benj
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 p.3 #19 · Another photographer is raiding my Facebook friends list | |
Jacob D - I'm not taking any offense to your comments. I appreciate the discourse. Hopefully you'll take my comments the same way.
1. When you said, "But there's not place for it "between competitors" in business", I didn't know what to say. That seems an awful lot like situational ethics...which is much more of an oxymoron than business ethics is. If you live by principles, then those principles are always applicable. You may miss some opportunities or advantage afforded you by circumstance over your competitors from time to time, but overall, you'll be a better person, business, and you'll improve the world.
There is a misconception that "there can be only one". Perhaps too many people watched "Highlander" when they were younger. But here's the thing. There's a lot more room at the top than many people think. If I succeed, that doesn't mean that you will fail...and vice versa. We can all succeed. When we talk about being competitive, we shouldn't be thinking how can I get the slip on my opponent, but we should be thinking...how can I make my business the best it can be? How can I reach my customers and meet their needs and raise the industry standards though my work?
The idea that one person must fail in order for you to succeed is a narrow and limited view.
The higher law that I'm talking about coincides with the idea that behaving well will in no way negatively affect your business. Of course there will always be snakes in the world that might take advantage of us, but that's the whole point of what I'm talking about...to get rid of the snakes. If we foster the business environment where snakes can thrive, then we only ad to the long term problem.
I'm in no way a "share the wealth" kind of person. I'm a capitalist to the core. But I am a person that sees capitalism for what it is, and not for what the snakes have made it. I have too many friends that talk negatively about capitalism, and when they speak ill of it, they don't know it, but they're actually just describing the corruption of capitalism and not actual capitalism.
2. If I had the power to save a competitor from going out of business, I would definitely save them. I know that sounds bad short term, but long term, it makes for a better end result. Competition makes you better. When you are running track, if you have someone running with you, you will generally push harder and do better than if you were alone. Too many companies standing alone stagnate and lose perspective of what their customers want.
So it's in my best interest to promote health honest competition.
3. If my competitor made a mistake, I would base my reaction or response to that mistake on what kind of mistake it was. If they had a great sale, and misprinted the date to make it virtually unusable, I'd go and tell them so they can fix it. I'm trying to think of a mistake that my competitor could make that I wouldn't want to warn him about, and I can't think of one. It goes back to my previous comments about wanting to keep health competition in the market.
I'm not going to copy my opponents, because then it splits the market and possible profits. Instead, I'll adapt and provide services that are different from what my competitor offers. We each fit a certain niche in the market, and that's how we improve our own chances of increased clientele as well as improving our craft in that area. If we're spending all day trying to match every move our competitor makes, then we'll be wasting our time and ultimately our resources that should be used to improve our services.
4. Like I said before, there is a lot more room at the top than people think. I don't need to scale back my success in order for another to succeed. Granted, there are elements of this in the market, but that is an indication that people aren't adapting to the market, and people aren't making themselves unique from their competitors.
5. If a business goes out of business, I want to make sure that it's not because of some underhanded thing I did. If it is a result of their inability to adapt to an honest playing field, then perhaps that's just not the business for them. But I won't be able to look myself in the mirror if I am resorting to underhanded business practices that focus on pulling down a competitor rather than just promoting myself. I think the same can be said in politics. Politicians who focus their energies on digging up dirt on their opponents are not the kinds of people we want to lead our country. Instead, we need leaders who instead focus on what they are doing right, and what they will do to improve our country. They are rising above the mud.
6. Moral dilemmas only exist where morals aren't firmly attached. If you've made up your mind to live according to principles of fairness, honestly, hard work, competition (the good kind), then when you're faced with a so called "Moral Dilemma", then you realize that it's not really a dilemma. It's just something you quickly move past because you decided a long time ago how you were going to act when faced with that problem.
I agree that some businesses succeed at the expense of their competitors. That is fine so long as their failure isn't a result of underhanded actions on your part. If they fail just because you were just so good at what you did, and they weren't, then that's just business.
IMHO.
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The rules for one doesn't apply to the other. If this guy is a friend of yours maybe he went over the ethical line; otherwise it's just business.
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