The Plant Effect

So you have just purchased a new potted plant from Home Depot. You bring it back to your office and arrange it nicely to sit on the corner of your desk. There it sits, all green and lush and a definite addition to the landscape of your work area. You enjoy having it there; it brightens the place up a bit.

After a few days, it still looks pretty green but maybe it isn't as green as when you bought it. You pay it no mind and continue to let it be. A few more days pass and now some of the leaves are dropping off. This can't be good. It must need more light you say to yourself so you put it in the window. You come in the next day and the plant looks even worse! Oh duh...you forgot to give it water, that's the ticket. That outta perk it right up! Maybe it will and maybe it won't. The critical stage of adjustment has already been missed and most biologists would say the plant's chances of survival are less than 20%. The autopsy might read: Idiot owner failed to give proper care and feeding to the plant; plant died from lack of carrying.

Perhaps a stupid analogy this early on a Monday morning but one I would like to acquaint to that of an important client or business relationship. Like our friend the plant, if we don't take the proper time to care and feed our relationships, they too will wither away and die.

It amazes me at how many people I know that depend on professional relationships just let them sit there like our friend the plant. They assume they will always be there and when they have time that a little bit of watering (attention) will breathe new life into them. Sorry to say, that simply isn't the case.

When a relationship is fairly new, it is very much green and lush and full of possibilities. In order to maintain that healthy shine, you have to find ways to continue to encourage the relationship to develop and grow. You have to find the collective "care and feeding" that works. I challenge you to evaluate some of your key client relationships and see if their leaves still have that lush green coloring as they did when you first met them. They may be yearning for their water or sunlight and it's your responsibility to give it to them.

Know you need to do some watering or (yikes) possibly weeding around the relationships in your life but just don't know how? Shoot me an email and let's chat about it.

steve@swotvision.com

Ripple On My Friends!!!

Steve

P.S. Be sure to check out our new "forums" section of the book's website. www.therippleeffectbook.com