Rules Of Management

RULE 64 - Have principles and stick to them

“Dear… I have given your proposition a lot of thought. My main concern is that you want the items to be pre-purchased for the XX show. I feel this is not acceptable and is misleading the 8 million viewers who will be watching the show, as you have informed me. I have been in the antiques business for 30 years, and I feel my reputation would be undermined if an item that was pre-purchased was placed in my antiques centre and supposedly purchased there, and then to an auction house to be sold at a loss. Because of this I must decline you offer to use my premises as a backdrop for your show. In the short brief time I met you, you came over as a very nice person and I hope you are successful with show. Yours faithfully…”

Genuine letter from an antiques expert turning down a very
kind – and obviously lucrative – offer from a television company

When you think about it, you’ve got to have principles. If you don’t, you end up despising yourself or in debt or in prison. You might end up like this anyway, but at least you could say, ‘But I have my principles’. There has to be a line beyond which you will not go. You have to know where that line is drawn. No one else has to know until they ask you to cross it and then you can tell them. That line has to be a ten-mile-high solid steel wall. You can’t go beyond it, no matter what.

“There has to be a line beyond which you will not go.”

So where would you draw your line? I’ve been asked to do things I didn’t like. I’ve been asked to do things I found unpleasant. I’ve been asked to do things I found extremely irksome, but whenever I’ve been asked to cross my own personal line – which thankfully in a long business career has been only one or twice – I was able to say, ‘No’, and stick to it. And each time I got a pat on the back rather than a trip to the Job Centre.

posted by Right Ranger @ 8:50 PM