Furmanifesto

Photo: Josh Plueger

My wife and I hosted an African pastor in our home about two years ago.  He was incredibly funny and intelligent; he was also massive, 6 foot 3 and about 230 lbs.  Not only was he big, he was also fearless.  His life was lived outdoors in a bush country filled with snakes and lions

 He arrived at our house late and went to bed. My wife told him that breakfast would be at 8 AM and that we would see him in the morning.  At 7:59 he came cruising down the staircase for breakfast, but when he got to bottom step he squealed like a little girl and just about broke his own legs trying to run back up the stairs on his hands and feet.

My wife and I were shocked and I had to go up and get him to come down to eat.  He wouldn’t come downstairs because he had seen something in our house that terrified him.

 He saw our beagle lying in front of the fireplace.

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We all enjoy having choices, because of this many successful businesses will allow consumers to have some say over process and product.  This isn’t something that is easy for a company to do, but they’re willing to do it because they know that it produces results:

Burger King offers The Whopper their way because they believe that this is the way that it tastes best.  They are also willing to take the additional time and effort to make it your way because they want you to not only purchase their burger, but also return to purchase more burgers over time.

They’re willing to set some preferences aside in order to develop a long-term relationship with you.

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I once worked for a boss who consistently asked the question, “Would you rather be loved or respected by your subordinates?”,  of course the majority of the employees responded that they’d rather be loved.

The boss’ response to his question was that being “loved” meant that people would walk all over you, but being “respected” meant that they would produce results for you.

The next time we were asked this one of my fellow employees suggested to the boss that he might be confusing the word “love” with “approval” and the word “respect” with “intimidation”.

You can probably guess how much longer he continued to work for the organization.

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