Don't Do Business with a "Winner", Unless You Want to Lose
Originally published by Bruce Kasanoff on LinkedIn: Don't Do Business with a "Winner", Unless You Want to Lose
Long ago, I was doing project work for a very wealthy entrepreneur when he told me, "Someone gets screwed in every business transaction, and I make sure it's the other guy."
At the time, I assumed he didn't mean me. After all, I was helping him and thus was on his side.
Months later, he tried to screw me in an incredibly harsh manner.
Winners are focused on one thing: beating you. Yes, you.
Even as you read these words, you may be making the mistake I made years ago. You think you are on the side of a winner and that means you will win.
Here's what it really means: you might win, until the instant that your winner's interests differs from yours. At that moment, you will become a loser. Sorry.
As the father of three kids, I've greatly enjoyed watching them compete as athletes. You can bet that when one of my kids wins a game, I am cheering enthusiastically.
But, to me, sports is a diversion and a nice complement to the real world; it isn't a model for any sort of business success strategy. Here's why: trying to win is a miserable way to build and maintain professional relationships. In amateur sports, you play a team, someone wins, and the next year the same teams have different players. Most moved on to something else.
In business, an employee and employer - or a customer and a supplier - can work with each other for decades. If someone is always losing, someone is going to get very bitter and probably even start to look for ways to get even.
So if your sales manager or CMO or CTO or CEO starts talking about "winning this ____", start looking for a way out. Sooner or later, winning is going to mean beating you.
By the way, I know that countless professionals disagree with me. You may be one of them. You may think that you are a winner with a winning attitude, and that is the reason you have been so successful. You may think "I take care of my people" and "I am fiercely loyal". But I bet you also have a code of conduct that says all these positive values are dependent on other people doing whatever it takes for you to win.
In other words, you are behaving precisely like I described above.
Bruce Kasanoff writes and edits content for a wide range of entrepreneurs and executives.