I'm taking some training for work right now, Delivery Management at Avanade Part 1, and we had a module this afternoon on customer relationship management. They showed some admittedly cool ways to visualize and track business relationships, but the idea of quantifying it in Visio and Excel didn't quite sit right with me. So when we were asked for "any final thoughts" on the last slide I chimed in:
"In this world of headcount and resources and FTEs, it's important to remember that people...are people first...and professionals second. I think you can do a lot to foster relationships by just being friends with people."
Throw your Excel Scorecard away, folks, and just answer this: Are you friends with your stakeholders? If your answer isn't Yes, then you have work to do.