Running the Business Your Dog Thinks You Do
There is a rather famous quote for which the author is apparently unknown that says
My goal is to someday be the person my dog thinks I am.
I believe we all know viscerally what this means. Our dogs adore us and wouldn’t we all love to feel that we deserve that kind of devotion.
In life few, if any of us, live up to our own expectations for ourselves much less to those our dogs seem to mistakenly have. But it seems to me that in business, which is much less complicated and ambiguous than life in general, high standards should be achievable – but not easily and probably not within the standard business models we see today.
Bearing in mind the name and topic for this blog, let’s confine ourselves to small personal service business for now, the ideas can then be expanded from there if we want to. If we take, for example, a hypothetical computer repair business, I imagine that the owner’s dog expects that business is run with integrity. Now this word integrity can be pretty easily thrown around by people in business so maybe we should try and define it. In The Speed of Trust, Stephen M. R. Covey uses a story about Mahatma Gandhi to illustrate a definition of integrity:
At one point in his life, he was invited to speak before the House of Commons in England. Using no notes, he spoke for two hours and brought an essentially hostile audience to a rousing standing ovation. Following his speech, some reporters approached his secretary, Mahadev Desai, incredulous that Gandhi could mesmerise his audience for such a long time with no notes. Desai responded:
What Gandhi thinks, what he feels, what he says, and what he does are all the same. He does not need notes … You and I, we think one thing, feel another, say a third, and do a fourth, so we need notes and files to keep track.
OK, I admit that I’m a sucker for almost any story about Gandhi and this one is no exception. How does this apply to our business?
I believe that the average Pug or Cavalier King Charles Spaniel believes its owner speaks to his/her customer from conviction, “I’ve listened to you, I understand your problem, here is what I think should be done, here is what I will do.” All that remains then is execution.
Now, as a great man I knew used to say, “That sounds great if you say it fast”. I think you would be hard pressed to find a businessman who would say they don’t live up to this … and I think you would be equally hard pressed to find a businessman who actually does. Why? Because, alas, we are human. We fall short of our own goals, our dog’s faith and our customers’ expectations. We juggle the motivations of integrity and profit, we wrestle between confidence and competence, between pleasing our customers and our bosses. Gandhi didn’t have these problems, he notably abandoned the personal services business on the road to becoming great. Alas, we mortals are left to struggle with these issues on a daily basis.
If I have an insight from the combined wisdom of Gandhiji and my dog it is to have a bad memory. Gandhi did not memorise a bunch of great ideas, he lived a great life and spoke from his convictions, conversely, every day is a new one to my dog, he doesn’t (apparently) remember or care that yesterday I didn’t feed him on time or walk him long enough or that I did not give him the proper amount of attention. To apply this to business well, I think means to apply a certain consistency in customer interaction and a purity of purpose that ignores the profit motive but trusts that it will take care of itself.
More on this in the future.
