Work relationships are the most powerful and least utilized factor in achieving extraordinary results with organizations.
Relationships form the core infrastructure through which any organization creates value. Relationships in organizations are like the air we breathe: an all-pervading, crucial aspect of life that is essentially invisible to us. Everything accomplished in an organization is done in the context of work relationships, and ordinarily we give this no more thought than we give to breathing. Under most circumstances we don’t need to give it much thought; functioning adults are essentially relationship supercomputers, who usually get relationships reasonably right without much effort.
But consider:
- People who master martial arts, singing, acting, dance or any form of athletics cannot afford to just take breathing for granted. They must attain conscious control of their breath, to focus it and use it to achieve exceptional performance. Similarly, organizations who set out to achieve extraordinary results cannot just take work relationships for granted; they must attain conscious control of work relationships and build them with purpose and clarity.
- Without much effort, most people do a reasonable job of organizing their work. But no organization today could afford to settle for that; instead, we use very precise process and statistical methods to design and constantly improve our work methods. No organization today can afford to settle for “reasonably right” work relationships; to achieve extraordinary results, we must use specific and very precise methods to build and utilize work relationships.
But if relationships are so important, why have our organizations done so very little with them? That’s a complex question with a long answer; for now, let’s just note that our ordinary language helps us very little in being specific and precise about relationships, and our usual academic methods for studying such things shine the light in the wrong places. (You can find the full answer to this complex question in this paper.)
The Putman Group has spent over 35 years developing, testing and implementing methods for building and utilizing powerful work relationships. We have used these methods to help hundreds of organizations develop extraordinary relationship competence. We focus, not on the methods themselves, but rather on developing the relationship competence the methods support.
Want to know more?
- A full account of relationship competence, with an outline of some relationship methods, can be found in this paper. It’s long, but was specifically written for a non-academic audience.
- Relationship competence forms the core of marketing professional services. You can find a detailed account of using relationships to differentiate a firm from its competitors, and exercises designed to support readers in their own differentiation, in Chapter 5 of Marketing Your Services: A Step-by-step Guide for Small Businesses and Professionals by Anthony O. Putman. (John Wiley & Sons, 1990, and yes, it’s still in print!)
- If your interest is specifically in using relationship competence to build and sustain success in your service business, you can check out our site on Ally Relationships.
- To explore how The Putman Group can support your organization in developing extraordinary relationship competence, email Tony.
