Building Great Business with I-Ching Hexagram 48 井The Well

The secrets of building great business can be found in I-Ching (For an introductory understanding of I-Ching, see I-Ching in One Minute for Abundant Life), the Ancient Chinese Classic Wisdom, Hexagram 48 井 The Well – Care & Sharing of Valuable (subscription needed to view the details). But the summary is reproduced below:

Summary & Teaching of  48 井The Well :

• Business is about delivering value.
• We must protect and care for our source of supply and our value producing system.
• We need to invest first to gains later.
• We need to plan and execute well to completion.
• Be considerate for the use and benefits of others.
• Co-operation brings greater success for all.

We can use the above as a reference check list to reflect on our present business. Such as:

• What is the unique value that we are delivering to our customers? Who are they? How to we reach them? What do they think is our value to them?
• Are we caring for our production system? Are we keeping them in tip-top operating conditions?
• Are we upgrading them? Did we invest in the upgrade?
• Are we planning and executing our plans or are we just letting runs on its own?
• Have we extended our view of business to take care our suppliers, partners, community, and the environment?
• Are we getting co-operations from our stakeholders including our owners, staff, customers, suppliers and community? What do they think of us?

Each Hexagram has a 6-stage line of additional wisdom to guide us.  The six stage lines of the Hexagram uses different states of the well to impress us with great wisdom. Below is the details and my additional comments.

Wisdom from the Stage Lines:

1. Dried Well.
   Must provide real value – thirst quenching water. Deliver your promises. Don’t put up good marketing messages, beautiful packaging only to disappoint the customers. A well is supposed to have water to quench the thirst of your customers. Are you creating the wow experience that customers want to return and ask for more?
2. Broken Well (equipments).
   Build on your strength and Fix the defects. Neglecting care and maintenance of our production system will result in broken equipments and lost revenues.
3. Unused Well.
   Be wise – hire and use talents well. Don’t let our resources go to waste. Don’t put class A people on class C job or Class C people on class A jobs. Have you neglected promotion of your offering? How do people know about the value that you have?
4. Strengthened Well.
   The system producing the value must be maintained and enhanced. Invest in improving our production system. Innovate in our offerings and the processes.
5. Cleansed Well.
   Reorganized the system with right placement of resources and run with principles produce valuable offerings customer seek.
6. Uncovered Well.
   Be trustworthy, transparent and generous. Great wealth is generated and shared. The more you give and share, the greater is your returns.

For more Ancient Chinese Wisdom, click here.

Lim Liat copyrighted March 2011.

Understanding The Great Learning DaXue in One Minute

We covered The Doctrine of the Mean ZhongYong and shall cover the next book Da Xue “The Great Learning” here. The book is very organized and is divided into One Jing 经Chapter and 10 Chuan 传 Chapters. The Jing chapter states the purpose and the outline for the book. Each of the Chuan Chapter cover a concept in the Jing Chapter. Hence, it is very easy to present the whole book of “The Great Learning” in a mind-map as follow:

Mind-map of The Great Learning DaXue

“The Great Learning” covers three objectives and eight steps to achieve the objectives. The three objective begin with glorifying righteous conduct/behavior, then the transformation of people into new people, so that they can attain the utmost goodness and create an ideal world of peace and prosperity.

Transformation begins with self and extends over to family, country and world. Change occurs from within and then extends to the external world of family, nation and world. Develop of Self begins

1. Studying The Things in our universal.
2. Develop Knowledge and Insights of how things- the principles.
3. Have Sincerity and Integrity.
4. A Right Heart than judges fairly and objectively.
5. A High Moral Character.
   Once we can take control of ourselves, we can then extend outwards to influence, in order, the following:
6. Lead the Family
7. Govern the Country
8. Rule the World with peace.

Further details of the 8 steps can be found in the following mind-map:

The Three Objectives:

The Eight Steps:

First 5 on Internal Character Development:

And the 3 External Steps:

Lim Liat Copyrighted 2011 March

Understanding The Doctrine of the Mean in One Minute

The Doctrine of the Mean, 中庸,  Zhongyong is one of the four books of Ru Jia, the School of Confucius Teachings. The author, Zi Si 子思 wrote it down so as to preserve its accuracy, as a handbook for the Ru School and taught it to Mencius.

The first Chinese word zhong 中 stands for right at the center, mid-point, just right, no more and no less, not bending toward either side, or balanced, or the pivot. The second word yong 庸 stands for common or universal. Hence, the Doctrine of the Mean, ZhongYong, should be translated as the Universal Law of Centrality or Just-Rightness or Balanced. I just wish to add that from the teaching of I-ching, this balanced is not static but a dynamic balance as the situation changes.

