Five common business lies

The following is information from a good a article on the five most common lies in business

Lie: "People are our most important asset."

Truth: "People are our most worrisome and unpredictable asset. Our most important assets are really our financial assets."


B.S. Detector: This may be the leading lie of our times. "When management starts talking about how important people are," LaFontaine says, "you can bet there is going to be an unpopular human resources decision coming soon."
Lie: "This was a rational decision."

Really Take: I dont believe its a lie and in my experience, people are the most important assets especially in managerial positions. But it depends on the size of the company once a company gets to large then processes and culture start to become more significant


Lie: "This was a rational decision."

Truth: "I wanted to do this."

B.S. Detector: People "want what they want just because they want it," says LaFontaine.

Really Take: Yes people usually do what they want and argue it as a rational decision, problem is if the decision in not rational, speaker will lose his/her value to the business and fellow employees lose respect on the speaker


Lie: "We judge people by their performance."

Truth: "I judge your performance based on how much I like you."

B.S. Detector: "Why do most people who keep their jobs keep them?" LaFontaine asks. "Because the people they work for like them. And you get fired when the people you work for don't like you anymore.

Really Take: We judge people by the perception of performance and how it effects us. You give more slack to people you like but it depends on how ambitious and what are the motives of the employees


Lie: "This is business, it isn't personal."

Truth: "Everything's personal."

B.S. Detector: "As people, we get mad at each other," says LaFontaine. "Attempts to avoid it are cowardly. So get mad. Then get over it and move on." LaFontaine believes that any disagreement can be handled with an honest conversation.

Really Take: For the majority of people, everything is personal, it is only people who are not interested in themselves where this is not important. As I am stating people are important to business this means that business can be personal.


Lie: "The customer comes first."

Truth: "I come first."

B.S. Detector: "More often than not, 'the customer' is an abstraction," LaFontaine warns. "People take care of customers when it benefits them and ignore customers when they can get away with it. Nobody says 'I come first,' which is what's usually going on."

Really Take: Depends on how you define customer as now the cutomer does not only mean the clients it also means employees working within the organisation, myself, external stakeholder etc. but who comes first depends on the culture of the organisation. For a company with specialised hard to find staff that develop things I would say the employees come first.