The Psychology of Management

The Psychology of Management
Introduction:
The discipline of Organizational Behavior can be regarded as the psychology of leadership, not necessarily the psychology of management. The basic psychological principles of management have found expression in different management theories but they have not been summarized under a fundamental title. Here I present the 20 laws of the psychology of management.
The Laws:
The fundamental laws of management, as I conceive them, are as follows:
1. People need to be managed if they are ever to be organized.
2. Humans can be managed.
4. The process of management changes people’s behavior.
5. The ongoing practice of management requires management theories to be revised and reset.
6. The practice of management must vary with the type of people managed, the situation, and the nature of task to be accomplished.
7. A group of people can be managed only if it has a common goal.
8. The theory of management can be compared to a complete human being: it has a head, a heart, eyes, ears, hands, legs, and a mouth. The head symbolizes knowledge; the heart symbolizes shared values and culture; the eyes and the ears symbolize the methods of scanning the environment; the hands symbolize the capabilities, experience and skill; the legs symbolize the mobility of resources and capabilities; and the mouth symbolizes the methods of communication.
9. The process of management not only needs knowledge, but also creates it.
10. If people are given an attractive goal to achieve, they will look for a leader to manage them. This is why good management involves the setting of attractive goals
11. If a group of people has a good manager, it will look for an attractive goal to achieve.
12. The process of management works by destroying the destructive freedom of people.
13. An organization is like a complete society, with only the imaginary difference that the people outside the organization consider an organization to be comprised of some mechanical principles, while those inside the organization believe that the real society is outside. Good management involves managing these opposite views.
14. One either loves or hates his/her manager. There can be no other possibility.
15. A man loves his workplace most. If the management fails to discern this, then it is the management’s failure, not the employees’.
16. Management theory should vary according to what is being managed. In managing a person, a manager actually manages the person’s desires, knowledge, capabilities, consciousness, ethics, errors, intelligence, creativity, time, dreams, etc. A manager can never be an efficient manager until he/she has these considerations in the mind.
17. Managing something completely means simultaneously managing its polar opposite. For example, while managing the use of a resource, a manager must also manage its waste. Likewise, while managing knowledge, one must also manage ignorance. Again, while managing people’s expectations, one must also manage their indifference. The list can be lengthened in this way.
18. Managing means the process of unifying and separating simultaneously. The general principle is that if people are to be unified in a particular way, then they must also be separated in another relevant way.
19. Managing people also essentially requires that some aspects of their minds must be unmanaged. Hence the need for freedom, recreation, a culture fostering creativity, and informal groups.
20. A manager must have the conviction that people can never be completely managed.
21. Those who are not satisfied cannot be managed effectively because they cannot manage themselves. Conversely, those who are fully satisfied cannot be managed effectively because they cannot ‘unmanage’ themselves. A good manager must understand this paradox. Therefore, a good manager’s duty is to make the employees satisfied to the extent that they are managed and also let them have an opportunity to feel unsatisfied to the extent that they are not managed. Hope, fear, knowledge, creativity, intelligence, commitment, dutifulness, loyalty, love, a sense of competition, self-esteem¾these are the streams of internal energy that an employee can be expected to manage in himself or herself. If this can be done prudently, then there can always be an opportunity to overcome complacency at one extreme and dissatisfaction or the related stress at the other.
(Published with Author's Permission, from the Observer Magazine, 16 July, 2004.)

Theory of Knowledge
Reconstruction of Qur’anic Thoughts with an Attempt to Unify Rationalism and Empiricism
By S.M. Zakir Hussain (Bangladesh)
(Author’s e-mail: smzhussains@yahoo.com)
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Click here if you'd like to exchange critiques


