Be nice on the way up …
… that way you won’t have to kiss ass on the way down!
If the current 2008-9 crisis teaches us anything it is that fortune can turn on a dime. One day you, or the company you work for, can be on the way up, the next all can be in ruins. If that time comes, you will need all the friends you can muster.
How many friends you can muster, and how solid those relationships are will depend to a high degree on how you treated people who you worked with. Namely, the people who worked for you (subordinates), the people who worked with you (colleagues and vendors), and people for whom you worked (your bosses).
As Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and their like have shown, networks of people are valuable. Very valuable. But networks require effort to build, and effort to maintain. Maybe even tender loving care to maintain. So if you want your network to thrive, and to be there for you when fate turns your world upside down (and at some point it will, unless you are truly blessed with good luck), you’d better be nice on the way up, or else in order to survive be prepared to kiss ass on the way down! So which is it going to be?
(The expression “Be nice on the way up, or be prepared to kiss ass on the way down” was passed on to me by my good friend Jean-Luc Vila, trader extraordinaire.)
… that way you won’t have to kiss ass on the way down!
If the current 2008-9 economic crisis teaches us anything it is that fortune can turn on a dime. One day you, or the company you work for, can be on the way up, the next all can be in ruins. If that time comes, you will need all the friends you can muster.
How many friends you can muster, and how solid those relationships are will depend to a high degree on how you treated people who you worked with in the past. Namely, the people who worked for you (subordinates), the people who worked with you (colleagues and vendors), and people for whom you worked (your bosses).
As Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and their like have shown, networks of people are valuable. Very valuable. But networks require effort to build, and effort to maintain. Maybe even tender loving care to maintain. So if you want your network to thrive, and to be there for you when fate turns your world upside down (and at some point it will, unless you are truly blessed with good luck), you’d better be nice on the way up, or else in order to survive be prepared to kiss ass on the way down! So which is it going to be?
(The expression “Be nice on the way up, or be prepared to kiss ass on the way down” was passed on to me by my good friend Jean-Luc Vila, trader extraordinaire.)
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