Flattery - 1/2

A few hundred years ago an English religious dude by the name of Charles Colton penned the words “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.” Sometimes yes, but jealousy can also show its ugly face too once you’ve been around a while.

Being an entrepreneur is sometimes pretty lonely, as you have to lead from the front, take the flak, set the vision and make it all happen. Not everybody appreciates your own commitment to your vision and sometimes its just bl***y bloomin’ hard work. So it’s kinda nice when somebody flatters you even if it is with a backhanded compliment.

In 2006 I established the Web Developers Association (WDANZ) - a commercial operation designed to give web developers who wanted to reach outside of their own little world a strong brand that they could associate with. The last organization that tried to do this disintegrated - officially for reasons of busy-ness - but the story actually depends on who you speak to!

We structured the business based on feedback from the industry that they wanted a user-pays model and didn’t want another talkfest without a strong brand and good services. In the first week of our launch, Eaden McKee and a few of the PHP guys didn’t like the fact that WDANZ was a commercial operation, and explored the possibility that a non-commercial group should do the same thing in a non-commercial structure, but nothing much came of it at the time.

In April 2008, another PHP developer Ben Simpson made an attempt to establish a group using the same concept as we established for WDANZ, but as a non-commercial model. While on the surface, the arrival of potential competition in the same commercial space could be seen as a threat, it was actually interesting that implicit in the founders original statement of intent was an acknowledgement that he thought we (as the incumbent) were doing a lot of things right and he felt that this was a threat.

Leaders think ahead of the present time and lead, usually encouraging others to do the same. In my books, this one is positive. Imitators however react to others, then mimic or follow and often try to stop others. The later one is essentially negative, but gives a backhanded compliment to the former.

Flattery comes in all shapes and sizes. Imitation is simply one form of it, and you sometimes have to work hard to see where the flattery is. At the other end of the spectrum however there is a form of flattery that can snare a good man if he’s not careful. Manipulative flattery often based on jealousy.

I’ve been around long enough to see the evil some people get up to when they’re jealous. If you’ve got more money, more brains, better ideas or more of whatever that someone else secretly wants, there’s always a way that these dudes (or dudesses) can connive their way into our hearts and mess with our lives. You see it with the paparazzi sweet-talking a socialite into a pose for their next photo - or a woman chasing after some poor rich dude suckering up to him just in order to, well I’ll stop the detail now.

I’ve got a theory about flattery. I reckon it’s all wrong. It doesn’t really sit well with me for some reason. I think maybe it might have something to do with the first time it happened - back in the Garden of Eden. The serpent managed to leverage Adam and Eve’s conscience with a bit of flattery, and it was all down-hill from there. Here’s what the Good Book says happened:

Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:4,5

Now that’s one “Hell” of a temptation if you ask me. Being like God - woaaah - that’s really pretty tempting if you stop to think about it. Shame that they did actually stop to think about it, because they got sucked in and then lost the plot the moment they did.

They really should have let that slimey little devil slip right on past them without a second glance.

It’s the VICTUS IN AMBITUS way to let flattery slip on by, and not get caught up in the trouble it brings us.