Why be Loyal? Key to Relationships

Key to Relationships and Happiness 

Loyalty can be expressed in many forms, to a brand, company, family or person.

We hear people professing their loyalty to products or brands,  “I only shop at Saks” or “I’m hooked on Apple” etc. but the most important expression of loyalty is the type shown to other people.

Being loyal to others is a fundamental ingredient to having integrity.  You simply cannot have integrity by acting in self interest.

False professions

Often times we profess our loyalty but abandon others  whenever that loyalty comes with a cost to ourselves.  People make promises and commitments to others but break them.

This evidences a total lack of loyalty.  At times legitimate issues prevent us from honoring a committment. Thats ok as long as we take the time to explain the reason we can’t live up to our commitments.  We all know people who always have ready excuses but anyone who contiually disappoints another lacks loyalty and integrity.

Dependable

We need to be loyal to our friends and families who need and rely on us, if only for support or company.

Even when some other opportunity presents itself we must keep our commitment. That is the ultimate expression of loyalty, putting yourself behind the needs or expectation of someone else.

Its central to your integrity and connected directly to unselfishness.

Believe it or not it is personally rewarding to honor your commitments!

Loyal to a Fault

As with most things there can be a downside to loyalty when we remain blindly loyal to someone to their detriment.  Protecting some one under the guise of loyalty when their behavior is destructive is unacceptable.

In that case true loyalty and love would demand that we stop enabling and approving of the behavior and help them seek the help they need.

Don’t Break the Trust

Can you be trusted with loyalty? Can you be counted on?

Loyalty –  the elixir for healthy relationships!

Copy Cat with a Twist – Improve Rather than Innovate

Be A Copy Cat

Originality is a sure fire way to achieve success.

Problem is it can be tough to be original; inventing a new product or idea.

It’s far easier to improve an existing product or idea.

In fact, most success is nothing more than a twist on something already in the marketplace.

Its so obvious, yet we always spend time trying to create something new when the answer is the natural progression of improvement.

Even Entire Nations Do It.

Taking the idea of tweaking an existing product to new level are some national economies who have used this principle to raise their standards of living.

In the early 1970’s Japan began to send their electronic products and autos to the USA.  They were not very good at the time and we tended to call it Jap Crap!

But they kept at it, working to tweak products and the cost structure to produce them and their focus was rewarded quickly.

Japan become an economic power house by improving products already in the market place.  They did not truly innovate, just improved products and processes of manufacture, even focusing on the supply chain to shorten times and inventory levels to get an edge.

As their success grew, they did begin to invest in innovation but the bulk of their success is clearly not creative.

Pure Copy Cat

China at this point has been a copy cat, as most developing nations tend to be. They use their low labor costs to copy and manufacture products others have created or designed.

They have not done much improvement, with most of the engineering and design work is still done in the USA.  At some point soon they will need to create improvement ideas and add some level of innovation as their cost benefits erode.

IPAD IPOD

Apple created two smashing successes with digital music players and tablet computers. But they didn’t create the categories!

They created elegant, user friendly devices that became must haves by vastly improving the existing players and tablets in the marketplace.

You don’t have to go as far as Apple has to get a leg up!

Success – Beg, Borrow and Steal

Why try reinvent the wheel?

We live in time where innovation is highly coveted and richly rewarded.  Everyone dreams of coming up with something new and hitting it big. The problem is that ground breaking ideas and implementation are very difficult and rare.

I am not speaking of giving up the pursuit of innovation but in support of gains that are easier to attain.

Easy Pickings

Opportunity to make improvements that produce tangible results are all over the place.

Put pride aside, in this case only, to learn from others who have proven strategies and processes.

“Beg”

There are leaders in every segment of life and business.  We should be open to learning from them.

Seek them out,  they have developed best practises and benefit from them as a result.  Most people are open to sharing and helping others.  Think of how much progress is made in the software area with the open systems available for all to contribute!

“Borrow or Steal”

We need to ‘borrow’ their best ideas and practices.

There is no shame in using ideas that others have developed, its a basic tenet of learning.

We can also learn from the mistakes they make, helping us to avoid mis-steps.

If people are unwilling to help, sharing their strategies or practices, then we must “elbow” them in ourselves.  We can research what sucessful competitors do, check with their suppliers and clients to get a sense of how they operate.

Study the habits of sucessful people or people who have a skill we desire. We can emulate their behavior and gain from it.

Open your eyes and ears, asking questions and implementing winning strategies!