The D4D Fundamentals

The Importance of Affinity

With a goal of entering into business relationships that will be stable and enduring, we find the highest degree of success when we work with people we feel affinity for, and vice versa. 

For us, this is not simply a 'nice to have’. Liking the people we work with and aligning with their business objectives is fundamental requirement for our team.

At the same time, having a strong affinity does not mean we will never disagree or that you or we won’t have differing opinions when we sit around the table.

It does mean, however, that vigorous debates with respect and empathy will result in exciting synergistic thinking that will help your business scale.

Creating a Shared Reality

Agreeing on what is 'real' and meaningful when it comes to our relationships is foundational to understanding our clients.

We dig in deeply and do our due diligence to understand the perspective of each of your stakeholders and how those perspectives impact the collective reality.

We take the time required to understand where you want to go and and then help guide your thinking on how you might get there.

When in doubt or debriefing, we revert to the data. We believe that it's only when we can agree upon the facts that we can identify key learnings and and translate those to next steps. 

Sometimes this process takes a bit of time – but, in our experience, it always pays off.

Clarity of Communications

Our experience informs us that the quickest path to building both strong affinity and shared reality with our clients is through clarity of communication.

Tech speak, jargon and acronyms are not our style. Clear, honest, fact-based and respectful communication is.

Frequent, clear and appropriate communication is our correction and feedback 'trim tab' for building the stable, enduring and successful relationships we want with our clients.

As an added bonus, this approach helps to reduce drama, keeps us all focused on the objectives, and contributes to sleeping well at night.