Friday, February 8, 2013

Don't Lie to Customers

 A basic belief when hiring employees is that they are honest and above board about everything they do. Unfortunately too many times the good managers are fooled by the deceptive employee. I would venture that bad managers probably are okay with a few close to the edge employees, but for the rest of us it can be a painful experience.
 Perhaps out of fear for lawsuits or monetary damage or customer loyalty, the manager chooses not to fire the employee once they find out they are not such a great person. Ethics are just one issue, but lying is another. Many times in the course of projects fingers get pointed and eventually someone will say "it wasn't me" or "I never touched it" or my favorite from support "didn't change a thing" only to find out in the end, indeed they did do something but were trying to avoid the punishment so to speak for their incorrect efforts.

But if you are their manager what do you do? Do you call them on this? You should. Not in front of the client of course but afterwards you need to deal with this at the first sign of it happening. If you do not, you may not have the benefit to change it later. Once you let it slide you have set the precedent and that is not a good precedent to set.

In this parsha, we read the following line from 23:1 :

1. You shall not accept a false report; do not place your hand with a wicked person to be a false witness.   א. לֹא תִשָּׂא שֵׁמַע שָׁוְא אַל תָּשֶׁת יָדְךָ עִם רָשָׁע לִהְיֹת עֵד חָמָס:

Sounds simple enough but the lines get blurred in business often. If the customer knows your team lied, you face up to it and move the person from the project. To do anything less would invite distrust on you and your company or brand. Clients respect you more when you deal with situations internally. They may have their own ideas about what happened, but as long as they believe you stopped it, they will continue to trust in you.
 

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Parsha Mishpatim in the book of Shemot, 21:1-24:18 It is said that the Torah or Bible
could be interpreted in over 70 ways. More likely these days 100's of ways. In light of this idea, I am writing some posts that bring business sense to what we can learn on a weekly basis. Enjoy, Shabbat Shalom

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