Corporate Bullying

How many times have we heard about big companies intimidating upcoming small innovative companies? In most cases big companies are afraid that new players enter the market and take a significant piece of their market share. It doesn't happen all the time since bigger players usually brush-off start-up, but there are instances that it does happen. When it does happen the bigger player ends up purchasing the small start-up for its business potential. However there are instances where upcoming innovative companies grow so fast and influential that it ends up purchasing the bigger player. This is true in the case of companies like Smart Communications or J.P. Morgan.

But before any of this acquisition or merger happens there a few things happening in the background which I call "Corporate Bullying". In the workplace corporate bullying is a term use when a company's management force its employees to submit to its rule. However outside the workplace this means something else. What does this exactly mean? The definition is simple really, Corporate Bullying is a tactic bigger companies apply to intimidate and pressure smaller companies. Such tactics are put into effect to pressure small innovative companies to abandon its plans and strategies.

Let's take into consideration a small company, for this example one that I co-founded, AmanziTel. AmanziTel while starting receives a few nasty calls from bigger established players who feared that once AmanziTel gains ground it will eat-up their business. These bigger companies are afraid that a new, small and innovative company developing open source platforms and application will put them out of business. Such intimidation tactics results to issuing threats and bad publicity. However such tactics never worked and is only detrimental to the company who employs it.

Corporate bullying is a useless and expensive exercise since small innovative companies are founded to withstand the initial storm and geared for fast sustainable growth (Facebook, Google, and Red Hat). The publicity generated by Corporate Bullying gives the new player bigger exposure and fuels its growth (You Tube).

In retrospect Corporate Bullying is a move welcomed by small innovative players while bigger and more established entities keeps resorting to it. Like an old saying goes "You can't teach old dogs new tricks".

Men's Dress Code at Work

Have you ever entered an office building where everyone seem to be wearing the same clothes? It seems we only see those occurence in movies but they do happen in real life. I attended schools with strict dress codes where everybody wears the same color and style of clothes every day. I can tell you it was boring and dull, although it gives the appearance that everyone is equal.

In children, however, they seem to be fascinated in wearing the same clothes at the same time. My 6 year old daughter, Kaja wants to buy clothes at H&M, apparently its where the other girls in her class buy their clothes. So gone are the flashy individual designer clothes and comes the mass produce more common clothing. I observe this phenomenon so widespread in children and that they are the true catalyst for brand and image building. I have to say peer-to-peer brand marketing thus work better compared to any other medium.

The question that lingers in my mind is should there be a dress code for men at work? I admire people who puts in the right dress for the right occassion, but how do you categorise working clothes?

I once work with a guy in a management team who is a big advocate of dressing right, and for him dressing should be of formal type. So for him a correctly dressed employee should wear suit and tie and fashionable shoes. In several instances the same person skipped very important high level meetings since he was not wearing proper clothing. Although I have know several ocassion that the same person does not necessarily practice what he preaches.

It is a fact that there is actually an unwritten dress code for men in the work place. Such dress code is a product of national culture and peer influence. One good general example is that Western Europeans normally wears formal set of clothings to work while North Americans are more of the casual type. In a lot of instances corporate culture plays a huge role on what employees wear in the office. More traditional companies tend to advocate formal tyoe of attire while creative and dynamic work places favor street-casual clothing.

I am a believer of individual preferences, I think each person should dress as they want at work based on the image they wanted to project. Although I believe in the unwritten code that anyone who is customer facing should be dress in a manner that is presentable and credible. Sometimes looking your best does have its advantages.

Making a Difference

We live in a world with more than 6 billion people, each one of us are different from each other but similar in a way that we are but a small dot in a bigger universe. The question is how do we make a difference in the world? Some of us have left their legacy to history, some are more influential than others, a few are on the path of giving something wonderful to mankind.

Let me compare the world to a sandy beach, where people are the sand and stones across the entire beach. Most are small grain similar to each other unnoticed, some are stones which are visible and a few like rocks that are conspicuous. Common people are like the small grain of sand going about their own business almost completely ignored. More famous people are like stones, which leaves their mark in history and are more prominent. The rocks are the prominent ones, well known to many and are influential to society.

The rocks can be seen from afar, followed by many and can change the way the beach looks when they move. To each an every grain of sand, the challenge is how to make a difference on the beach. Although rocks are popular and prominent they are outshined by grains of sands working in coordination with each other to build beautiful structures that are admired by all.

Organisations such as the ones focused on open source software and educational foundations were created to make a dent in history, give sands a facility to outshine the rocks on the beach. This is achieved by pioneering disruptive but supportive concepts and technologies that will forever change the way telecoms business is operated. Furthermore, it gives the opportunity for the common staff to become a part of something beautiful, like a gorgeous sand castle.