Rumpelstiltskin's Lessons

For some reason, I've been thinking about Rumpelstiltskin. You know the story: A miller wants to curry favor with a king so he unwisely claims his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king's greedy, so he locks up the daughter with a bunch of straw and a spinning wheel and tells her to produce gold every morning for three days or she dies. Hearing her despair, a gnome-like creature appears for the first two nights and successfully does the spinning in exchange for her jewelry.

However, by the last night she's out of jewelry so she promises her first-born child as payment and the gnome spins the straw into gold yet again. The king, astounded at her success, marries her. Upon the birth of her first child, the gnome appears to collect his fee. To save her child, the new queen has to correctly guess the gnome's name, the not-so-simple "Rumpelstiltskin." Through subterfuge and guile, she discovers it and all is well (except, presumably, if the king wants more gold).

Like many fable and fairy tales, Rumpelstiltskin is embedded with good lessons that can be applied to service businesses. Here are some that come to my mind:

• Alchemy of some sort is always in demand.
• Know who you're dealing with
• Under-promise and over-deliver, not the other way around.
• Unrealistic promises may come back to bite you.
• It's the age of the Internet and it's a double-edged sword: your name is out there!
• There's a lot of power in a good name.