Confucius Advising The Manager

Part I

Claudio Pardo Molina, Denise Tarud

• Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781071544242
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Publicité

This book provides practical advice for the daily management of a company. Managers have to deal with ethical or moral issues all the time and do not necessarily have the academic background to respond to these challenges.
Because of this, I wrote this book with a series of recommendations for decision making based on Confucius' millenarian book "Analects". It is as if we were lucky enough to be able to hire as external consultant the wise Confucius, born more than 2000 years ago.

Chapter 1 A New Manager

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I wrote this book in order to convey the techniques of business administration that I have learned based on Confucianism and which are different from but complementary to those taught in all Western business schools. For this reason, throughout the book I will present a dialogue between the manager who writes this book and Confucius the advisor. The fictitious reasons why I met with Confucius are presented below.

Due to major advances in today's technology, one of the world's largest consulting firms, McKinsey and Company, agrees to implant a chip in one of its main partners. This chip has a very particular characteristic, all the knowledge of the Chinese sage Confucius. The chip was developed from genetic samples of the descendants of this Asian sage born more than 2,500 years ago. Once the chip was placed at the base of his brain, he started his journey to our company, because we had just hired him. To make this clear, I will describe the conversations we had over the course of twenty meetings.

When he first came to my office, he told me that he had read the diagnosis that his consulting firm had made. He warned me that he would gradually answer my questions with various ideas to address the weaknesses and threats he read in the report. He just asked me for a little patience, since the side effect of this technology is that he can get hit with overwhelming ideas. For this reason, there would be moments in the dialogue where I would perhaps provide much more information than requested. My managerial curiosity is so great that before consulting him, I asked Confucius to tell me about the ideas he receives from the biotech chip.

Confucius began by describing the characteristics of a professional with potential to become a good manager. You should promote professionals who have certain characteristics such as the following: They enjoy learning something and trying to put it into practice in a timely manner. They highly value ideas coming from other industry sectors. Besides, they don't get upset when their merits are not acknowledged. In his experience, professionals who respect their parents will hardly tend to challenge their bosses, let alone organize their colleagues against the strategy.

When interviewing a professional for a managerial position, he tells me, I must be very careful with candidates who engage in overreacting or verbose behaviour. Such people tend to have very little empathy for others and will sooner or later be rejected by their workers unless they acknowledge and work to improve this weakness.

You as a manager should seek to improve your performance at least three times a day, he says, so you should practice the art of introspection periodically.

1. Being a manager means that a group of shareholders or an entrepreneur has entrusted us with the management of their resources. Have I been worthy of trust by these shareholders?

1. Have I been loyal in my relationship with managers in other areas?

1. Of the knowledge I have acquired, financed or not by the company, have I practised what I have been taught to seek continuous improvement?

This consultant continues to give me recommendations freely. If I am to lead a medium-sized company or branch, I must have a balance of feeling, thinking and acting in various aspects. I must make decisions with the dignity of a chieftaincy. Neither too friendly to my collaborators nor so distant as to create indifference to the people. I must always rely on the good intentions of my workers. To be fond of them, but always with moderation in my actions. This does not detract from the fact that, if necessary, I must lead them in order to grow the company or allow it to survive.

Confucius tells me that a common characteristic of potential leaders is that they tend to respect their current leadership. These seeds of leadership tend to speak little or gradually regulate their conversations. If you listen to their opinions, they tend to respect others, but they are very selective about their circle of trust, as they tend to trust more of those who are virtuous, if any. I could also add that they are always training intellectually as well as seeking to improve themselves in terms of values.

These professionals who can potentially lead the company tend to value virtuous behaviour much more than modern exaltation focused on good looks. If you can have an approach to your private life, we can see that your free time is dedicated to your family, your children as well as your parents. They tend to have a high commitment to the companies where they work so they always seek to grow within them, rather than rotating throughout various companies. With regard to their relationships with different colleagues, they tend to be very respectful of keeping their word even if one of their co-workers does not keep it.

To describe again what the community expects from my management work, it is as follows. I will never have authority if I lack gravity in my actions, otherwise my behaviour may seem superficial. Being a leader of a company is not an easy task, so we must be and appear loyal in our actions, as well as always project loyalty to the values and people who support us. A leader will never be able to sustain a friendly relationship with those workers who are morally inferior to them. This does not detract from the fact that if this leader makes a mistake they will have no problem in recognizing it as well as correcting it in a timely manner.

Confucius continued to recommend various strategies for maintaining a good balance in the work climate within the company. He recommended that the business strategy should be based on the values of the founders, as people tend to idealize the values of the past, which over time seem more beautiful than the current ones. When we honour our work ancestors, we will promote the virtues of the company as a whole and therefore those of our workers.

If you are assigned to a new area or join another company as a manager, he said, you should always be informed of the management policies they have, but how to get this real information beyond what is received in the induction protocol? Usually, the way to get it is simpler than you might think. This information is obtained by being cordial and respectful with collaborators. This kindness must be displayed towards each and every worker. From the cleaners to the highest authority we know. With this type of cordial relationship, it is very likely that the people who work with me or even those who belong to other areas will give me the information necessary to achieve the goals of my leaders.

You as a manager must take unique care in choosing your team members. If they belong to other management, you should observe the aspirations that these professionals have. If any of them are promoted within the company, you should find out what their opinion is of the previous management. They can disqualify it to standing out artificially or try to be objective and maintain the good practices of the past. If a reasonable time passes, say six months, and this professional has focused on respecting and maintaining the good practices of the past, as well as improving those that are necessary, we could say that this professional has the potential to become a useful member of your team.

If you want a soft landing in the company you are arriving at, I recommend that you observe the practices that prevail within this new company. You can watch whether they have regular meetings or not. Perhaps in this company the organizational climate is valued much more than a high growth in sales. You could also see that most workers admire innovation within the company. Whatever your response, it is very important in the first few months to respect this natural harmony within the organization. It is known that even if you make great changes within the company, these must be and appear as a change inspired by past practices. Now, whether the changes are large or small, you must set an imaginary line where you will stop them. This will allow you to define a new standard of harmony, which should remain in place for a reasonable period of at least one year. This new level of harmony will always be subject to the new practices you implement. If you change them again, you will not have harmony, which could have negative consequences that may affect sales or cost performance.

I subsequently consulted Confucius about whether or not to make commitments to a power group within the company, especially if I do not have much time to think about possible negative consequences. The answer was quite interesting. Confucius told me that if my promises adhere to economic goals but positively affect the workers, I will be able to keep my word. If these promises do not affect normal practices within the organization, I will be able to keep my word without fearing that it will have later negative effects or that it will not be supported by board members, their peers and even my closest circle of collaborators. Because the best support to achieve my promises will come mainly from my circle of closest assistants. Without this support, it will be very difficult to keep my word.

Let's suppose that I've already managed to prove that I'm a manager who keeps his word. How should my behaviour be to demonstrate an honest willingness to learn? Confucius told me that the manager must be balanced in their work lunches. And while my office should be comfortable and formal to demonstrate the authority I represent, it should be decorated without excesses that take me too far emotionally away from my collaborators. I must be quick and diligent in fulfilling whatever they ask of me. I should always show caution in every word I say to others. And it will be highly recommended that I meet periodically with workers who have higher values and moral conduct than the rest of my collaborators.

But how should managers who come from different socio-economic groups than the dominant ones within the company behave? I asked him, could he think that if a new manager came from the bottom, he would be poor but not submissive? And what happens if this manager comes from a golden cradle, but enters a company founded and run mainly by people of working clas...