If you have an relationship with someone (especially when it’s exclusive) and want to continue that relationship, you must make sure that at all times what you offer them is the best offer they could get.
Say you have a boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse. If you want to keep that relationship you must make sure you’re always offering them the very best they could get (of whatever it is they want). I don’t mean to suggest that all relationships are purely transactional. I certainly hope they aren’t. But I do mean to suggest that people can and do re-evaluate their relationships – sometimes formally but more often informally and, perhaps, subconsciously. If you aren’t meeting their needs as well as they could be met by another, you might be replaced. I’m not saying this will definitely happen – only that you should assume it will. Most of us don’t manage our relationships on a minute by minute basis. If someone annoys us or even does something that strains the fabric of the relationship, that doesn’t mean it will be grounds for ending the relationship. Most of us take a longer view of our relationships. But if in that long view you do not appear to be the best offer, you should expect to be replaced.
Of course in many social circles it is considered taboo to make an offer to someone else’s boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse. Though it does happen.
But in business there is no such taboo. If you have an employee that you find valuable and want to keep, then you should assume your competitors will also find that person valuable and will want to hire them. If the other company makes a better offer then you stand a pretty good chance of losing that employee. Again, the same “rules” I mentioned above apply here too. Employees will also typically take a long view. They might think you’re not presenting them with the best offer for the work they will do tomorrow but that employment with you would be more valuable over the long-term than employment anywhere else. So this doesn’t mean you need to track this every minute. But it does mean you need to decide which people you really want to keep and then make sure you understand what they care about, know what value the market places on them and exceed the best offer they could get elsewhere.
But what about loyalty? Well, I recently wrote about loyalty. My advice was that you pretend it doesn’t exist. Don’t count it. You have to continue to earn the love, the partnership, the labor, etc. of the people with whom you have relationships. If you take them for granted you stand a good chance of losing them at some point – even if you’ve done so many wonderful things for them in the past. Call it an obligation, call it love, call it risk management, call it whatever you like. The bottom line is that you need to be making the best offer to the people in your life that they could possibly get.
Oh and by the way, if that person leaves you it isn’t because they were disloyal. It’s because you were. It’s because you took them for granted. It’s because you weren’t as good a boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, partner, employer, etc. as they needed you to be. As you should have been.
