Think over the past week or so in your home business operations…were there some instances where you got aggravated, angry, or disappointed in something someone else said or did? How about flipping the coin and asking yourself if there was someone else who got upset with you because of something you said or did? Sometimes, these disagreements and disappointments stem from differences in our moral codes or the ethics that guide us as we do business. We get frustrated and angry when someone does not play according to our rules, or they get frustrated with us for the same reason…
It may seem obvious that principles and moral judgment can be strong guiding factors in many a business, but what we might forget is that not everyone has the same standards. What we consider to be core values for how we operate may not be the same system that our customers or clients subscribe to. The difference can create some conflicts if we cannot understand why and how another is operating the way they are.
For example, I recently had a situation with one of my work projects where someone cancelled their participation at the last minute, after signing a contract and completing all sorts of training and preparation, because she got a better offer. I was aghast and amazed, assuming that if the commitment had been made and the contract signed, it should be honored. She was amazed and flabbergasted that I would even think to hold her to the contract because she felt like any “better offer” at any point should nullify the commitment at any point. We were obviously operating under different belief systems and our ethics didn’t mesh.
Was one of us right and the other person wrong? That all depends on how you look at it and which side of the value fence you are standing on. As a small business owner, we do need to learn how to take into account these different value systems and see if we can work with people whose ethics and standards may be quite different from ours.