Relationships thrive on generosity. Fair is not good enough.

If each side is willing to give only as much as the other, it won’t work. A negative spiral of giving less and less will result, because some of what you give is lost in translation. Some words and actions go unnoticed or unappreciated for one reason or another. Because of this “lossiness” of relationships, both sides need to give more than their half to equal a whole.

Generosity is the alternative. Instead of the minimum expectation, give a gift. When both sides feel they are getting more than they deserve, a positive spiral of giving more and more becomes possible. And gratitude is so much more fun than competitive accounting.

Think about a time when someone (person or business) went the extra mile to be generous to you. I’ve experienced a few lately. One was an unexpectedly free meal at a Hyatt. (It’s kind of cool to ask for the check and hear “Oh, you don’t have a check, this one’s on us because we like seeing you in here.”) That’s a lot of goodwill for the cost of a meal.

I experienced this on a higher level through an incredibly generous and meaningful gift of a special watch. It came unexpectedly from a friend who owns a jewelry store. It blew me away. It wasn’t intended in any way as business strategy, it was a personal gift. As I thought about it though, any time I need the best in a jewelry gift, I will turn to that store and I assure you I won’t be haggling about the price!

I want to be generous enough to give more than my half to family, friends, and customers. And I want to have more faith in the power of gratitude.

Last week I was privileged to attend a session by Scott Kuethen on how to hire quality. He is a hiring expert and the CEO of hiring service Flazingo.

Hiring decisions are crucially important, yet relatively infrequent in small business environments. So guys like me enter the all-important hiring process without much practice. Scott, who has 25 years of practice, generously taught us a thorough process for hiring quality. I won’t outline the whole process, but here are my key takeaways and observations.

• Know exactly what you want before you go looking for it. Take the time to define the central mission, responsibilities, outcomes, and requirements of the position first.
• Don’t tell the candidates who you want them to be. A little cynicism is required in the hiring process. If your job posting lists the exact qualifications you want, you will get resumes that magically list those exact qualifications. If you ask questions in the interview like “We really need someone who’s great with Quickbooks. Are you great with Quickbooks?” you are going to get a yes and you won’t learn anything. Don’t say or imply what answers you want.
• Ask behavioral story questions. “Tell me about a time when you had to confront an colleague about something they did that wasn’t right.” Not what would you do in this situation, but what did you do. Then ask questions to probe deeper into that story. Very few people can put together a fake story that holds up, so you will get reality.
• Ask for information that’s not on the resume. Scott recommends sending a questionnaire to about 9 to 12 candidates you’re interested in. He says people get a lot of help with resumes, but the questionnaire will be their own doing and it brings up information that they wouldn’t have volunteered. Also, the questionnaire screens out people who are curious about the job and fired off a resume but are not interested enough to put any work into applying.
• Be warm in person, and skeptical later. A warm, positive interaction with candidates will bring out more honest answers than a tense, skeptical interaction will. Save your skepticism for the evaluation and verification process after the interview.
• My overall conclusion: Hiring well is a lot of work. It takes a big investment of time to map out the mission, responsibilities, and requirements for the position, attract interest from candidates, score resumes, and conduct effective interviews. I wanted to think of hiring as just another task in the day, but it’s more analogous to designing a new product or building new infrastructure. It’s a big investment up front that pays off (or costs) over the long term.

Lately it seems like everything I want to do to grow to the next level collides with all kinds of anxious resistance in me.

I feel like a little kid who grew up in the jungle, in a little clearing. All my life I was scared, constantly on guard against what might jump into the clearing and attack me. I didn’t sleep well, I didn’t have fun, I just stayed on guard, circling and looking in all directions for danger.

Then I got some help from some good people and I found the clearing is not as dangerous as I thought. So I started to relax and enjoy life a little more. That was scary, but I was working through it.

But now, now people are telling me I need to LEAVE THE CLEARING. Try new things. Delegate. Outsource. Engage. Take risks on purpose. Depend on other people to take care of important things. (What is the matter with you people. Don’t you know it’s dangerous out there!)

So here I am a scared little kid, wooden sword in hand, wide-eyed and shallow-breathing, inching into the jungle trying desperately to be brave but feeling stomach-turning waves of anxiety every time a twig snaps. I want to go back to the clearing. I want to dig a hole and crawl underground and cover it with a lid to keep out the scary world.

