One rule has helped me work with my team and contractors for over ten years: if it isn't written down, it doesn't exist. It removes almost every future conflict.
A very important principle for working with people.
There’s one rule that has been helping me work with my team and contractors for more than ten years.
It’s the habit of starting every financial relationship in a separate chat that opens with the following:
“The first and main rule of our cooperation: IF IT ISN’T WRITTEN DOWN, IT DOESN’T EXIST. Only the agreements set down in writing in this chat carry any weight. People have a way of remembering the same conversation differently three months later. Putting it on paper removes a lot of slippery moments and keeps expectations in the right place.”
Those few simple lines remove 99% of the conflicts that could come up later.
Before any cooperation begins — even when the sums involved are tiny — these agreements come first, and the person puts a ”+” to confirm they’ve read them and agree.
Almost every time I ignored or forgot this important opening ritual, things ended badly and somebody’s expectations went unmet.
So writing everything down at the start is, in my view, a diamond of an idea.
If later on, during the work, we agree on something verbally, the substance of that agreement appears in the chat the same day.
The more precisely you describe the terms, the conditions and the areas of responsibility, the better.
When there’s clarity and transparency in a business relationship, that cooperation can last a very long time.
I’ve seen more than once how people ended a good partnership over some secondary nonsense that hadn’t been agreed on in advance. I’ve lost several good colleagues that way myself.
And yes, I know that legally these chat agreements carry no force at all — but that isn’t the point. They’re agreements in principle, and they help us understand clearly where we’re going together and exactly how we’re getting there.
Do you write down your agreements with other people? Have you had cases where people understood and remembered your first conversations about the work completely differently?
It is rarely a lack of knowledge
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