July 9, 2008

Try to NOT Make Everyone Happy

Attitudes

0  comments

Seth says: If you are willing to satisfy people with good enough, you can make just about everybody happy.

I’d say If you want to make everyone happy you’ll HAVE to be satisfied with good enough. [read the whole story – it’s kind of funny in a sad sort of way – and you’ll see what the picture is about]

The problem is that good enough usually isn’t. And it virtually NEVER is for a small company. It can work for a big company like General Motors (oops – they’re getting their clock cleaned by Toyota) so I mean good enough is OK for a big company like Microsoft (oops Google’s eating their lunch) how about McDonalds? (then why did they buy Chipotle?) OK I guess it isn’t good enough for the big guys either.

Takeaway:

  • To make a difference you’re going to piss some people off.
  • By “Make a Difference” I don’t mean change the world, though that’s fine if you want to try. Making a difference in your own life or even just your bank account is plenty of motivation for running your own company well.
  • If you don’t want to make a difference, go get a job.
  • Don’t use it as an excuse to piss off the wrong people – rather just make the right people happy (and ignore the others).

[tags] small business, entrepreneur, ceo, being remarkable [/tags]

– image credit:
http://www.folsom.ca.us/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=275&targetid=1

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About the author 

John Seiffer

I've been an entrepreneur since we were called Business Owners. I opened my first company in 1979 - the only one that ever lost money. In 1994 I started coaching other business owners dealing with the struggles of growth. In 1998 I became the third President of the International Coach Federation. (That's a story for another day.) Coaching just the owners wasn't enough for some. So I began to do organizational coaching as well. Now I don't have time to work with as many companies as I'd like, so I've packaged my techniques into this Virtual CEO Boot Camp.

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