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Charles Handy wrote about this 20 years ago. For a while now I had confused about my position in the grand scheme of things and probably over estimating my influence or potential leverage.

It’s taken me a while to realise where I stand but one of the people who has taught me most about this is Rosie, my thirteen (soon fourteen) year old youngest daughter and middle child.

It seems that Rosie has inherited the ‘Colin Campbell fairness gene’. I completely appreciate that fairness is a world view and an opinion and there is no fact in what is fair but Rosie has a strong sense of indignation any time she comes across something she feels is unfair; much like her father.

I guess I thought that when we work with organisations that are bigger than us then we would be able to influence them in one degree or another because we think we were ethical, honest and straight talking about the good things and the bad things.

Just for the record that was completely naive. I am but a flee and they’re the elephant.

It’s unusual for a single flee to even gain the attention of the elephant let alone force them into scratching. But the flip side of this is of course that the flee communicates with other flees and multiple groups of flees can definitely stimulate a response.

All of us in my lane of work (dentistry) are flees, pretty much at the mercy of large multinational conglomerates (investment banks or corporations). In the end though we still have the power to not buy, not engage and not promote. We can protect our community from the perverse incentives and unfairness that at times seem to follow big businesses like a bad smell follows an elephant.

Blog post number: 1550