When Clients Don't Follow Your System
BNET Australia Contributors
Aussie Rules
Biography
BNET Australia Contributors
Brian Haverty is editorial director for CBS Interactive Australia and is responsible for the company's BNET and ZDNet Australia sites.
Robert Gerrish is a coach, author and professional speaker and the founder of Flying Solo, an Australian online community for solo business owners.
Melissa Lourenco is the HR manager for CBS Interactive in Australia.
Chris Golis is the author of The Humm Handbook: Lifting Your Level of Emotional Intelligence. He runs seminars and workshops on EQ.
Suzi Dafnis is Community Director of the Australian Businesswomen's Network.
Yvonne Adele helps organisations build a culture of ideas by teaching people at all levels to access their untapped creative thinking skills.
Environment and landscape designers have a lovely term for pathways that walkers create when they take shortcuts across parks and the like. They call these tracks “desire lines”.
I don’t know if a technical definition exists, but if it did it would read something like:
desire line: An informal, preferred path used to get from one location to another rather than using the official route.
So what’s all this got to do with business? Quite simply this: if you have procedures or policies that people are not following — “pay within 7 days”, “Read and sign this three-month contract”, as examples — just consider the “desire line” carefully before you go beating up your clients and customers.
It may just be they are trying to tell you something. Something you’d do well to hear.
