This is a favorite of mine on Aesop. Aesop’s fables, for all its simplicity , amazingly is a good source for stories in teaching management and life values.

“There was once a mouse who approached a lion. “Lion, ” , the mouse says, ” I have had difficulty running away from beasts who want to eat me. Are you ok if I just live atop your head. I am light, and you will hardly feel it.”

The lion was upset, let out a mighty roar, and with one mighty roar, gobbled up the mouse.”

I think this story illustrates that we should be mindful of where our pride and confidence emanates from. I have seen people who thinks they are real photographer pros, when in fact, all they have is good equipment where they press the shutter. I have seen people who think they create ‘cool’ programs, when over 95% of what the program does is in the developer tool runtime. I have seen Americans who are conceited and look down to some people in developing countries. Of course, there is something to be proud of being an American, but when as an individual, you know this guy is no better than many of the people he looked down on (even has less education) , except that he has a little more dollars and carries an American passport, then you start to ask where all his haughtiness comes from.

I knew a person from Microsoft many years ago. He was feeling good. During the 90s, Microsoft was an admired company, and he thrives that he could call the CEOs of the biggest companies, and get them out to answer the phone. At length, he felt his connections were enough, and he wanted to venture on his own entrepreneurial venture, which would succeed on the strength of his ‘network’.

More and more he became frustrated. The big businessmen who used to be chummy with him were now too busy to meet him. At length, he confessed to me, that it was a hard lesson, but he learned that the people respected him, or liked him simply at that time, because he was representing Microsoft. And when he left the company, it started to become more and more difficult ….

It is a hard lesson to learn. We have been fortunate that as a technology company, we have been steadily growing, and now, we are bigger than many of our customers. Sometimes, our sales people now are not paying enough respect to the customers as they ought to. That is why part of the ‘awareness’ that you need to know in order to succeed is how much catchet you carry as an individual, and how much is due to the technology or people or company behind your back. As they say, ” don’t burn your bridges on the way up, because you might meet them again on the way down. ”