Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Have you ever worked on a project with a group of people, and one of them drops the ball and makes you look bad even though you did everything that was expected of you?  Recently there have been some difficulties at Perfomancing Ads because of the negligence of one person.  Articles are being written calling the program a scam because payments are somewhat delayed, and attacking the whole group of people who participated in the launch of the service, including me because I did the design, though I haven’t been involved with the project since the design was complete several months ago.

Performancing Ads is a great concept and there has been a hitch in the startup because one person hasn’t followed through with their responsibilities.  Does that make it a scam?  Of course not.  I know all the people involved in the project and they are some of the best people I’ve ever worked with.  Even the “ball dropper” was pretty good to work with.  Performancing is taking measures to get the situation rectified and I’m confident payments will be sent as soon as possible and in fact, I believe at this point, payments have gone out.

What’s my point?

I’m not writing this post because I’m concerned about my reputation. Anyone who knows me and has worked with me knows that when I say I’m going to do something, I do it, and that I’ll go above and beyond to make sure those I do business with are completely satisfied and happy with the results. My main thoughts about this are that working in an online environment poses some very difficult challenges.  When people are hired to work on a project, it is far too easy for them to flake out and leave others holding the bag.  The relative anonymity of the online world means that people end up doing things that they would likely not do if they were working a regular day job and had to face people in the office every day.

Just a minute, let me step up onto my soapbox

If you say you’re going to do something, just do it.  If you break it, fix it. If you screw up, make it right.

We all fall short of this at times in whatever business we’re in- I’ve certainly done my fair share, but you always have to keep in mind that when you drop the ball you’re not the only person it affects.  Through your negligence you can damage someone else’s reputation and that’s much worse than damaging your own.

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“If no one hates you, you’re doing something wrong”

This is a quote from a recent post on Copyblogger. Do you think that’s true? While I agree that you can’t water down your content so much that no one will ever take issue with it, stating firm and well thought out opinions does not have to be offensive. As Brian quotes in his article, Tim Ferriss said in a recent interview on ProBlogger,

Do not try to appeal to everyone. Instead, take a strong stance and polarize people: make some love you and some hate you. Hate is an extreme, but here’s the gist: what you write, in order to create the highest pass-along value, needs to be “remarkable”. Is it something that is worth remarking upon?

I agree with Tim that being “remarkable” is important, however why must anyone be offended because someone takes a strong stance on something and holds a different opinion that they do? Of course, there are those who try to be offensive just to drive traffic, and I don’t understand that either.

Here’s my appeal to you:

• If I happen to take a strong stance on something and you disagree, tell me about it in the comments- I’m interested in your opinion.
• Be nice as you express your opinion here or on any other site, and I’ll do the same.
• Let’s not turn into jerks just to drive traffic. It’s not worth it in the end.
• Let’s try to remember the lessons we learned in kindergarten: be nice, share and try to get along with others.

Tell me what you think. Am I just being too girly and naive? Are we really not successful unless people start to hate us?

Stay tuned- the next post contains some big news!

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