Stephen Covey wrote a seminal book on how to run your life and your business, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s a must read to fully understand the concepts of this article. Once you've read the book read it again at least once every quarter until you've absorbed these ideas into your psyche and are living those seven habits. One of the seminal habits is “Begin with the end in Mind”. However, an even more important principle of life and business is always do what’s right for the end user.
The basis of this principle is “Treat others as you would have others treat you.” Sound familiar? If we live our lives in that way, we don’t become extremists (in any direction); we become proponents of the Fairness Doctrine. Another way of stating the same principal is “be fair to everyone always.”
The 10 Commandments offers an excellent set of codes for living, regardless of your religious belief (or lack of belief). A number of these commandments offer guidelines for living a “Principle-Based Life”:
- Honor Your Parents if they deserve honor. I hope that they raised you as best they could. However, it’s extreme to presume that all parents deserve honor Treat them as you would have your children treat you some day and treat your children in a way that will cause them to “honor” you: firmly, but fairly ).
- Never cheat yourself or anyone else. You don’t want anyone to cheat you. This covers a number of the 10 Commandments (adultery, lying, stealing).
- Don’t Covet - Wanting “things” motivates us to be successful. However, don’t drive yourself to “keep up with the neighbors” or to be like anyone else just because of what they have. That’s extreme! We have built our nation and our culture on a healthy dose of “wanting” a better life for ourselves and our families. “Wanting” that focuses on the well-being of our families and ourselves is good. “Wanting” someone else’s possessions is extreme.
Applying the Fairness Doctrine to our business lives will fulfill both our own best interests and, simultaneously, the best interests of our clients and our employees (the most important end users’ in our businesses).
When we do Strategic Planning, we “plan” for business success, growth and profit to give ourselves and our families a good and secure future. However, if you concentrate on doing what’s best for the end user, you won’t grow and/or profit by taking away from our employees’ best interests or those of our customers.
The concept of “being fair to everyone always” is simple. However, simplicity doesn't imply that it’s easy to accomplish. We see frequent examples of rationalizing actions that are obviously unfair’ to accomplish results that might be commendable. The principle of “the end justifies the means” has sounded good and rationale to extremists all over the world to justify what they consider right and just’ causes. Similarly, raising taxes impacts one group of people (taxpayers) negatively in order to serve all people. The reality that most Americans face today is that we might not be able to afford to provide the wonderful things we would like for everyone when most taxpayers feel the squeeze of economic pressures. Municipalities and states throughout the nation are feeling the impact of taxpayers acting in their own self-interest, rejecting new initiatives and taxes, both questionable and commendable, simply because they would hurt their “end users.— their families,.
Let’s translate these concepts into our own lives, both personal and business. Good things happen when people do the right things consistently over time. However, bad things sometimes still happen to good people in the short term. If we stop doing the right things consistently because we face a personal or business downturn, our only option is to do things that we know will harm someone in order to achieve our own goals. For instance, if we face a downturn in profit it’s perfectly reasonable to take less income as an owner. We enjoy the rewards of our business when we succeed and bear the burden of taking less profit (or none) if business doesn't succeed. The Fairness Doctrine justifies lowering raises for our employees, together with our own reductions in compensation. This is not easy to explain to employees, but it is just. We cross the line when we lower or eliminate raises to employees in order to maintain our business profits at artificially high levels.
Many agencies are experiencing losses due to the soft market. There’s no question of profits above your expenses. When you lose money, your business must run a deficit or you must take less income personally and this affects the well-being of you and your family. Many agency owners, in the spirit of paternal feelings for their employees, try to continue to give raises to employees when they, themselves, are taking less income in a given year. This is an extreme in the other direction. It’s absurd to give someone a 5% or 10% raise when the owners (who are often the hardest working employees in the business) are taking a pay cut. They do so because of a misdirected feeling that they’re responsible for their employees’ well-being. They are, but only to the extent that this does not affect their own well-being.
Of course this implies that the agency owners are paying themselves “fair” compensation for the work they are doing in the agency (fair = the same amount that they would pay someone else to perform the same functions at similar levels of performance). This means that they benefit annually from the success of their business or suffer a decline in agency income and they hope to benefit in the long term from the increased value of the business that will eventually go to the next generation (or to someone else) when the agency is perpetuated.
The Fairness Doctrine for agency clients and prospects pertain to how you treat your customers. Do you concentrate on which products are best for your clients, or do you concentrate on commission rates or pressures from your carriers to boost volumes? Do you find that most of your accounts are “renewed, as is,” without analysis or do you analyze their accounts each year to determine which products are best for them Which of these statements reflects the Fairness Doctrine? Are you being “fair to everyone always?” Are you giving your client the same treatment you would want to receive in similar circumstances?
If you ask yourself these questions every time you make a decision that affects your employees or customers, you’ll find that the right’ choice is relatively clear clear, not necessarily easy.
Remember, people are always more important than entities. “Fairness” applies to you and your family as much as it does to your employees and your clients. If you don’t cheat yourself or anyone else, you’ll feel better about yourself in the long run. You should define the success of your business by how hard you work and how smart you are about growing and creating more profits not by whether you’re cheating yourself or anyone else to get the results you desire.