Prenups

One of the boys recently had a falling apart with his best friend. He had given his friend some of his online password and now he felt he had to change the passwords. The lesson - besides not giving your passwords to anyone - is to remember that relationships change. Employees can become ex-employees. Significant others can become exs. And while family will always be family, even family sometimes has falling aparts. So if you do something that makes you vulnerable to someone make sure you would be comfortable with that vulnerability even if situations change. I encounter this often in business: there are things that I sometimes would like to do for employees that I can't because of the liability they would create (down the road in the event things change).

This is not to say that we shouldn't trust anyone. Just that we should be conscious when we are making ourselves vulnerable that relationships sometimes change with time... Sometimes we'll take a risk with someone. That is OK. Sometimes we'll get burned. That is OK too. But hopefully not because we didn't even think about it...