No? Good. Otherwise I’d be skewering you in this post, too.

We all know the type, though—two-faced, double-dealing, hypocritical, dealing behind closed doors, polished smile with forked tongue, amicable but back-stabbing.

A Real-life Weasel

I have a recent example. No real names or specific information will be used because I’m not 100% sure I have all the information correct and I wouldn’t want to ruin someone’s name due to inaccuracy, but this is the way things appear to me.

A young entrepreneur I know, we’ll call him Adam, had some really good ideas and decided to start a business. He figured out a process that is tricky and has a learning curve too big for the average consumer, and so he began a service to carry out the process for customers. Things got moving, but Adam quickly figured out that to hit critical mass he had to get some outside help. He asked a friend to invest in his company and a relative to help manage the business.

Being an entrepreneur, Adam continued to have good ideas related to the process he created. For some reason, he didn’t feel like sharing them with his investor or his manager. He began working on his ideas parallel to his first business. Eventually, they were developed enough that Adam left his first business to start a new business. The interesting thing is that the new business is in the same industry, performing the same service, in the same geographical area. The only difference is that his new business incorporates his new ideas and doesn’t involve his investor or manager.

Analysis of a Weasel

Why was Adam willing to stab his friend/investor and family member/manager in the back?

Maybe it was greed. He wanted a bigger share of the profits from his good ideas for himself.

Maybe it was bad personal skills. Adam couldn’t work with his investor or his manager very well, and rather than resolve issues, he decided to just leave.

Maybe it was malice. He was mad at his investor and/or manager for a perceived wrong and wanted to punish them.

We may never know with Adam, but these reasons usually point at a flaw in the weasel, not his situation or coworkers.

Consequences of Being a Weasel

Despite the immediate gains that a weasel may reap, there are some negative effects:

1. I will never do business with Adam, and I will try and persuade anyone who is considering doing business with him that it isn’t a good idea. I can only look at him with contempt for what he did, and I can’t trust him. In general, a weasel can expect to lose the trust and confidence of some (or all!) of his associates.
2. Depending on the contracts he signed, Adam may have done/be doing something illegal. For example, there are often non-compete clauses or issues of intellectual property at stake. The process may have been associated with the business and not Adam himself, which means he may be stealing his former company’s intellectual property to use in his second company. In general, if weasels take actions that are illegal (and not just unethical), they can expect to be caught eventually. The odds are certainly against them.
3. Adam may work for a while with his new business and realize that it is going to fail, that it isn’t as successful or efficient or profitable as his last business. Weasels often don’t realize how good they have it until they’ve burnt their bridges on the way to something that appears better, but turns out not to be.

There are lots of ways to be a weasel, some of which are illegal, some of which are not. The reason you would be called a weasel, though, is because they are all unethical. Be careful about how you deal with people and make promises. If you change your deal or break your promises for your own benefit, you risk being labeled a weasel and facing some or all of the consequences that come with being a weasel.