Chapter 1:5 致中和，天地位焉，万物育焉. tells us that the ideal state is “central harmony”. That is the position of heaven and earth and the abundant reproduction of all living things. It also proclaimed that this is the law or the way of heaven and that man should follow and not depart from it. There are therefore two key thoughts – centrally balanced and harmony and both work like two sides of a coin. If we don’t go to the extremes but hold the extreme in balanced, we can have harmony. If we have harmony, differences working together well, we must have hold the right balance.

The teaching is then about telling the leaders, the government and the kings, how to move and sustain the ideal state of centrally balanced pivot where optimum harmony and synergy is reached.

Love is the Way – People Centered Management

The main teaching of how to govern a country  is about having love and compassion for the people. It could be called “People Centered Management”.  Chapter 20 is long chapter but contains the key ideas for governing a country. 20:3 people centered way smooth the operation of governing, earth centered way facilitates growth of trees. v4 Governing is the responsibility of man. Select the people by their character. Character is built by following the Way. Following the Way begins with Love(Compassion).

One major teaching of the Ru School on ruling the world is to starts with character building of oneself , then run the family well, then rule the country and then the world. This concept is covered in depth in Da Xue, The Great Learning. We will cover this in a future post.

What is Love?

20:5 「仁者，人也，亲亲为大。 义者，宜也，尊贤为大。亲亲之杀，尊贤之等，礼所生也。 」

Love (Compassion) is about people. The main thing is about caring and being intimate with your close ones (relatives or friends). Righteousness is about suitability.  The key thing is about respecting the capable (talented people). When there is no love, no respect for the able, then you need to have rules of conduct.  We can see here that the best form of motivation and management is intrinsic motivation. It is behavior from the inside. When we need to use rules to force behavior, we are operating at a lower level of performance.

Types of Relationships

20:8 tells us that there are five kinds of relationships.

1. King and his officers. In modern term – Bosses and Staff
2. Parent and Children.
3. Husband and Wife.
4. Brothers and Sisters (Older and Younger)
5. Friends.

3 Ways to Develop Character and One way to grow.

1. Knowledge 智 – like to learn is close to knowledge.
2. Love (Compassion) 仁 – doing good work is close to love.
3. Boldness 勇 – knowing shame is close to boldness. (dare to face up to one’s mistakes and take corrective action is boldness).

The way to grow is to do the three things – ever learning, loving and boldly do the right things (not shameful things). Later verses added trust and sincerity.

Leadership begins with develop oneself, serving one relatives, understanding people and the ways of heaven.

The Nine Laws of Governing (20:12-14)

1. Develop Character. Know the right ways. Have integrity. Dress appropriately. Don’t break the rules of good conduct.
2. Respect the Capable. Then one will not be confused. Get rid of the inferior evil little people. Stay away from sexual lusts. Think lightly of wealth but value good moral.
3. Love and Care for your Relatives. Then there will be no complains and hatred from your relatives. Put them in higher positions and give them high salary. Share their love and hates (i.e. same values and beliefs). In present time, may be ‘relatives’ can refer to those people that are close and trust worthy to you.
4. Respect the High Ranking Officers. Then when crisis come there will be no panic. Support them with many staff. i.e. increase their span of control and allocated resources.
5. Compassionate towards All officers. Then they will committed in serving you. Truthfully put them into the right jobs. Pay them well.
6. Love the People like your children. Then you gain loyalty. Let them harvest at the right time. Collect less taxes.
7. Employ the Craftsmen. Then you will have abundance of goods. Monitor their productivity regularly and reward them accordingly.
8. Treat the Foreigners well. Then all the people around will be obedient and follow your leading. Welcome them when they come. Send them off well. Rewards those that are able and help those that are in needs.
9. Gain the following of the Feudal Lords.Then all the people in the world will respect you. Help the lost countries to stand up again. Stop the rioting. Solve the crisis. Regular accept their requests for paying respects. Accept their gifts. Give them back in abundance.

Applying the 9 laws in business, perhaps we can treat the people as our customers, foreigners as foreign talents or subcontractors, feudal lords as our suppliers or even competitors.  The lessons seem to be to treat all of them well with love, respect, right assignment of jobs and corresponding high salary and rewards. Our competitors in one deal may be our partners in another deals. Building good relationship with all is a key for long term and global success.

Planning (20:16)

Everything being with a plan so that there could be success. Prepare first, negotiate and agreed first before taking actions so as to prevent premature stoppages, pains and poverty when you execute your plan.

