You may remember Victor Kayam. He was the man who liked his Remington shaver so much, he bought the company.
Years ago I remember hearing him reveal the secret of his success. He said "I realised very early that people liked buying from friends. So I made a lot of friends".
Whether you are trying to sell your product or working to deliver social change with ‘partners' the question of "What is a ‘friend' and how do you make them"? is an important one.
We are beginning to believe that making friends is simple. We make friends at the click of a mouse. How many ‘Facebook friends' do you have that you have never met? I have one FB friend, who incidentally I have never met, with an incredible 2040 FB friends. Its fun to see inside the everyday lives of the people in your Facebook, but it's not a substitute for real friends, or genuine connections that make the wheels of business turn.
Maybe we are losing a little of our know-how about friends and friendship as we slip in and out of virtual relationships where we can feel more popular at the click of a mouse. Sometimes we can do this without ever meeting the person that we have accepted into the fold and then rejected with a single digit.
Perhaps we should look back a bit, because Aristotle and others gave this notion of friends and friendship some serious thought. Aristotle referred to a state of well-being in what I guess he may have referred as his PB....Papyrusbook. OMG with jokes like that it's a wonder that this writing thing ever caught on. Anyway, the word he used to describe this state, most conducive to feeling good and incidentally making new friends, translates as Eudaimonia. It's an interesting word because it contains every vowel.
The key to achieving this state is virtue. There are two kinds of virtue: moral and intellectual. Moral virtues are exemplified by courage, temperance, and liberality; the key intellectual virtues are wisdom, which governs ethical behaviour, and understanding, which is expressed in scientific endeavour and contemplation.
Clearly, these are not things readily available at the click of a mouse and most definitely not downloadable from Amazon. It seems that achieving a state which is conducive to well-being and to making real friends requires us to do some work on ourselves. To look inward at our own beliefs and behaviours rather than simply projecting outwards and grasping the hand or clicking the icon of anyone who will listen.
Let's all just stop running for a moment and pause a little to introspect; perhaps become a little more virtuous if we can; we might make a real friend or two.
I doubt if there is anyone out there that likes this blog so much that they want to buy the company, so when you have finished your introspection...Facebook me.
Years ago I remember hearing him reveal the secret of his success. He said "I realised very early that people liked buying from friends. So I made a lot of friends".
Whether you are trying to sell your product or working to deliver social change with ‘partners' the question of "What is a ‘friend' and how do you make them"? is an important one.
We are beginning to believe that making friends is simple. We make friends at the click of a mouse. How many ‘Facebook friends' do you have that you have never met? I have one FB friend, who incidentally I have never met, with an incredible 2040 FB friends. Its fun to see inside the everyday lives of the people in your Facebook, but it's not a substitute for real friends, or genuine connections that make the wheels of business turn.
Maybe we are losing a little of our know-how about friends and friendship as we slip in and out of virtual relationships where we can feel more popular at the click of a mouse. Sometimes we can do this without ever meeting the person that we have accepted into the fold and then rejected with a single digit.
Perhaps we should look back a bit, because Aristotle and others gave this notion of friends and friendship some serious thought. Aristotle referred to a state of well-being in what I guess he may have referred as his PB....Papyrusbook. OMG with jokes like that it's a wonder that this writing thing ever caught on. Anyway, the word he used to describe this state, most conducive to feeling good and incidentally making new friends, translates as Eudaimonia. It's an interesting word because it contains every vowel.
The key to achieving this state is virtue. There are two kinds of virtue: moral and intellectual. Moral virtues are exemplified by courage, temperance, and liberality; the key intellectual virtues are wisdom, which governs ethical behaviour, and understanding, which is expressed in scientific endeavour and contemplation.
Clearly, these are not things readily available at the click of a mouse and most definitely not downloadable from Amazon. It seems that achieving a state which is conducive to well-being and to making real friends requires us to do some work on ourselves. To look inward at our own beliefs and behaviours rather than simply projecting outwards and grasping the hand or clicking the icon of anyone who will listen.
Let's all just stop running for a moment and pause a little to introspect; perhaps become a little more virtuous if we can; we might make a real friend or two.
I doubt if there is anyone out there that likes this blog so much that they want to buy the company, so when you have finished your introspection...Facebook me.