RElATIONShIPS ANd SERvE STRATEGIESWhAt CAn YoU Do to DIFFeRentIAte
YoUR seRve stRAtegY?If you are in business, you should consider the relationships you have
developed with people and the social side of business. Many business
deals are conducted in social settings. Your strategy should make allow-
ances for this.
Within this framework you should consider the following three ground
rules:
- Groups are changing all the time.
- Good products will develop in life cycles. A good example
is cell phones. They continue to get better with every
development. - Customers are fickle, and will come and go to the
next best thing.
So, in order to survive, you need to be able to manage projects and
people in an environment that is changing constantly. You need to know
if your message is positively received and that the expectation is under-
stood. You need to be able to demonstrate how deliverables should be
met and always set a timeframe for acceptance testing. Those you in-
tend to influence should not follow you simply for fear of keeping their
jobs. They should be given the opportunity to speak freely and openly.
Social researchers call this opportunity ‘free space.’
It’s been my experience that no person can be assured of their success
just by looking at results. The path to success is often littered with bro-
ken relationships and connections unless the “Serve Strategy” is con-
gruent and authentic.
But many successful companies have started to embrace a new method-
ology of creating teams, especially around social interaction.
take the following example:
A group assembles in a boardroom, where there’s a boss at the end of the
table looking down on the nervous employees giving a rigid presenta-
tion. The presenters were given instructions to complete a task.
The defined hierarchy and chain of command separate the management
from the team. The decision makers, the managers or leaders, sit up-