Get Used to It -- Business is Not Fair
If you want to start a new career as a Maasai warrior, you will have to learn how to kill a lion. This is a test of your courage. If you are really brave, you will fight the lion in unarmed combat. The lion will then have a nice lunch and you will no longer need to worry about your pension plan.
The Maasai may be brave, but they are not stupid. They have learned how to kill lions. When patrolling your territory, you may find a lion sleeping upwind of you, where it cannot smell you. Quietly, put some poison on the tips of your arrows, creep up and shoot the lion. Then run like crazy to the nearest cover (you do not want an interview with an angry lion). You then follow the lion at a safe distance for hours or days until it falls over a dies from the poison. You can now cut off the lion's tail return to your village and prepare for some gruesome initiations rites as a warrior.
None of this is remotely fair on the poor lion. And that is the whole point. The problem with a fair fight is that you might lose it.
Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, declared that "it is not the winning, it is the taking part that counts". That is patently untrue of nuclear warfare, killing lions or fighting business competitors. The point is not to take part. It is to win. A fair fight is not a passport to victory.
Before regulators and prosecutors get too excited, it is perhaps worth observing that most successful businesses are based on some form of unfair competitive advantage.
This fits well with Warren Buffett's maxim that he only invests in companies "which any fool can run, because some day some a fool will run it". An unfair advantage makes any company more or less foolproof.
There are endless sources of unfair advantage, where unfair is having something the competition cannot have.
For instance:
- Licence to drill oil in the best places.
- One of few telecoms licences.
- Ownership of Heathrow landing slots.
- Copyright or patent protection.
- Ownership of the best sites on the high street.
- The most powerful global brand.
- A monopoly on desktop operating systems.
Meanwhile, companies with great management in tough industries find themselves running harder every year just to stand still. Does your business have an unfair advantage, or are you running harder every year?
(Photo: Tambako the Jaguar, CC2.0)