Most of us reading this blog are in business. We are all aware of how annoying or exasperating it is to work with someone who doesn’t do what they say they will do. It is so basic and so elementary to know that you should keep your word. Yet many of us in business don’t for one reason or the other. Some are too busy to do what they promised. Others forget or just don’t care. Some are frauds and intentionally don’t deliver on promises.
This applies to threats too. If you run a business and have rules for conduct and someone breaks the rules, do you keep your promise to penalize them? If someone pays you late and you have a $25 late fee do you wave the late fee? If you do, nobody will take your policy seriously. I run a directory and threaten to take people offline if they don’t login regularly. I keep my threat now, but I didn’t use to. The minute I kept my promise, people started logging in religiously.
It is busy running a business, and sometimes we forget about very basic things like keeping in touch with critical people and keeping our promises all the time every time. If you don’t, people will lose faith in you and then you will not have a business for long!