Relationships—why they still matter
Dr. Robert M. Gresham, Contributing Editor | TLT Commentary November 2015
Can you develop a good business relationship using only emails and text messages?
SOME OF YOU MAY REMEMBER THE LINES FROM THE JIMMY BUFFETT song Fruitcakes: “Here come the big ones—relationships. We all got ’em, we all want ’em. What do we do with ’em? Here we go, I’ll tell ya.” And so will I.
Have you taken time to watch today’s teenagers, twentysomethings and now thirtysomethings? They seem to be constantly on their iPhone, iPad or some other digital gadget that I probably wouldn’t recognize and certainly couldn’t operate without help from a teenager. A friend lamented that he had just given his son one of these, and in the first month he had run up over a thousand minutes with the resulting horrific bill. Think of it, a thousand minutes—almost 17 hours of text messaging and related chatter. My friend said his son, who is at college, usually called or text messaged his friends in the room next door rather than walk the 10 steps to that room. These communications often take the form of short simple sentences or, more commonly, just phrases, abbreviations and symbols such as LOL,
. Yet, this is becoming the preferred mode of communication (a term I now use loosely). Whatever happened to eye contact, body language, nuance, depth of thought and discussion and a clever turn of phrase? Poor Shakespeare, alas, must be turning endlessly in his grave. Not only that but, more important, what about developing trust, confidence, affection and related aspects of an honest human relationship? Irrelevant?
Salespeople often talk about relational selling. The idea is that to be an effective vendor, you need to develop a relationship with your customers based on mutual trust, confidence and credibility. This means you honestly represent your company’s products and services: if there is a delivery problem you will personally become involved to fix it, and if there is a quality problem, no matter the cause, you can be trusted to respond with credibility. Likewise, your customer treats you with equal accommodation. Can you develop that kind of relationship if your only contact is through a few emails and text messages? Yet, in this era of globalization, what are our choices?
I’m often reminded of an experience a number of years ago when our largest customer, an airframe manufacturer, had a serious paint adhesion problem on the skin of its aircraft. The problem manifested itself with the paint on the heads of the fasteners located all along the wings and fuselage popping off. As you look out the window on your next flight you will note there are thousands upon thousands of such fasteners. It was costing them $11 million per day. As such, the problem had extreme visibility at higher levels than anyone would prefer.
The “system” involved manufacture of the skin fastener, coating it with a very specialized solid film lubricant (SFL), followed by dipping the fastener in cetyl alcohol (a waxy material much like candle wax used as an assembly lubricant). Formulation and application of the SFL and cetyl alcohol was our part in the process. Then the coated fasteners were installed at the point of attaching the outer aluminum skin to the wing and fuselage assemblies, and the whole thing painted with a primer followed by the topcoat.
Everyone in the vendor chain was asked to present themselves at a meeting called in less than 24 hours after the problem had been identified. It was quite a group: three fastener manufacturers, two from my competitors, three paint suppliers and quite a number of engineers from various parts of the customer’s operation. And, of course, a couple of guys in expensive suits with a decided attitudinal problem.
After the suits made certain all our attitudes were properly adjusted and motivation infused, we suppliers all began reciting our various assurances that whatever the problem, “it couldn’t be my company.” Indeed, one of my competitors as much as said it had to be the fault of one of his competitors, certainly not him. When my turn came, I began with what was probably a pedantic recitation of our quality assurance procedures and records. But then before totally losing my audience, looking directly at the lead engineer responsible for lubricant specifications, I went into the things about our processes that might be missed and how we might test for various things that might help identify the cause of the problem. This engineer now sat up and became engaged in the discourse and as we went back and forth trading ideas, posing questions and how we might answer them, the whole mood of the meeting began to change. No longer was the focus making sure one’s company didn’t get blamed but rather how to identify the cause of the problem and get it fixed.
Soon we had a game plan, samples were FedExed all over the country, our various test labs ran through the night and, in time, we found the cause of the problem. As it happened, it was a self-inflicted wound. The customer had changed his specification for paint and primer from solvent-based to water-based coatings in response to pressure from EPA considerations. However, neither the paint companies nor the customer’s engineers responsible for the paint specifications were particularly aware of the fastening system. The problem was that the water-based paints would not get the needed adhesion on the exposed fastener heads due to the cetyl alcohol on the fasteners. After all, water beads on wax! This wasn’t a problem in the solvent-based system because the solvent dissolved the cetyl alcohol, removing it from the fastener head so the paint could properly adhere.
So what happened that caused us to get to the heart of the problem? As I said laced with fear, my presentation—pedantic at best, certainly not charismatic or overly insightful—was sincere, methodical and logical. But most important, however, I knew the lead lubricants engineer very well. When he was initially transferred into that job, we met when he took STLE’s Basic Lubrication course to help get him up to speed about lubricants. As an instructor in the course, I was able to establish my technical credibility with him independent of any business relationship. Then, as was our custom, I and my colleagues called on the customer at least once a quarter. Soon this engineer and I got to be friends, sharing tales of family, values, school and of course business. I’m not talking about safaris to Africa or anything else beyond slowly developing a mutual relationship based on trust, honesty, confidence, technical competence, respect and credibility.
This relationship began in the neutral environment of an STLE meeting and flourished in subsequent meetings. We met at other conference meetings and ASTM events. We saw each other once a quarter for several years to work on various issues and problems that affected our companies’ mutual business, or if nothing much was going on, just to say “hi” and rekindle the relationship. It was this relationship that allowed us to stop posturing and get to the heart of the matter.
So I pose two questions to the youngest of us (I suppose the Millennials or younger): Can we still develop these kinds of relationships—ones that carry you through the good times and the bad times, especially in a global business environment—via short emails, text messages and the like, or do we still need something more? If the answer is yes, how do you do it with confidence?
Send me an email, I’d like to know what you think.
Bob Gresham is STLE’s director of professional development. You can reach him at rgresham@stle.org.