The Qur’anic Model of Information Technology

“Information Technology describes the storage, processing and transmission of information by computerized system”. (The Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia). The key-concepts related to IT can, therefore, be identified as follows:
1. A Database (for storage of information)
2. a Very Speedy Device (for processing and transmitting information, i.e the computer)
The usefulness, importance, and potential of IT lie in these two possibilities. Therefore, the possibility of IT could never have been conceived of prior to the development of the electronic computer. We should not forget that all the ideas and concepts about Information Technology came to man’s mind after the emergence of the Technology. In other words, while in most case of human invention the idea is the thing that came first, not the product of the idea, the opposite is true in the case of many inventions that involve the utilization of the flexibility, ability, and efficiency of the electronic computer. As a result, though Information Technology is important for its capability of storing and providing information world-wide, its very foundation is the technology, not the idea. In other words, it is the technology that created the idea in this case. Or what is the same thing the idea did not exist prior to the emergence of the communication technology and the computer. But, surprisingly enough, all the ideas relating to IT have been present in the years. Let us see the related verses that could give man the idea of a modern IT system even if he could not invent it up till now.
1. A Database:
In the Qur’an God speaks of a comprehensive Database that contains information of all sorts. He says that everything that is in the universe is in a clear record. Moreover, everything that happens on earth or any where in the whole universe is instantly recorded and stored in a huge database.
And We have recorded everything in a book. (78:29)
With us is a writing that preserves. (50:4)
Then as for him who is given his book (of record or performance appraisal kept by angels) in his right hand, he will say: Lo! Read by book; Surely I knew that I shall meet my account. (59:19-26)
And as for him who is given his book in his left hand he shall say: O would that my book had never been my account was (59:25:26)
Nay! Most surely the record of the wicked is in the Sijjin (in a different directory)... (which) is a written book.
Nay! Most surely the record of the righteous shall be in the Iliyin .... (which) is a written book. (83:18:20)
And most surely there are (record) keepers over you: Honorable recorders. They (and record) know what you do. (82:10:12)
The most basic and the most important characteristic of any database is its flexibility, its ability to be used in any way for any purpose by any body having access to it. This flexibility comes primarily from the storage and representation of the data by types of information. In other words, data need to be cattegorized on a multi-dimensional basis before storing it, so that a set of data can be identified as belonging to any of all the classes or dimensions that together make up the picture of the reality they represent. For example, a set of data relating to the ages of people should be classified by sex, place, education, marital status, etc. Man would not even think of so many dimensions of a single datum it the powerful storage system of the computer were not developed by the empirical sciences. But the very approach and tone that God takes when He describes some varieties of plants, fruits, etc., are instructive enough to make one think about how different angles of view. Consider the following verses:
And in the earth there are tracts side by side and gardens of grapes and corn and palm trees having one root and (others) having distinct roots-they are watered with one water, and we make some of them excel others in fruit, most surely in this there are sings for a people who understand (e.g., those who under stand taxonomy). (13:4)
A conscious reading of the above verse will reveal that in it there is a special emphasis on what angle of view we should in classifying various aspects of the reality to be described. Indeed, such an angle of view is something that makes a group of people worth considering scientists (“a people who understand”). The following will add to our understanding of the implication we are concerned with:
And He it is Who produces gardens (of vine), trellised and untrellised, and palms and seed-produce of which the fruits are of various sorts, and olives and pomegranates, like and unlike. (6:191)
And God has created from water every living creature: so of them is that which walks upon its belly, and of them is that which walks upon two feet, and of them is that which walks upon four. (24:45)
Do you not see that God sends down water from the could, then We bring forth therewith fruits of various colors; and in the mountains are flowers, white and red, of various hues and (others) intensely black? And of men and beasts and cattle are various species of it likewise, those of His servants only who are possessed of knowledge [believing scientists, thinkers, educated people etc.] fear God. (35:27-28)
(Published in the Observer Magazine on December 13, 2002)


Continued ...


Author of:
Secret Knowledge of the Qur'an

Theory of Knowledge
Reconstruction of Qur’anic Thoughts with an Attempt to Unify Rationalism and Empiricism
By S.M. Zakir Hussain (Bangladesh)
(Author’s e-mail: smzhussains@yahoo.com)
Click here to send comments
Click here if you'd like to exchange critiques


A Good Writer Has Five Eyes!

