Are you sitting comfortably? Good, now lets begin.

Cue: Robert Gottliebsen style voice over.

Once upon a time there was a big, big business. They were most successful in selling their shiny widgets to the market. Or they thought they were. One year they did terribly well for themselves and sold approximately a massive 711, 836, 200 shiny widgets. They were feeling very chuffed with themselves.

But the next year something went terribly wrong. They sold only 499, 627, 500 shiny widgets. The bean counters hit panic stations. “Good gracious, what will we do? what will we do. One more year like this and we’ll all be rooned“, they yelled during internal meetings. In their panic, they schemed a grand scheme.

Why not undercut all our competitors, target their markets and attack, attack, attack! Yes, indeed, that would be a grand plan! And we will keep attacking until we win and sell even more shiny widgets!

Unfortunately some of them didn’t remember a vital lesson from business school. Bad business decisions that hurt the market will ultimately hurt everyone, including their big, big business. In the real world of business, such inept business practices call for a immediate change in management. But that stuff is for people with ethics and transparent decision making processes, not silly people who haven’t learnt anything from Ansett, OneTel, HIH, Enron, WorldCom or Global Crossing.

But this is all just a fairy tale, a cautionary, yet cryptic fable to scare the kiddies.

Not unless you shift the decimal points.