Key Business Ideas drawn from the Sicilian Mafia
The New York Mafia(informally known as The Five Families) were equal to the size of the top 10 US Corporations at the height of their golden years. They controlled the trucking, ports, the garbage business, meat and fish markets, real estate and so much more. Their inner workings and the hierarchical chain of command still draw a lot of attention from the business world. Many of their principles and ideas still linger today.
No moonlighting allowed
Out of all the rules of the Mob, the biggest rule that must never be broken is what’s called “Omerta”, their code of silence to never reveal the secrets to outsiders or authorities. This is what made the Mob untouchable, in the eyes of the public because they couldn’t get anyone to be an informant or reveal the inner workings.
Although the term ‘moonlighting’ has emerged recently, the idea of being a rat or informant is something that has never been welcomed, especially when those trade secrets today can cost a fortune for the company and put the competitor in a better position.
Branding
Another rule was that the Mob members never referred to themselves as the Mafia or any other incriminating name to keep out of the public eye. They only referred to themselves as the ‘la Cosa Nostra’ which literally means “our thing” in Italian. For the longest time, there were doubts about whether the Mob existed and people claimed it was a mere conspiracy. Even when the movie “Godfather” was being written, the boss of the Mob directed the director to pull out the word ‘mafia’ or its similar references in the script.
Many big oil companies and even consumer-centric FMCG-based companies today use this as a branding thumb-rule to by moving away from their core product and focusing on building a fluffy narrative or focusing on their subsidiary products. The entire ‘surrogate marketing industry’ lives on this core principle, which was almost perfected by the Mafia back then.
Motivation and Leverage
The recruitment process for the mafia is also quite interesting to look at. They typically got younger people as ‘associates’ to better trust them and to better demonstrate the glamour and value of the Mafia to young minds. For further leverage on the associates to stay committed, the Mob made you do a vicious crime to make them stay committed.
It’s interesting to draw parallels to certain new-age companies for this kind of behaviour even today. Firms like Rockstar Games draw in young and passionate designers and developers who are intrinsically drawn because of their early experiences of playing GTA and then make them work intensive hours, with minimum leaves and tightly-drawn contracts as leverage to not leave and stay committed.
As the modern world continues to evolve, so too does the nature of organized crime. Today’s mafias are not the ones with the gun and knife, but economic mafias that seek to maximize their profits by exploiting both customers and employees. These nefarious organizations often operate in the shadows, their true intentions hidden behind a veneer of legitimacy.
