Going against Establishment is bad business

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Going against the Establishment is a bad business unless you are in the business of politics! In the world that is so well networked, a loose word, even among friends or in a WhatsApp chat, can get into problems and can negatively impact your balance sheet. If you are in the business, then the best thing to concentrate is your business. If you do not want to, or don’t know how to, leverage the Establishment, then it is better to just shut up and work on your growth. No place for venting your emotions, particularly those against the Establishment.

There are many definitions of Establishment. The one I liked most was is dictionary.com when they mentioned it as as “the existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority”. It is all encompassing. Right from the Managing Committee of your housing society, the Principal of your child’s school, to regulators, upto the central government.

There are many business leaders whose downfall started at the moment they started going against the Establishment. India’s corporate history is replete with such instances.

I have opted out from many WhatsApp groups with the promise that I will join back again after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The political environment currently is turbulent. There are machineries at both ends of political spectrum capable of tracking all my comments, forwards, etc. Unknowingly, you react to a post put in by friend or a business associate. If you end up supporting the Establishment as your reaction, the opposition is unhappy. If you end up opposing the ruling disposition, then you face the danger of the Empire striking back. It is safer not to find yourself in such a situation.

Surely, there are some among us who are anti-Establishment by nature. And surely one has witnessed Martin Luther King, Anti-Emergency Movement, Arab Spring, the Playboy Magazine successfully implementing ideas that were anti-Establishment. They were not businessmen. Karl Marx’s theory of Dialectical Materialism does not help much to today’s entrepreneur. When an entrepreneur is supporting the Establishment of the day, he/she is supporting his/her enterprise. Nothing wrong in that. What may be wrong is the compulsion to support Establishment at all aspects of his/her life simply because peace is needed to maintain focus on enterprise.

Thank Heavens that we are in a democracy and creation of wealth is no longer a sin. I am sure that it was worse when kings or religion ruled this planet.

We still have a secret ballot where we can express whatever we want. How I wish that there was a secret ballot for everything that is needed by an entrepreneur to succeed.