Are Rules For Keeping Or Breaking In Business?

Posted by nialldevitt under Management
From http://bloggertone.com 4833 days ago

Take business guides, etiquette, rules and regulations. How rigidly do you stick to those rules and how many of them do you break and for what reason?

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Comments

Written by saraib820
4833 days ago

Great post. I think it is safe to assume that most visionaries who were given coloring books in grade school drew outside of the lines. They might have been yelled at by teachers, but it set in motion something that would follow them through their lives. In business, breaking rules, as long as it doesn't hurt others, is a good thing.

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Written by yoni67
4833 days ago

I think my take-away from this post is that rules are made to be broken. Rule-braekers can be "mavericks" and "people-ahead-of-their-time." But once morality and ethics are trampled on, a red-line has been crossed.

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Written by EncouragingExcellence
4833 days ago

Absolutely Yoni. If we were to stay within the boundaries we won't develop. It also brings into question morals and ethics too, some of what is acceptable morally and ethically today would have been frowned upon 30 years ago. It ALL gets stretched and at each stage we collectively agree or disagree with the boundaries and stay within them or disagree and move past them.

The point of the post was to query rule breaking in business and whether it is beneficial or stifling to business owners.

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Written by yoni67
4833 days ago

Niall/Mairead:

Good job with the article in spurring discussion. I always tend to judge articles on BS not by how many votes they get, rather by votes AND the number of comments they catalyze.

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Written by EncouragingExcellence
4833 days ago

Oh my! That's a first for me, loads of comments, thanks folks.

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Written by businessavante
4833 days ago

Interesting, Mairead.

I'd say Nelson Mandella was only technically considered a terrorist by a diseased society - that he was never really a terrorist. Our 'freedom fighter' is our enemy's terrorist (or criminal).

I'll add that ethics are non-negotiable - if we lose sight of this, we become diseased ourself.

Duncan

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Written by businessavante
4833 days ago

Hi Mairead.

I would agree in theory were it not that Apartheid was a disease - fighting a disease is alright with me. Every revolution costs innocent lives - to call the leaders of just revolutions terrorists (unless you support the diseased government) is what's wrong. Martin Luther King & Gandhi advocated total non-violence, but that scenario isn't going to work in many situations.

Duncan

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Written by EncouragingExcellence
4833 days ago

While his motive was to gain freedom for his people, he was a terrorist in that he supported violant action and considered the people killed "fair game" and often innocent people are killed in actions like that. To the victor the spoils, to the loser the condemnation. There are many in various countries at the moment who would fall into that category, yet a shift in perception and roles could just as easily be reversed.

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Written by businessavante
4833 days ago

All their "junk" was rendered next to useless when they ousted the Shah - look how fast Saddam attacked (it wasn't too hard to fight an army w/its head cut off). He never would've attacked w/o the coup - the way it played out, Iran was just a paper tiger.

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Written by yoni67
4833 days ago

It was a beautiful bird and Janes, my bible for all things military, lists the Tomcat as still being a frontline Iranian fighter...though spare parts are hard to come by, leaving most inoperable.

They have some newer Soviet stuff, though not much, and their indigeous crap...a copy of the F-5.

Once there anti-aircraft capabilities are neutralized, I think any attacking air-force (ie U.S. or Israel) would enjoy complete air-superiority.

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Written by businessavante
4833 days ago

The lauded outlaw killers of the Old West were no better than our current serial killers, some gangsters of the '30's (like Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde), or some of the Vikings as portrayed in their own sagas (such as Egil Skallagrimsson, a sensitive poet/serial killer who'd kill at the drop of a hat, according to him).

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Written by businessavante
4833 days ago

The F-14 was designed to protect aircraft carriers. It's Phoenix missile system & associated radar could track 6 separate targets simultaneously past 400 miles - there was nothing that came close in the late '70's. The British Challenger tank was the 1st tank to use Chobham armor - invented by the Brits, and it had a 120mm gun years before the Abrams (which started life w/a 105mm). (This is all from memory - no searches or books consulted.)

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Written by yoni67
4833 days ago

D-

I guess not entirely unrelated is the outlaw/killer/living on his own terms/rule-breaking/blood on his hands figure who is thought of at the time, or through the blurry lens of history, as a folk-hero.

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Written by businessavante
4833 days ago

Iran was one of the most well-armed countries in the world - we saw to that, and he paid out the wazoo for F-14 Tomcats and the British Challenger tank (the even more expensive, customized "Shir of Iran" version), two of the most advanced weapons systems in the world at the time.

I'm also pretty sure the hostages were freed as Reagan was being sworn in - whatever he said to them did the trick.

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Written by yoni67
4833 days ago

It's a big dilemma in hindsight: did we prop the Shah up so much that it created a backlash against the West...the Islamic Revolution...or did we not prop him up enough...could more weapons, support and assistance in quelling the riots have helped avoid the "444 days" and the return of Khomeini from exile in France and the thirty+ year fiasco we are now dealing with in regards to Iran?

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Written by businessavante
4833 days ago

The Shah of Iran is another - we propped him up till the "students" took over.

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Written by yoni67
4833 days ago

P.S.: I give DeKlerk credit not to take away from Mandela, rather in the context that if someone such as he had not come along, Mandela could still be in jail, or worse...would he have lived into his 90s on Robbins Island?

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Written by yoni67
4833 days ago

Good point Duncan.

Mandela was a true freedom fighter. But it's also vitally important that we never forget how some of the people we (the Western World) initially thought were on the right side of the freeom/terrorist equation who turned out to be very bad apples:

-The Taliban (romanticized in novels, by politicians, and even in a Rambo movie in the 1980s)

-Joseph Stalin (referred to as "Uncle Joe" by FDR and Churchill)

-Manuel Noriega (supported and "placed in power" by the CIA

-Saddam - Armed to the teeth and supported by the West during and before the Iran-Iraq War

In the case of Mandela, a great man was freed, much, in my opinion, through the insight and sheer greatness of F.W. DeKlerk, a courageous man who came to power in SA and knew that the system was wrong and needed to be reformed.

In many other cases, though- just a few listed above - thr freedom/terror conundrum turns out to be a case of "you better watch out what you wish for!"

Regards to you and kitty!

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