In the sandpit

By Fiona Boyd |  Email This Post

Do you remember back to when you were a small child at kindergarten and the politics that were involved in getting to play in the sandpit?

If you were nice to other children, then chances were that they wanted to share the sandpit with you, rather than the child who chucked sand, stomped on their sandcastle, gratuitously bumped into them without saying sorry etc. It’s a skill learned early and a really useful one – how to play nice in the sandpit.

I was discussing the concept of being in business and actually playing nice with a psychologist friend recently and she had a lot of trouble believing that it was actually possible to play nice in business. Her belief and experience so far was that ‘business’ had that aura of mean, ruthless, unkind, exploitative, show me the money-ness about it and that this was incompatible with playing nice and being a nice person.

I’m not sure that it’s necessary to always be ‘nice’ in business, but I certainly think one can have a minimum standard of always behaving according to one’s own notion of ‘good’ and with good manners. Nice can be a problem, who hasn’t been ruthlessly exploited when they’ve gone into a situation wanting to be nice – the other party saw you as a walkover right?

Before taking on a new partner or client, try work out whether they 'play nice in the sandpit'.

Well sort of right, but not really. As David and I move towards 15 years in business together and I had another five in a previous life it strikes me as I see ruthless, hard-nosed good-at-business people come and go, that those with the hardest, meanest edge just aren’t around anymore. The ‘nice’ guys or at least the ones who could play nice in the sandpit are still around, developing projects and deals, able to inspire others and get them involved in joint projects.

That’s why, whenever we’re about to take on board a new project with new partners and people we haven’t done business with before, David and I ask ourselves the question – are they going to play nice in the sandpit?

Photo: flickr fotologic

Fiona Boyd and David Eedle have written about their adventures with nice and not-nice sandpit characters in their book about the Arts Hub journey, Niche Content Millionaire.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

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