This post’s headline are the earliest ‘words of wisdom’ I remember being given. Despite the fact that it often proves true and is, no doubt, a fundamental aspect of human nature, I have always disliked the phrase.

Thinking about it recently, I believe this dislike comes from the ‘overtones’ of corruption that are often associated with it.

There’s an implication that no matter how much effort you put into learning something and doing it well, someone else is going to do better not because they’ve put in similar levels of effort but because they just happen to be mates with someone in a better position than you.

I’ve seen some great examples of this over the years. In my early career, I remember questioning some expenditure on the departmental marketing budget that was going directly to some UK MPs. This was before the ‘cash for questions’ scandal broke back in the 1990s where it transpired that MPs were taking money to ‘ask questions’ in Parliament. In this instance this was to ‘ask questions’ regarding the future of digital TV which it was clearly in my employers interest to promote. The fact that I saw these budget lines and, indeed, related paperwork from the MPs themselves, with my own eyes means I will always be inclined to believe ‘there is no smoke without fire’ when it comes to these type of scandals. Once the US management took over, things became even worse, cluminating in massive debts and legal action for corrupt dealings.

Then there was Lucent, a company I had admired from a distance for a number of years before joining it. Oh boy, what a hotbed of corruption that place was. I was working there when Rich Mcginn was fired and all the dodgy dealings were exposed. It was often heartbreaking to see these loyal lifelong AT&T/Lucent employees cast out in wave after wave of subsequent redundancies – the many years of hard work and talent sullied by the greed and corruption of its senior executives.

In the hosted services industry, I’ve seen, first hand, how ruthlessly organisations like Microsoft can act through personal and partner networks and how it infiltrates the analyst and consultancy ecosystem to spread its own version of the truth. When I see comments on how it is ‘gunning for Google’ I can certainly believe it.

In the software industry, I’ve witnessed similar vendor and analyst dodgy dealings which are far more about money than they they are about unbiased truth. Likewise, I’ve seen how professional services organisations conspire with vendors to extract maximum cash from clients. In crowded and confused markets, like web marketing and information management solutions, it’s been encouraging to see the growth of truly ‘vendor averse’ organisations like The Real Story Group – we need much more of this type of ‘trustworthy’ analysis in other areas.

In recent years, I’ve had the displeasure of encountering the very worst example of wealth driven entitlement and superiority in my life so far, which helped me understand how a combination of dysfunctional personalities and money driven power could create the type of society where horrors like apartheid and ethnic cleansing could exist.

So, based on over 20 years of seeing the good and bad in the business world, I welcome the idea that Wikileaks intends to turn its attentions on business organisations. It would be good to see some real transparency rather than the faux transparency it is currently fashionable to proclaim.