![When it comes to doing favours all of us has one of three styles: backscratcher; one-way-streeter; or give-a-holic.
[[MORE]]BackscratchersThese are the most common. Backscratchers will scratch your back - like offering you assistance or making...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/f8ccf03072b3cf681060c4a9f79bef93/tumblr_nwyzqgn1EF1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
When it comes to doing favours all of us has one of three styles: backscratcher; one-way-streeter; or give-a-holic.
Backscratchers
These are the most common. Backscratchers will scratch your back - like offering you assistance or making valuable introductions - just as long as you scratch their back, too. They’ll help you out only on the understanding they’ll get something from you in return. They’re tally keepers: I helped out Steve, now he’s on the hook to me.
One-way-streeters
One-way-streeters try to get other people to serve their ends while carefully guarding their own expertise and time. The traffic is all one way with this style of person. It’s best for our mental well-being to give these people as wide a berth as possible. They take without giving. They’re sometimes cynical, often bitter and always self serving.
Give-a-holics
The give-a-holics offer assistance, they share knowledge, and make valuable introductions. They do it to be helpful and don’t keep a tally. Often being around give-a-holics makes us better sharers inspiring backscratchers to become give-a-holics, too.
Give-a-holics are good for business. They promote problem solving, collaboration and build cohesive, supportive cultures.
Business owners need to cultivate give-a-holics. Culture cultivation requires consistency. This means re-structuring the way we are rewarded at work.
Business declares a hatred for departmental silos - yet often rewards and promotes based on individual performance metrics. In a structure where one guy gets to be called manager. Does that promote the collegiate embrace of peers or the sharp elbows of self interest?
![Managers have moved from knowledge hoarders to knowledge pumps. The moniker: ‘knowledge is power’ is being replaced with ‘power belongs to the network’.
[[MORE]]Writing in the Harvard Business Review Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms describe a growing...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ca74bac0cbb7000ead217ec01e13af53/tumblr_nwk2bzEUVY1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
![“Knowledge is power” runs the cliché. But in the industrial age of command and control hierarchy this line meant: guard knowledge; hoard it. Be a knowledge miser.
[[MORE]]Having a head full of knowledge made you indispensable to your organisation.
In...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/bdf1a92dad9681db31bbdd85946cfd38/tumblr_nw3fthy7bO1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
![Yesterday Seth Godin, the father of permission marketing, wrote about people’s differences. In a post titled: When in doubt, draw a bell curve Godin mused:
[[MORE]]““We’re puzzled when we see uneven acceptance or uneven performance, because it’s easy...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/5bc97ae30c2a940df038f416f2b97b99/tumblr_nw8yz7EnBK1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
![CEOs may thump the boardroom table and demand “a new game changer … a disrupter” but usually their firms aren’t structured in a way that can create radical innovation.
[[MORE]]Often big ideas aren’t as competitive as incrementally improved ideas...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/89b087e564a9ccb8269ff735c8736230/tumblr_nx0u10Kk2u1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