Sitting in my foxhole, I know God made me for more than this. I know He gave me potential to do big things in parts of the jungle I’ve never seen. I really want to get brave and go see what’s out there. Maybe beyond the thick of the jungle there are sweeping plains and powerful mountains, peaceful rivers and breathtaking oceans. Scared as I am, I cannot ignore God’s call to what’s beyond. I can’t stay here.

To my friends who feel the same fear and hear the same calling, let’s not creep through the jungle alone. I’m not brave enough to head out there by myself. Let’s form a posse and help each other through the tangles and give each other courage to do the brave things we think we cannot do.

Friday night, after an inspiring day of conference sessions, I wandered to the hotel bar looking for conversation. (I hate lonely empty hotel rooms.) I was the only customer in the bar, and I don’t really drink, so sales were pretty low there for a bit.

A couple sat down and the woman struck up a conversation with me. As I finished explaining what I was doing in California and what I do for a living, I said “I’m learning a lot and I hope to have many decades to use what I’m learning. I’m excited about the future.”

She told me she was glad to hear somebody who was hopeful about the future. The company where she works is on their 13th round of layoffs or something and the latest round was yesterday. It was done by a consultant without warning, and the owner didn’t show up to explain anything. Her friend who had been let go was so devastated they were afraid she might commit suicide, and called a counselor for help. Everyone in the office is afraid. Afraid to ask questions, afraid of what will happen tomorrow, afraid that people they care about are getting hurt, afraid that they’re going to be next to go, and afraid because their leader is not leading.

I caught a glimpse of how crippling fear is. Nobody wants to take any risk. Nobody can perform their job well. When that company needs every ounce of employee contribution to succeed against tough odds, most of the energy in the company is going to fear instead. I bet the same scenario has been playing out in thousands of offices over the last 18 months.

The devastating effect of fear in her office contrasted in my mind with the encouragement she felt at my simple statement of hope in the future. I remembered something from Dr. John Townsend’s keynote speech at the conference. He said leaders who are good at strategy provide hope to their followers through relationships.

I always knew I loved strategy. I didn’t know strategic leaders provide hope. I didn’t know I could inspire hope in someone else, but I did in the bar and now I see that it happens at work and church too. I feel honored to have that role as a leader because hope is bigger than today and no one can survive without it.

Without hope fear takes hold in forms ranging from acute panic to chronic risk-avoidance to total giving up.

Those of you who lead (and that’s all of you), don’t think like I did that it’s just about good strategy and getting the job done. Through competent leadership you provide hope. It’s powerful and it’s in your job description.

I felt like the most lonely person in the bar that night. I was surprised to find that I was also the most hopeful. I think I have taken the hope I have for granted, not realizing that I have something many people wish they had. I really do look forward to the future because I know God is good and He is generous with me.

Do any of the worthless idols of the nations bring rain? Do the skies themselves send down showers? No, it is you, O LORD our God. Therefore our hope is in you, for you are the one who does all this. Jeremiah 14:22

I read an article in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review about a study done on business strategies during the last three recessions. The goal was determine the most effective strategy a business can take during a downturn, measured by growth and profits in the three years after the downturn ended.

Here are my thoughts and observation after reading the article, colored by my experience and business philosophy.

1. Even the best businesses feel the pain. Recessions hit both strong and weak businesses hard.
2. Going into the fetal position is the worst strategy. Companies that do large layoffs and big cuts to development and investment budgets fare the worst. A highly defensive strategy is suicidal.
3. Going super-aggressive is not effective either. Desperately reinventing everything doesn’t turn out well during recessions or any other time.
4. Steady, future-minded investment with an extra dose of proactivity is the best strategy during a recession. Companies that invested for the future and didn’t do large layoffs were in the best position to grow during the economic recovery.

My overall takeaway is this: The same measured, proactive strategies that work best during good times work best during hard times too.

• Don’t panic or veer off in untested directions.
• Don’t lay off key people you will need during the recovery.
• Do continue to invest in the company’s future, facilities, and R & D.
• Do make extra effort to be proactive and open to cautious, tested changes.

These strategies will not spare a company from the pain of the recession, but they will move them ahead of the competition during the economic recovery that follows.

I have often observed that good old-fashioned business strategy holds up better than the latest wisdom about how “everything is different now”. Recessions are no exception.