“Let a hundred flowers blossom.”

What would later be known as the Hundred Flowers Movement was first a small campaign aimed solely at local Chinese bureaucracies for non-communist-affiliated officials to speak out about the policies and the existing problems within the central government in a manner previously considered illegal.

While it may not have worked well for the Chinese, it is an interesting concept for small businesses. Asking for criticism to grow and improve. Not just any criticism, but healthy, constructive criticism. So ask . . . and more importantly listen!

There is an belief that for every thing right you do for your customer, they tell one other person. The mistakes? Oh, that they share with 13 others.

It’s kinda like me and the phone companies. Yesterday, my cell lost service. I called up Cingular. Within a reasonable time frame, I was connected to a service rep. He verified my account was in good standing and that my local network wasn’t experiencing any outages. He asked my when was the last time I shut off my phone. I never shut off my cell. Shut off cell, restart, problem fixed. I was a happy camper, but other telling you dear reader to make a point, it’s not something that I care enough about to share with others.

Now consider the alternative. A month ago, the local phone company lost my most recent work order to move our phones to our new offices. When the service person failed to show, I called customer service, was routed to Bangalore and back, finally got a surly agent on the phone who pretty much didn’t care, couldn’t find the notes on the system, and restarted the process from scratch – thus we were without phone services for close to 2 weeks. Let’s just say, not a happy camper this time. This story, I told anyone who was silly enough to listen.

If one client is unhappy about something, are there others? Probably.

As small business owners, we sometimes lose sight of what are customers are experiencing. We focus on deliverables. We focus on meeting deadlines. But are the customers happy?

Sometimes, you just gotta ask! No one at the phone company seemed to care if I was happy or not. I don’t recommend this model of customer service!

Encourage an open dialogue with your clients and your staff. You may be surprised at the variety of views and solutions offered to ongoing problems. Some of which, you may not even know you had.

“Let a hundred flowers blossom.”

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure . . .

When launching a new venture, the possibilities are endless. Everybody is happy and opportunistic. What could possibly go wrong? Fast forward 4 years, and your either talking to me or a lawyer about what went wrong.

As with all things in life, businesses change. What you wanted out of the business may differ from where your partner is at. Outside influences may send you in different directions. So, now what?

Unfortunately, if you are just starting to think about this – you’ve got a problem. Both parties have a vested interest in the outcome and they have layered their own issues and emotions onto the problem. This is a really tough time to be rationale and hammer out a resolution.

No body likes to buy life insurance; it’s not a lot fun planning for your demise. Similarly, planning “the what if” for the end of your partnership doesn’t feel great either, but doing so alleviates a lot of grief during a potential stressful event.

No matter how much you like your partner at the start, put in an “out” clause so that both parties may terminate the partnership relatively easily. There may be a multitude of reasons why one partner may want to exit the business, and there should be a plan in place to allow that to occur and still have the business continue. Talk to your lawyer about executing a buy/sell agreement.

A little precaution before a crisis occurs is preferable to a lot of fixing up afterward.

Entrepreneurs who love too much . . .

Not sure how or when, but my business life is starting to resemble a Sex in the City episode. I feel like I have become the Carrie Bradshaw of the small business world. "Can clients really change?" Tonight’s business meeting felt like a bad dinner with an ex.

The relationship between you and your client is just that - a relationship. Some of them work and some don’t. It’s not about whose right or wrong, it just may be a bad fit. While we may spend a lot of time trying to meet the client’s expectations and pride ourselves with being attentive to their needs, occasionally we just end up on different pages.

Tonight’s meeting was with a former client, who has always had a different approach to business. My gut said “Don’t do it,” but the ex-client was insistent. While the meeting started off on decently enough, we quickly fell back into old patterns. Was this outcome inevitable?

When we make bad business decisions, hopefully we at least learn from them. So, if you and a client don’t see eye to eye consider your options. If you can work past it and resume a healthy working relationship, by all means that is the optimal path. But if you see a recurring pattern that can’t be fixed – move on. Trust me that this relationship neither benefits you nor the client.

Opportunities for us to learn and grow arise often throughout our careers. While some of these opportunities are painful, they provide a chance for us to reflect and apply the lessons to grow our businesses.