When What Works Stops Being What's Right

I've spent a lot of my life in sales.

And if you've spent enough time in sales, you've probably heard some version of this:

That's just how the business works.

I've heard it about scripts. I've heard it about marketing. I've heard it about how companies generate leads, how they describe themselves, how they talk about competitors and how they get customers to make decisions.

Sometimes it's true.

Sometimes it's an excuse.

The problem is that after you've been around something long enough, it gets harder to tell the difference.

That's something I've been thinking about lately.

There are businesses where the line between persuasion and deception gets pretty thin. Maybe somebody comes up with a phrase that isn't technically a lie. It works, so everybody starts using it. Then somebody pushes it a little further. That works even better.

Pretty soon it becomes part of the script.

New employees get trained on it.

Managers reinforce it.

The people who use it successfully make more money.

And six months later nobody remembers that there was ever a conversation about whether it was true in the first place.

It's just what we say.

That's how cultures get built.

And I think that's one of the more dangerous things that can happen to a person.

Not because you suddenly wake up one morning and decide to become dishonest.

Because you don't.

You get there an inch at a time.

You make a small compromise because you've got a number to hit. You repeat something because your manager told you to say it. You convince yourself that everybody in the industry does the same thing. You watch somebody else make a lot of money doing it.

Eventually you stop asking the question.

Is this right?

That's the part that bothers me.

I've always been fascinated by systems. Sales systems. Business systems. Training systems. Martial arts systems. Give me something complicated and I'll probably spend way too much time trying to figure out how all the pieces work together.

But there's a weakness in that way of thinking.

You can become so focused on whether a system works that you forget to ask what the system is producing.

A sales system can work incredibly well and still produce miserable customers.

A business can make a lot of money while treating people terribly.

A martial arts technique can look beautiful while being completely useless when somebody is actually trying to hurt you.

Function matters.

But function needs a compass.

That's something martial arts has forced me to think about differently.

When you're training with another person, you're being trusted with their body.

I can punch harder than I punch my training partners.

I can crank an arm farther than I need to.

I can throw somebody harder.

Being physically capable of doing something doesn't give me permission to do it.

Control is part of the skill.

Maybe business should work the same way.

Maybe the ability to convince someone isn't enough.

If you're good at sales, you can influence people. You learn how to build trust quickly. You learn how to frame decisions. You learn how to overcome hesitation. You learn what words make people lean forward and what words make them pull away.

Those are powerful skills.

Which means there's some responsibility attached to them.

The better you get at persuasion, the easier it becomes to rationalize using it.

That's where I think people can lose themselves.

And I don't think most of them are bad people.

That's almost too easy.

I think most people adapt to the environment they're in.

Put somebody into a culture where honesty matters and they'll probably become more careful about what they say.

Put the same person into a culture where revenue is the only thing that matters and they'll start learning which corners can be cut without getting caught.

Do that long enough and those corners become the road.

I've participated in systems I don't feel the same way about today.

I've said things because they were in the script.

I've taught things because they worked.

I've defended practices because I understood the business reason behind them.

I'm not interested in pretending otherwise.

But getting older has made me less impressed by explanations that begin with that's just how it works.

Because I'm starting to realize that's exactly when you should start asking questions.

Why does it work this way?

Who benefits from it working this way?

Who gets hurt?

And would I still defend it if I weren't getting paid?

That last question is a hard one to think about.

Because it's easy to have principles when your principles don't cost anything.

The test comes when doing the right thing costs you money, status, opportunity or security.

I don't know that I've always passed that test.

I'm trying to get better at it.

Maybe that's another version of the white belt mentality.

Being willing to look at something you've done for years and admit that you might have been wrong.

Being willing to relearn.

Being willing to walk away from something that works because you've decided you don't like what it's doing to you.

There's a Japanese concept I've always liked about training: you don't just practice technique. You practice yourself.

Every repetition is building something.

I think life works the same way.

Every little compromise is a repetition.

So is every time you tell the truth when lying would have been easier.

So is every time you say no.

So is every time you refuse to repeat something you know isn't true.

Eventually those repetitions become who you are.

That's why I've become increasingly suspicious of the phrase:

That's just how the business works.

Maybe it is.

But that doesn't mean I have to.