Hello and welcome to Business 300. My name is Philip Kulachoff and this is 300 seconds about business. We're all a busy people. Two-in-five minutes or less to get my point across. I know you don't home much time. I get it. I'm human doom. People are inescapable in the field of business. And if you're on your own, your customers are people. And it's hard to think of a business where you're not having to deal with any people in order to serve those customers. So people in the input, people in the output. And if we care about our reputation, we ought to have principled engagements with other people when commitments are involved. Being loyal to those commitments, loyal to the people who received our commitments is what a business owner who cares about his reputation should aim for. Promises made, promises kept. But we're not in a commitment situation with every interaction we have. Business of our interactions happen as individual ad hoc circumstances. Whether it's a unique customer need or an out-of-ordinary employee situation, we are surrounded with the needs of others. So apart from making any formal commitments, what sort of approach should a business owner have in his day-to-day interaction with other people? When dealing with people, a business owner should remember that he is a human and that they too are humans. In this way, he is to apply that timeless oration nicknamed the Golden Rule, treat others the way you want to be treated. The Golden Rule assumes that there is a certain way each one of us wants to be treated, demonstrating our own humanity. And it assumes that those people who we come across also have a certain way they want to be treated, demonstrating their humanity. And so when we seek to treat others the way we would like to be treated, we live as fellow humans. I'm not saying to simply consider others, but to treat other people the way we'd like to be treated. To do that, a certain sense of honesty is required to be able to admit our own humanity and that of the people we interact with. In all our interactions, we are always among equal because all of us are a part of that human race, equal in our value. There's a certain kind of business owner who operates with zero-chairdier compassion towards the people he deals with. His operative tendencies are based on fact and reason. There's no room for middle ground. He has no sense of sympathy toward others. He doesn't relate to people. But although he has a lack of compassion and sympathy toward others, he still expects to receive sympathy toward himself. His problem is not that he elevates reason and structure. Those are good things to hold to. But without the balance of compassion and sympathy, the business owner is a misaligned half-human. Compassion and sympathy are possible when we remember that we are equal in value and worth as fellow humans. When we are honest with that reality, we can approach all people with the same level respect and dignity toward our peers, our shipyriers, and our subordinates. Rank and file are important for the sake of structure and order, but it does not affect the worth and value of each individual. It takes honesty to admit that we are fellow humans together and work in and interact with a sense of compassion, understanding, and sympathy. Now, I get that a business needs strict policies and procedures and those systems must be enforced. I'm all for that. If you're building a business you can't afford to be sporadic and have a hawk with everyone's whim and wish. Definitely don't do that. Custom is chaos and that's not what you should do. Write your SOPs and enforce your policies. But those policies and procedures that you've designed, where they built on the basic assumption that you're dealing with people, did you take that into consideration? If not, then it won't work in the long run. Customers want to be treated like people. Employees want to be treated like people. If your strict internal company procedures don't make room for that, your business soon won't have customers or employees. As a business owner, don't forget that you're dealing with people.