could, what would be the value of suppliers in the equation? The fact is that we must always ‘listen’ to what customers want…but we must act on what we have discovered they need • “Never use price to sell products or services.” This saying might apply if you have no competitors, but if you do have rivals then you will soon learn two things about ‘price’: the first is that most supplying companies take quite a while before they learn which prices are ‘right’, and the second is that low ‘demand’ (for whatever reason) can often be countered by lower prices. The fact is that people love bargains (look at advertising in all its forms and see how ‘specials’ are used to create demand), and so no matter how wonderful our offerings may be, the prices we charge are an integral part of our attraction to the market…especially during tough times • “Work smarter, not harder.” Surely, no one could argue with the need to work smarter in business, but too many people take this ‘saying’ to mean that being smart negates the need to work hard. It doesn’t. This is why we have legions of losers in business that are trying to make money…so that they can get out of business! The saying should read ‘If you find a smarter way to do business, then you have reason to work harder.’ The concept of ‘not working’ was experienced by our grandfathers, by mentally retiring at age 50 or so and then physically retiring at age 65…after which time they soon died or became weaker by the day. Our grandmothers did not suffer in these ways because they never had any sense of quitting, stopping, slowing down…or reducing their value to the family • “The economy points to difficult times ahead.” This is the kind of sorry statement made by industry executives, either voluntarily or in response to ‘surveys’, and it is the kind of irresponsible language that confirms that many senior managers are in fact ‘junior leaders’. How smart do you have to be to know that terrorism is on the rise, plus that there was a recent war in Iraq, also that the ‘SARS’ virus has emerged and that share markets are making a comeback? The world of business does not need managers who behave as ‘reporters of external conditions’; it needs managers who behave like ‘authors of internal action’. Management at its highest and most effective level is ‘concerned’ about external conditions and takes such ‘news’ into its planning work; however it is also ‘committed’ to looking within the organisation to determine where opportunities and potential exist to improve and control external business performance. Every business can do much, much better with customers, prospects, staff, suppliers and external experts So, to return to the theme of this thesis, there you have just 10 examples of ‘sayings’ that should not be heeded or repeated…and these are but a fraction of what can be seen and digested on the menial management menu. Look beyond the sayings and you will find further evidence of mundane management in the myriad of ‘success concepts’ that come and, thankfully, go in business. For example…

• MBO (management by objectives)

• Quality circles • Theories X and Y • Transactional Analysis • Psycho-Cybernetics • Total Quality Management • CRM • Win-Win Selling • SPIN Selling • Change Management • The one minute manager (one minute salesman, etc.)

• Reengineering Some of these ‘concepts’ might have helped us to think about better business practices, but where are they today as tools of business? Nowhere. It would seem that we need a constant flow of ‘new’ ideas, and yet the best performing industries, companies, teams and individuals know that doing anything very well is a timeless task. This task is really concerned with the question ‘How can this be done better?’, which in turn requires us to think for ourselves. And when the best people in business see a saying or success concept of apparent worth, they take it apart, examine it, improve it, test it, use it…and make it their own strategy.

Too often, ‘sayings’ and ‘success concepts’ suggest that we don’t need to think, that the thought process has been tackled by apparent ‘leaders’…and our job is merely to follow. Think of key areas of life that have suffered from this awful attitudinal approach, such as religion, politics and racism. These three significant areas have provided the motivational backdrop for human suffering on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend. Why have so many apparently intelligent, ‘good’ people embraced doctrines like Nazism? Why have so many people accepted the belief that there is only one God and it is theirs? Why have so many people allowed themselves to believe that their skin colour or other ethnic elements add up to superiority over people who are ‘different’?

I am not riding a high horse here; I am using areas away from business to remind business people how easy it is to accept sayings and concepts as the way forward. I believe that they are in fact most often the way to travel backwards.

So, as people we are not built for creating answers, but we are built for creating quality questions and working together to determine the best way forward…at this time. Who knows what needs to be done in future, especially when we have so much difficulty dealing with today’s challenges? What we do know is that more problems will arise tomorrow, and we should also know that today’s ideas and yesterdays sayings and concepts will not solve those problems.

So, I am not suggesting that you should turn away from sayings and the like, just stop and think about their relevance, truth and value to your situation. This is what I did many years ago after meekly accepting that my parents’ political beliefs were good enough for me too. But then one day I stopped to think about the issue and I decided that I didn’t want to be a Neo-Nazi (that’s a Nazi that glows in the dark).

And finally, don’t just be suspicious of business sayings; be wary of all sayings…for many ‘everyday mottoes’ are without any foundation. Take for example the adage “Never kick a man when he’s down”; I mean, really, when is there a better time?

John Lees is a speaker, consultant, trainer and the author of 10 books...specialising in marketing & sales.

Website: www.johnLees.com.au email: info@johnlees.com.au



Beware Old Sayings in Business Many Are Outright Lies - To learn more about this author, visit John Lees's Website.

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