Avast ye!

I don’t endorse taking prisoners, theft, killing, pillaging, looting, wearing a parrot as an accessory or piracy in any form, but I must admit that I’m a little awestruck by the sheer boldness of modern day pirates.  And I think there are some lessons that we can learn.

Hit them where they’re weak

The pirates don’t use another large boat to take down a tanker.  No, they use small fast little boats.  When your giant competitor tries to steal your customers, think like a pirate.  Get in your little speedboat and flank them.  Siphon off their customers from areas of their business that they can’t pay adequate atttention to.  Wal-Mart is defenseless against the custom tailor or the company that comes to you to change the tires on your car.

The power of a dozen pirates

In September 2008 twelve pirates armed with automatic guns and RPGs in a small high speed craft attacked, boarded and hijacked a  ship along with 25 crewmembers.  After stealing the crew’s cash and personal belongings, they requested a ransom from Egyptian intelligence officials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_attacked_by_Somali_pirates

Hold on.  There were 12 of them and they took on 25 crew members. Living in a port city, I’ve seen a few sailors.  They look like they can take care of themselves. So how did the pirates get the upper hand?  They showed up with the right tools (automatic guns and RPG’s) and I’ll bet that they were empowered (for those of you playing buzzword bingo – that’s 5 points) to make decisions on the spot about non-compliant hostages.

So, take this back to your company.  Ultra-Huge Competitor has miles of red tape to go through. In fact, they likely have some employees who need to ask for permission to go to the bathroom.  Not you, Nimble Fast-Reacting Company.  Your employees can make things right for customers.  On the spot. No manager approval required.  Because that’s what it takes to beat the big company.

Nothing is worse than a small company who wants to be big but does it in all the wrong ways.  They confuse standards and scalability with policies and inflexibility.

Try this.  Walk into a large big-box retailer and ask them if they can special order a certain German toy that you saw in last month’s Popular Mechanics.  Now try the same trick with your local Hobby shop.  If you get two no’s, it’s a good bet that the hobby shop’s space will be coming available fairly shortly.

Make a big bet

Most attempts at piracy fail.  Crews have gotten wise to this.  They use water cannons to repel the pirates.  Or they string barbed wire around the hull.  Some even have air support.

But when it pays off, the payoff is big.  One reported ransom was $15,000,000 US.

Back to you. If your idea pays off…if you beat the odds and your company survives…will you end up just eaking out a living?  Or will you end up being bought by a large competitor for an obscene amount of money because quite frankly, you’re just too much of a pain in the backside to have rattling around in the industry.

Safe harbour

Sometimes, you’ll take the risk and it won’t pay off.  What will you do?

Well, the pirates go back to their harbor towns where they live life quite well.  Even if there are some misgivings about the number of heavily armed men walking the streets, the citizens recognize the economic impact that they have.

So, do you have a backup plan?  I’ve encouraged my kids to go out and learn a trade right out of high school.  My son, in fact, is working on becoming a lifeguard.  He’ll always have that and if things went sour in his business, he can fall back on it to provide a bit of a bridge until something else comes up.

Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen!