At four o clock in the morning the pipe breaks. It always breaks at 4 am, why? Because at 4 am there is less draw on the network. There is more volume in the supply lines and the outside temperature has dropped below freezing. Things get brittle below zero, parts break.
You call us. We help to fix the issue. That is how we are made. We provide the rugged hardware. We supply service quality too, at no extra charge. Our IoT tools could have given forewarning that the pipework was weak, but this was a new section, freshly laid. The work was not yet bedded in. These things happen.
So, what has that got to do with a business blog?
Being a good partner means digging your client out of a fix from time to time. It means that you share in rough days as well as those easy days when you are the toast of the town. Great businesses have a lot of great partnerships. They rely heavily on those connections. The guy who starts in a packing room eventually gets promoted to the CEO and knows everybody in the supply chain.
Back in the old days around the holiday season it was traditional to send a bottle of good whiskey to your working partners in the other company. That tradition seems to have fallen away in recent years, with projectized work environments, virtual teams and internal training on bribery and socially approved etiquette. What it did do was to acknowledge the partnership. To celebrate the person or team responsible. Cheers to you, was the message. Seasons Greetings!
Dealing with burnout
We were working with a distribution partner, a big motorcycle carrier. On my first day, I noted that the primary point of contact in their company was overloaded. Most of our team had both his direct dial number and personal number, and were abusing that privilege. It was the first thing I opened with on meeting the client side manager, even before the initial formal, all hands, “getting to know you” meeting.
Hit the nail right on the head. Her guy was overloaded and was complaining to her, but she had nobody to discuss it with on our side. The issue kept getting pushed back, to the point that the account lead was avoiding taking our calls and was taking more sick days than was usual for him, building intense friction within their team.
What was needed was a little understanding. We could not individually call Diego daily with different issues. We needed to assign one person on our side to act as his counterpart. He was diligent and hardworking, but each extra request was another task he would not have time to complete. We were literally drowning him in work.
Overstepping boundaries
Good partnerships take time to build, but they can be damaged easily. In another company one longstanding customer service team member took it upon herself to discipline a colleague in another country. It was a mistake. She had no authority. It could have been used to create friction and for political intrigue.
My counterpart in Greece contacted me directly, explaining the situation. She gave us a pass. She also resolved the issue in a very effective way. She delegated the action back to those responsible, reconfirmed our boundaries and passed the relevant information forward. It was an elegant resolution to a sticky situation. It showed finesse. Instead of brute force or playing the victim card, she opted for dialogue and banked significant social credit for the future.
Building products
At FindyIoT we make really solid hardware and software. We are proud of our work. Our team can show you quality soldering on a semiconductor, if you are genuinely interested. But, we also build partnerships. Partnerships do not begin fully formed. It takes time to build trust and understanding. Where we build concepts into physical products there is always an opportunity to misinterpret the end goal or specific outcome a product is being designed for. This is called an iterative process. It means that we get to the right outcome by paring away the “wants” and ending up with the “needs.”
When you are discussing hardware and software, it seems a little “non technical” to talk about good communication between people and not computers. Yet, we have grown solid relations with many of our key partners for more than a decade, designed multiple products and built strong communication pathways. Our customers feel that it is ok to call is at 4 am. We are reliable.
The bottom line
We build companies by engaging with people. Oftentimes, in business and in life, that engagement is equally as important as any physical product that is created.
