Here follows another post inspired by a question I hear routinely. In particular, Ken Shear and I hear this question a lot at entrepreneurial type events and that is; “what is it that will make people work as a team instead of competing (or trying to determine who is in charge, or only caring about what is in it for them)?” Answer number one to this question is back in my prior post about community. But answer number two is actually even simpler (and I will quote Ken here as I love the way he phrases this), “we are creating publishing for grown-ups”.

Aside from the fantastic tongue-in-cheek and quotable value of that response, what does that actually mean?

Simple – it means we expect everyone to follow the golden rule. Contrary to what some might think in these days where the mighty dollar rules, this has nothing to do with actual gold. I grew up hearing this: I am sure many of you did as well.  As with most things that make me scratch my head and wonder, I turned to the all knowing interwebs for clarification!

“All versions and forms of the proverbial Golden Rule have one aspect in common: they all demand that people treat others in a manner in which they themselves would like to be treated.”

This is from the Wikipedia entry on this topic, which also clued me in to the fact that almost every religion or philosophy has a version of the golden rule – from Christianity to Confucius. It is a nearly universal moral teaching tenet. How cool is that?

So, while of course we offer a framework, guidance and tools to our teams to help this along (via our publishing platform, Teamtrope), we also expect that they adhere to this time honored principle of their own volition. Why would anyone work the way we do (i.e. being paid via royalty – after the book is selling) if they did not feel valued, and enjoy what they are doing? Frankly, they wouldn’t.  We expect people to respect one another, and treat each other the way they would like to be treated themselves.

 

We hope our company will continue to grow in that same spirit.