I love small

I remember elementary school and the kids that won some arguments with the “I’m bigger than you” excuse. What I didn’t know then is many of those kids were going to do it for the rest of their life.

This is about big organizations. The kind that say “I’m bigger than you” to their customers. That probably optimize and automate for more and more efficiency, leading to more and more profit and higher and higher board compensations. That probably segment customers according to their value, not according to their needs. That probably reward workers for the total revenue they bring, not the satisfaction of their customers.

One doesn’t need to work in football to understand when two teams start any match, none is bigger than the other, they have to play to win. Yes, in football there can be only one winner. But the larger is the number of opponents and the ladder a team climbs, more meaningful is the victory. Still, with teams the same size.

Getting big doesn’t mean one’s getting better. Either it’s business or whatever, I also thought that was obvious. It’s not.

There’s a retail store where you feel everything is the same, despite the brand. Where you don’t actually find a person to talk to, just frenetic buyers among zombie sellers.

There’s a service provider that keeps you on the bureaucracy loop for ages and you end up doing what you don’t want or need.

There’s a company’s nameless rep (and this is my favourite) that explains you “the system doesn’t allow me”, at which point I feel like offering a red pill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill

And, last but not the least, those behemoths that went out of business to the loss of thousands – it’s always the case, I don’t care anyone got arrested at the end.

That’s why I love small. Small doesn’t mean weak, inferior, or outdated. Small means flexible, ambitious, honest. Small may be limited, but too big to fail is something no one ever proved right, except empirically we know it’s wrong.

And all this because stars aligned, and I had a phenomenal week followed by this terrible one. Where a friend just got mobbed by another behemoth, one I actually been mobbed in the past too. Where I got this behemoth writing me a menacing letter that only shows their incompetence, they are asking me to solve. Where I got a partner delaying me for months just to let me know how big they are as an excuse. Where a few customers of mine were mobbed by another behemoth that disrupted their businesses for the sake of a procedure.

So, consider this my red pill. Dinosaurs were big. They’re extinct. We’re just not doing enough to extinguish behemoths. Before behemoths extinguish us in their hunger. And I’m sorry for you working for behemoths even if for a salary, that excuse for ignoring the behemoth that sooner or later is going to eat you too.

And before wishing you a pleasant weekend, I’ll be just there putting a nail in another behemoth’s foot.