2-3-4 Friday: 

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

Since July 2023, I’ve been following a CEO of a NVOCC (non vessel operating common carrier) to write his memoir.

The NVOCC business is a shipping business. Businesses who need to move goods in a cost-efficient manner use ships. Why ships? Aren’t they antiquated? Who even uses them these days?

Why not planes? Because planes are more expensive, and if you need to move things like concrete, building materials, the only way is still the ship.

When I first started, I used to wonder how such a business model still worked, amidst all the evolutions in logistics. But somehow, despite centuries of developments in transport (think railways, cars, then planes), shipping still continued to be a thriving business.

Yesterday, he held the celebrations of his company’s 50th Year in business. 

He got his colleagues to come up and share. One office in the Philipines shared about how they were deeply grateful to the CEO’s father, for believing in them, and allowing them to grow from a small office in 1989, to what it is today, with 10 offices with over 250 staff.

The founder shared,

when I first started Mac-Nels I only wanted to do three things.

1. Be honest. 2. Deliver what I promised. 3. Take care of our people.

With that, he built a network that spans more than 10 countries today, and which has more than 250 staff across the different offices. 

To me, what’s amazing is that there’s no grand strategy or masterplan, and often, not much great technology that’s behind their work. Despite the global nature of their work, whilst they have computerized their work, they still do a large part of their work with paper and pen.

But I realised what made them valuable was this:

they kept their promises.

You’re familiar with how frustrating it can be when you don’t know when a delivery or the item is going to appear. Is it today? Tomorrow? Next week?

And these are only just items. What about real work, where the stakes are higher?

It makes me think about why some older adults fail, and why some keep going from strength to strength.

When I worked in a full-time job, I noticed that the core difference between the bosses that were trusted and those that weren’t, were those that could deliver their promises, and those that couldn’t.

It didn’t matter that these weren’t big promises. I remember my second boss often saying alot, but nothing actually materializing. Slowly I noticed a pattern. Whenever he said something in meetings, people stopped listening to him.

Unfortunately, this was also a persistent mistake I did in my career.

Compare that to this CEO I wrote the memoir for.

He would often say no to most of my requests.

But for those that he said yes to, it would be done in days. There would be no dragging of feet. For example, when I asked if I could follow him to his conference to learn how he led them, he bought the tickets the next day, and then got me on the same plane with him.

1 talk

Be honest to the promises you make. If you can't meet them, don’t make them.

1 tip

So one vital principle: make less promises, but deliver on those.

And if you can’t deliver on promises, always tell people in advance.

Trust sounds like a small thing, but it’s one of the few things, that once breached, is hard to recover and repair. You can lose many things, but I’d dare say that once you lose trust, it’s better off to change your job.

You’re not likely to recover it again.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love