Venture capitalist and 9rules member Guy Kawasaki just wrote about The Art of Sucking Down, which essentially is how everyone needs to respect those who have power over certain aspects of our lives. Don’t piss-off waiters because they handle your food, did you see “Waiting”? Don’t yell at people at the airplane ticket counter because they control where your baggage goes and who you’ll sit next to. Basically Guy is saying that you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you, or else that hand won’t feed you anymore.
I think this can be applied to decision-making as well, because how often do people totally unconnected with a certain problem still assert their opinion on the situation? If you have a boss who knows nothing about databases, why should he or she be the one to tell your database architect that switching to DB2 is a good idea when you’re perfectly happy with MySQL? Sucking down can be considered the ability to identify who has more power or is more informed and then just letting them do what they know how to do. Don’t micromanage a project you couldn’t explain in detail. Don’t supersede your employees which undermines their trust. Don’t upset people who have their hands deep inside of your daily life, because they’re the ones that can do the little things that throw off the big things.
At Jason Fried’s keynote with Jim Coudal, Jason talked about how the majority of the people who complain about their products (either via email, or by trolling in their blog entry comments) are the ones who use the free versions of 37signals products. The people who are paying 1 or more monthly fees don’t complain, because they feel as though they’re getting $100 value per month for $14, or whatever it is and love 37signals. If you’re using a product for free but still feel the need to complain, I think you need to learn The Art of Sucking Down 🙂
