Fair Play ruled in my upbringing in everything from marbles to baseball to life itself. It's a simple principle promoting that how you play the game is more important than winning. Well, the rules have changed. We have cheating bankers getting federal bailout money while honest people are losing their homes. Then there are companies out there who ignored the markets and followed their own egos all the way to bankruptcy and then they are bailed out.
I won't keep going, we all know the examples, in business, government, sports and our own personal lives. We all know that Fair Play is becoming more rare every day in certain circles. I wonder if we've let Fair Play slide because life is easier without that rule. Fair Play means that we have to be better than others to succeed. When we deliver a quality product and service to our customers, we have a significantly better chance of winning than the guys who do shoddy work. Fair Play also means we take responsibility for our actions. We step up and deliver focusing all our energy on doing our best, rather than on who has the power and how we can get more. Fair Play means we focus our efforts to get better and better at what we do. Our skill and knowledge, our performance, becomes our path to accomplishment. We can't use other forms of manipulation to get ahead anymore, they won't work.
Think what the return of Fair Play could do for life as we know it.
In business we'd return to the premise that when we deliver quality…we get the rewards. When we deliver crap, we go out of business. Now that would solve a lot of problems, wouldn't it? In our personal lives we'd learn to trust again, knowing that everyone we encountered was playing according to the rules. Wouldn't that be a great step. I believe we Fair Players are the majority in this world. So why do those who break the rules get by so often…and for so long?
I don't have the answer to that question. Nor do I know how to bring Fair Play back as the name of the game. What I do know is that I don't like it when others get to play by a different set of rules, actually break the rules, and still survive. Luckily I have patience…it won't be long.
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