Fit for purpose?

Three Approaches to Longer-distance Business Relationship-building:

Business travel is often viewed as an “exercise” in “pressing the flesh”, but perhaps it should be seen as a “fitness programme” for building relationships.

If you want to get physically fit, experts say you have to both exercise and eat properly. Similarly, in business, if you want to have productive relationships, they need to be “exercised” properly, or their health will suffer …and of course, this can also involve eating – sensibly or not!

Take a moment to ask yourself: when you aim to stay fit, combining exercise for Cardio-vascular, strength, and suppleness, which approach works?

Do you:

a) go crazy when you can find the time, and take a sprint on the treadmill at 5 minutes’ notice, then collapse, exhausted, until the next time?

b) never leave home, watch sport on TV or perhaps do a so-called ‘work-out’ on the Wii Fit?

or

c) find a good Gym, and with help of a Personal Trainer, plan a personalised training programme, using the correct equipment for you?

Thinking again about your approach to Business-Travel, would you choose to commit yourself to a crazy, intensive schedule every so often, that will simply exhaust you? Or plan to invest your time in a sustainable routine that will result in sustainable, long-term benefits without causing injury?

And would you combine your chosen (travel) activity with lots of rich food, or stick to a healthy-eating plan?

We all know what would work best… so let’s apply what we’ve understood.

Here, we analyse and compare the Relationship-Health benefits across three styles of Business Travel:

(Default) Option One: Single-Focus Short, Ad-hoc Business-Trip (Hotel)

• Cost-intensive, rushed, de-humanising and Carbon-laden sprint to put a face to the name and establish a bare minimum relationship – to be able to say “I’ve met him/her”.
• Better than “No Contact”.
• Does at least allow all five senses to be exercised, not just Vision and Hearing.
• Limited scope for deepening relationships, combined with adverse effect on home relationships, if done excessively.