Integrity, Sincerity 诚, Trust 信, Keeping Promises are the Way of Heaven. (20:17-18)

The teaching of Ru School stressed on five values of Love 仁， righteousness  义, rules of  conduct （good manners) 礼,  knowledge 智, and trust 信。 We have covered all the five here and have one more – Boldness 勇。

Learning (20:9,19-21) – Just DO IT!

1. Know it whether by birth, by learning, forces by circumstances.
2. Do it till success whether in good time, for profits, or forced to do it.
3. How we learn:
   1.  as broad as can be
   2.  question it
   3. meditate on it
   4. discern it.
   5. practice it often.
   Repeat 1-5 until you fully understand it.
4. I try harder. Some do once and get it. I do hundred to get it. Some do ten times, I do thousand times.
5. If we learn like above, then the dump becomes bright and the weak become strong.

Lim Liat Copyright 2011 Feb

Understanding The Chinese Mindset in One Minute

The Chinese have more than 5000 years of history. They are spread all over the world. People staying in the China mainland are not the only way to define who are the Chinese. The Chinese culture, traditions and beliefs are spread throughout the world with the people and shared by those in the mainland and those in the rest of the world collectively known as Overseas Chinese (华侨).

A recent book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” written by Amy Chua, now known as the Tiger Mother,  created a lot of interests about the traditional Chinese parenting and education methods. Some even accused her of not even a Chinese or she does not represent the typical Chinese parenting tradition. Instead of arguing about her, we should dig into the ancient Chinese literature and history and let them tell us what the Chinese is like.

I think the shortest and most representative ancient Chinese literature is “三字经 The Three Character Classics”. Here is a good site with English translation. It is written the thirteenth century. It is simple, with only 3 word phases. It is short – about 1200 words. It is designed for kids. It is widely taught; being the required reading for primary school kids over the centuries.

It is an amazing book. It covers almost everything. It is a simple wikipedia! It is a curriculum for education.

Here is why:

It has five sections:

1. Basic Knowledge about Man, Development and Relationships.
2. Maths, Science and Sociology.
3. Index to the Classical Must read Literature and their purposes.
4. The History of China – from beginning to 13th century. (later editions extends to present time)
5. The Past Heroes as our models.

The purpose of the book is about teaching man how to live well on earth – a harmonious, righteous and useful life.  The book emphasizes ‘education and learning’ from a young age. It teaches the young to make effort in learning and be hardworking.

It begins with men as basically good but warns that if not educated and developed well, they will go astray. It ends with “Others leave a fortunes to their children, but I only teach my children one bible. Diligence brings rewards, fooling around is no use. Take heeds and be vitalized.

On parenting, the most famous verse is v3、养不教，父之过。教不严，师之惰。子不学，非所宜。幼不学，老何为。 Just feed and not teach is the wrong doing of the father. Teaching without discipline is the laziness of the teacher. Children not learning is not right. Not learning from young then what will become of old?

All are to learn from young and live them out when older and stronger; bringing benefits to the king and the common people; build reputation,  bring honor to parents. Create a bright future and provide wealth for the future generations. (v46 幼而学，壮而行。上致君，下泽民。扬名声，显父母。光于前，裕于后。)

The moral values are love, righteousness, good manners, wisdom and integrity v10 ,,, 曰仁义，礼智信。此五常，不容紊. The classics are to teach us morale values, love and righteousness, self-control and managing others, understand the saying sages and understand good manners and music; know the good and bad, right and wrong. Understand the beginning and the ending. The past heroes teach us about diligence in learning, learning from young so that there is no regrets in later life, not allowing poverty to stop us from learning, learn about vision and determination and watchfulness.

The way to grow is to learn and learn the right thing well. Put in the effort now to enjoy the fruit of the later.

I hope your interests are stirred up to know about the Ancient Chinese Wisdom. Click the link.

Lim Liat copyrighted 2011

Management According to Confucius – 10 Keys

The best and important parts of a book are usually at the start and at the end. The first five verses of Lun Yn (The Analects, the teaching of Confucius complied by his disciples) are presented below:

Chapter 1 学而 Learning

1 子曰 Confucius says：

• 1a“学而时习之，不亦说乎？Learning and practicing, is it not a joy?
• 1b 有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎？Having friends from far away, is it not joyful?
• 1c 人不知而不愠，不亦君子乎？ Not feeling angry when others don’t know about or acknowledge you, it not this a gentleman (wise superior man)?

2 有子曰 YouZi says：

• 其为人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鲜矣；不好犯上，而好作乱者，未之有也。
  Those that respect parents and friends, they are seldom disrespectful to their superiors. Those that are not disrespectful to their superior and at the same time create troubles, cannot be found.
• 君子务本，本立而道生。孝弟也者，其为仁之本与！
  Wise men (frequently translated as Superior Men) focus on the development of  basics first. When the basic foundations are strong, moral virtuous character is birthed. Respecting our elders and friends is the basic of love and compassion.

