Just This Once

All human relationships are built on trust.

Trust is a delicate subject as it is sometimes hard to describe, but we know it best when it is broken.

Trust is built on results, relationships, or both.

Trust built on relationships is enduring, but harder to rebuild when broken.

Trust built on results is fickle, but easier to rebuild when broken.

The ease of building trust through results is driven by the ease of measuring results. When you have been shown to consistently deliver on agreed metrics, people trust you to deliver on such responsibilities.

However, the ease of building trust through relationships is driven by a commitment to ethics. It is hard because with ethics, it is either 100% or 0%. There is no 99.99%. When you have shown 100% commitment to anything, people trust you with it.

In Clay Christensen’s popular article, How will you measure your life?, he summarizes this succinctly –

“If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal-cost analysis, you’ll regret where you end up. That’s the lesson I learned: it’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time. The boundary—your personal moral line—is powerful because you don’t cross it; if you have justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again.

Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.”

The most enduring relationships are built by those who do not give in to “just this once.”

The most enduring relationships are built on ethics.

#MEMBA11 #BE #Zazparelli