When to call out the line judge...

Many years ago, my doubles partner and I were in a tennis match. The doubles team we played against was very good, but they seemed to foot fault on most of their serves. A foot fault is when the server's foot touches the baseline on the tennis court. The serve is ruled a foot fault, and the server loses that opportunity to serve. If the foot fault occurs on a first serve, the first serve is ruled ineligible, and the server goes to the second serve. If the foot fault occurs on a second serve, the server loses the point.

After we lost the first set, we requested a line judge. We asked the line judge to watch our opponents' and our feet when serving. And we helpfully mentioned, "They foot fault on almost every serve." The line judge watched our feet during serves, and she ensured we and our competitors called and played the game fairly. She called a few foot faults on our opponents, and they lost their rhythm and concentration. We won the next two sets and the match. I am not sure we would have won had we not called out the line judge for a fair playing field.

Many years later as a Product Manager, I found my organization in competition with a Rival. Rival and I used the same vendor to provide a Treasury Management product to our respective clients. Both our organizations had issued press releases at different times with the same vendor. Later, we found ourselves in a competitive bid situation for the opportunity.

Rival relayed to the prospect they had developed their own solution and did not use an outside vendor for any part. To the prospect, we indicated Rival and our organization used the same product from the same vendor. Rival's sales officer continued to insist Rival had developed the product themselves. My sales officer came to me and indicated the prospect was concerned after hearing Rival's alternative explanation.

What did we do? We found the line judge. In this case, the line judge was the news release Rival had issued with the vendor. I forwarded Rival B's news release and our organization's news release with the vendor along to my sales officer. I told the sales officer that if the news releases did not clear up the issue for the prospect, then I did not know what would. The sales officer forwarded both Rival's and my organization's news releases to the prospect for their evaluation.

A few days later we were awarded the business - not because we had a better configuration of the same product - but because the prospect said they appreciated we had given them the news releases, which provided detail on the Rival's foot fault.

All parties should feel free to call in a line judge or referee when needed to ensure a level and fair playing field for all.