Businesslike

There is many a time that working with a clients we encounter a stumbling block around the idea of being Businesslike.  The stumbling block usually being around the client’s belief about what ‘businesslike‘ actually means. Often entrepreneurs, or those of you in the creative industries, those of you who are sole-traders,  seem to believe that businesslike’ is symbiotic with being ‘Hard-nosed’. Personally I believe that these two things are very different things.

Definitions of Businesslike include words such as ‘diligent’ and ‘earnest’ and ‘efficient’. I think there is something fundamental in knowing what a businesslike approach to your work encompasses. When we are clear about our own definition then we know when we deviate from it. When we deviate from it we might need to ask ourselves why that might be? There may be very good reason for you to deviate from your usual protocol. Equally you might be allowing yourself to be skewed from your own values and ethics by another agenda. Being businesslike can be a really good moral compass.

Definitions of Hard nosed contain words such as ‘being tough, stubborn, or uncompromising’. Whether the term comes from the hard-nosed bullets used in the war to create increased devastation on impact. Or whether the meaning is derived from the inability to keep the scent on a hunt and thus an ‘insensitivity’, is neither here nor there. I think that this phrase brings with it mis-perceptions that do not serve us in business. This belief can prevent us from the safety of engaging with established and proven protocols and contracts.

Contracts: Who are they for? Often a new client will say ‘……and then I didn’t get paid for that piece of work….’ and my first question is ‘and what did it say in the contract you provided?’ and if I I get the answer (as I sometimes do), ‘well, we didn’t have one, we just sort of agreed it’, then I know that we need to examine what is going on beneath that kind of informal understanding within what is actually a business context.

What do Contracts really achieve? Being businesslike with contracts provides two things. firstly it provides safety. Contracts prove safety in the understanding of what the job, work, project, that is being undertaken actually involves. Contracts also provides safety in defining the responsibilities of each of the parties involved, exactly what they will pay and be paid. It will also outline the protocol for resolving any disputes.

Thirdly contracts expose the covert agenda. this is perhaps THE most important aspect a businesslike contract. Whilst reading and signing that simple piece of paper, the discussion will inevitably arise along the lines of ‘what does that bit mean?’, and “do we understand this clause the same way?”. This is the chance for what has not been previously said to be voiced. Individuals may have entirely different understandings of the same sentence and to explore that before anything is signed can save enormous amounts of grief later on in the process.

My next question is: Why would we need to reinvent the wheel? Contracts have been employed in business contexts for years. There is a reason for this. Sometimes a spontaneous response is exactly what us needed, but do we need to reinvent the wheel every-time? Be businesslike and you might come to enjoy being businesslike. Being buisnesslike saves time, misunderstandings, as well as loss of income and indeed potential loss of friendships.

Is that really a hard nosed way to behave or is it actually ethical, clear and transparent?

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