Friday, August 21, 2009

When Handshaking is Unhealthy

I do business with a great number of people, from "Whose turn is it to buy ice-cream?" all the way to classroom training sessions and major upgrades to applications.

I think I do all of them on a handshake basis.

But I was taught "If it ain't written down, it don't exist", and "Management measures".

I was taught to write down my goal, and then write steps (Objectives) to meet that goal.

The written goal served as an acceptance test (so that BOTH sides would know when we were finished and payment was due)

The proposal became a Contract, all developed logically from a client's statement "I wish that ..."

So?

I hope that the Written Contract is not seen as superfluous to doing Business.

I can agree with the view that once a relationship goes bad, contracts help only the lawyers.

But I don't want to leave out a written record of WHY the relationship is going to continue working.

Search