3 子曰 Confucius says：“巧言令色，鲜矣仁！” “smooth, flowery and tricky speech, tempting appearances, are seldom associated with true love and compassion.

4 曾子曰：“吾日三省吾身：为人谋而不忠乎？与朋友交而不信乎？传不习乎？”
Zeng Zi says: “I examine my life daily on three things. Am I faithful in my work? Am I trustworthy with my friends? Am I doing what I am teaching?

5 子曰：“道千乘之国：敬事而信，节用而爱人，使民以时。”
Confucius says: “The ways to govern a big country are: faithful in work and be trustworthy. Controlling my spending(be not wasteful) and loving the people, using the people at the right time (i.e. use them when they are free and not to disturb their farming or other productive activities)

The Management Principles:

1. Learning and the Joy of Learning.
   Confucius predates Peter Sengge’s Learning Organization by about 2500 years! Yet he has one key thing that is missed out by the Learning Organization proponents, and that is the Joy of learning. Why do people not want to learn? It is because we are ‘educated’ by the society that learning is hard and painful. If one sees learning as fun and joyful, one will be motivated to learn. Walt Disney was the first person that I know to do this well – one mission of his Disney Lard is about learning and fun – the origin of EDUTAINMENT! Read his Disneyland opening speech.
2. Networking and the Joy of Relationships.
   He had friends from far away. Friendship is joy and precious. It builds one up. Expand your network, even to far away places. With the social media network, it is easy. But Confucius did teach us about how to pick your friends in other part of Lun Yu.
3. Humility – Don’t be Full of Self.
   We can tell how proud we are by our reaction to others action about us. If we get angry because someone does not recognize or know about us then we are really too proud. It is a warning signal that we could be too full of ourselves. We need to pay attention to others.
4. Love & Respect is the Foundational Quality of Relationships & Success
   The way to build relationship is by love. The basic of love of respect, respect for those that are our elders, either in age or in position, and respect for one another.  Respect for others is a reflection of our character and quality and not about whether the other person deserving our respect or not. In this world of knowledge and diversity, it is important respect the culture and opinions of others that are different from us. Only through mutual respect, can we truly build harmonious and strong relationship.
5. Watch-out for the Sweet Talk and Tempting Appearance.
   (Don’t believe in Advertisements and PR’ Spins!)
   Don’t be fooled by external sweet speeches and appearance. Trickery talk and inviting and tempting signals take advantage of us are not true love. They may appear that they have our interests at heart but are just out there to take advantage of us.
6. Review and Improve Continuously – Integrity in Work, Friends, Self.
   We are to reflect on our lives daily on 3 things:
   1. Commitment to our work – giving our very best.
   2. Integrity and trustworthiness to our friends.
      Did we delivery our promises? Did we do our best for them?
   3. Walking our talk. Did we practice what he taught others?
7. Manage the Organization by:
   1. Faithfulness and Accountability to our Responsibilities.
   2. Integrity
   3. Spending wisely without waste
   4. Loving people.
   5. Using the people at the right time. Create opportunities for them and use them wisely. Jim Collin’s bus model “Getting the right people on board and on the right seats”. I just want to add that we must make sure we are heading the right direction.

Lun Yn begins with learning to gain understanding and ended with the warning of the consequences of  ‘not understanding’.

The last verse Chapter 20：3 is

子曰‘不知命、無以為君子也。不知禮、無以立也。不知言、無以知人也’
Confucius said,

1. “Not understanding the ways of Heaven and one’s destiny, it is impossible to be a wise man (Usually translated as superior man or gentleman).
2. Not understanding good manners (the protocols to behave and communicate) , it is not possible for person to be successful.
3. Not understanding the true message behind the speeches, it is impossible to know and evaluate people.

Hence, I will need to add the following points to the 7 points above

• 8. Develop and Understand your Calling and MissionUnderstand our own personal calling and matching that of the corporation.
• 9. Understand the Protocols of Communications and have good manners.
• 10. Know a Person well by his speech and behavior. Not just his speech.

Conclusions:
The ten key words for good management and success are:

1. Learning with Joy
2. Networking
3. Humility
4. Respect & Love
5. Watch-out for External Appearance
6. Review to Improve – Integrity to work, friends and self
7. Be Effective and Put people at the Right Jobs
8. Know Your Mission
9. Have Good Manners
10. Know your Staff & Friends.

BVOTECH Copyrighted 2011