On Unfair Decisions

There have been moments in my life when I ran into blatant unfairness — the kind that touched me personally, my interests, my business. At times it happened in situations where the decisions were made by people who held more power and influence than I did back then.

I remember a case when a decision that mattered a great deal to me was being hashed out behind closed doors, and I wasn’t invited in. I sat on a chair right outside that door, waiting to be called. They brought me in for a couple of minutes, just long enough to lay out my position briefly, and then asked me to wait outside again. I was on edge, and I couldn’t even imagine what, or how, they were agreeing on in there. When the result was announced, only a small part of my interests had been taken into account; the rest left a lot to be desired. I felt regret, helplessness, and the pain of realizing I couldn’t change a thing while other people decided my fate and the fate of my business for me.

I’ve also had to work with people I didn’t choose, but who were responsible for some part of the deal. It’s not that they stirred up any open dislike in me — it’s that I shared not a single value that mattered to me with them. And yet I had no choice: if I wanted the project to succeed, I had to make peace with the conditions and limits I’d been handed.

Over time I drew an important lesson: if you keep moving toward your goals and your ideals, sooner or later everything falls into place. Adversaries discredit themselves, new opportunities appear with more room to maneuver and more ways to shape the outcome, the people making the decisions get replaced.

Gradually, step by step, but without fail, things came around to exactly what I had been after in the first place at those, let’s say, meetings I wasn’t invited to. It just took more time — sometimes even years.

What’s the main conclusion I drew? Yes, at times we feel a sense of unfairness when other people, or the situation itself, decide things against us. But if we don’t give up, if we keep acting and keep persuading, sooner or later we get what we want. Maybe not on the first try, or the second, but by the tenth we end up where we want to be. There are no irreversible situations and no unchangeable conditions. There’s no need to despair and abandon what you started halfway through.

Here’s to all of us claiming fairness for ourselves — even if it takes a little longer! 😎