The Power Of Unity

The marketplace does not suffer fools. The road to riches is littered with broken dreams. The most unfortunate part about the debris is that so much of it is unnecessary. But then, if everyone had common sense, there would be no room at the top to park your car. We'd all be there.

If you want success, you have to be more than just an idea person or a clever creative. The finest venture capitalists in the world invest in tech rather than creating it for one simple reason. They're money people, not creatives. They can't create the future, they can only finance it.

However, money, while important, isn't enough. Whether you need angel investors or have the rather unconventional notion of generating your own capital through sales of your products and services, you can't build a better tomorrow with clever ideas alone. Business is war, and it's a highly competitive world out there. If you don't know how to fight effectively, your competitors will put you out of business and then strip you for parts.

As the ancient Celtic tribes learned when faced with the strength and discipline of the Roman Legions, this isn't an arena for individual combat. One person will be quickly isolated. A single tribe won't last much longer. To truly be effective in the world of modern commerce, you have to bring your people together and focus their combined strength on your targets.

In unity there is strength. An old story told by many warrior cultures instructs a young man to break a single arrow, which he does with ease. He's then handed a bundle of arrows, which he can't break, at least as long as they're all bound together. It's worth noting that the chainsaw had yet to be invented.

If you're a typical modern day business, chances are good that you don't have anything that resembles such cohesion among your own groups. It's more likely that your environment is an ongoing political struggle between tribes, with an even larger number of skirmishes going on at the individual level, each person vying for power, territory and resources. Make unity a priority, and even the chainsaws won't scare you.