Thought Trigger:
Do you know that you can learn to write very well without even learning to think in the so-called ‘efficient’ way? In other words, do you know that you can think deeply without thinking at all, and just by using your five eyes instead? If you don’t, you’ll have a lot of pleasure now.
What do you Express when you Write?
Just have a look inside your memory and experience. In your writing, especially if it is imaginative or descriptive or narrative, you just express what we can generally term ‘information’. Do you collect this information or just create it in the mind? Actually, we all collect information from the environment – first from the external environment, then from the inner. Now let’s see how.
Collecting Information is like Collecting Flowers and Fruit in the Garden:
When you look at the environment, you collect information with your eyes. There are bits of visual information. The types of information gathered are: DISTANCE, SIZE, HEIGHT, WIDTH, COLOR, and so forth. When you use your touch or feeling, you know whether something is HOT or COLD or SMOOTH or ROUGH and so forth. In this manner, see how we process information with our five senses in the following table:
SENSE INFO COLLECTED VERBAL INFO COLLECTED
EYE size, color, condition etc. adjective, verb
TOUCH temperature, smoothness, length, softness, etc. adjective, verb
NOSE smell adjective
TONGUE taste adjective
EAR sound adjective
You can easily see that I have not mentioned ‘noun’ in the above list. That’s because that is the primary information about which we gather other types of information.
So, How Should You Look?
Form now on, whenever observe anything outside or inside, simply keep in mind that you’re just LOOKING – with your eyes, ears, tongue, nose and feeling. Also bear in mind that the moment you’re doing so, you’re adding a number of words (adjectives, and verbs etc.) to your database. So start enriching your Vocabulary of Experience (VOE) by re-directing the ways you have so far built your Vocabulary of Words (VOW). Here’s how:
• Close your eyes and learn to ‘see’ the visible things with the other senses, which are: NOSE, TONGUE, TOUCH, and EAR.

• Use the above technique in the case of each of the other senses: for example, learn to HEAR the visible things by totally avoiding any kind of visualization even in your imagination. That’s because we, as far as we’re concerned with this article, haven’t yet known what imagination is.
The Real Power of Imagination:
If you do some homework in the above-mentioned way, the verbal-sensory database, which is very dynamic and has unlimited potential and will evolve or get enriched in you, is what we call IMAGINATION. So keep the following in mind:
• Every bit of sensory information is an IMAGE.

• The amalgamation of all types of such information is IMAGINATION.
• The ability that can fill in the gap of the absence of a sensory organ is called CREATIVITY.
The Beginning of CREATIVITY:
Real creativity begins when you keep one sense-organ stopped and start performing its actions to achieve your objective with the help of the others. In fact, if you have an objective before you can develop your imaginative ability, then, even if you accomplish the objective, you will probably not gain much. That is because a mind that can’t imagine effectively formulates unpromising objectives.
Just keep in mind that you are always ‘reading’ the book your senses are writing on your nervous system. Now get them to ‘write’ things for you. Make it happen that seeing is thinking.



Continued ...


heory of Knowledge
Reconstruction of Qur’anic Thoughts with an Attempt to Unify Rationalism and Empiricism
By S.M. Zakir Hussain (Bangladesh)
(Author’s e-mail: smzhussains@yahoo.com)
Click here to send comments
Click here if you'd like to exchange critiques


The Basics of Chomskyan Theories of Language

1. Question related to the shift of viewpoint in linguistics: What are the main differences between the traditional grammars and the theories that Chomsky has proposed?
Chomsky’s Answers: The most glaring difference between the traditional grammars and Chomskian views is that the traditional grammars were considered to be solutions, while, as Chomsky claims, the Chomskian approaches enable us to look at language from a new angle and thus help us discover new problems. In fact, Chomsky has shown us the way to ask questions (See Chomsky 2000, pp-15-16).
Another big difference between the two lines of thought is that it is only the latter that looks for the components of the mind as well as the lexical categories that help a human being generate infinite number of expressions on the basis of finite input. That is why Chomsky has said that “the most comprehensive grammars and dictionaries – Oxford English Dictionaries, ten-volume grammar of English and so on – were skimming the surface. They only included hints that an intelligent person could somehow use to get information about the language. They were thought to be descriptions of the language but they simply weren’t; they were much too superficial. (See ibid., p-12).”
A very important difference, as Chomsky himself has pointed out, between the two lines of thought is that the traditional grammar only deals with exceptions and fails to explain or simply ignores the regularities in language (See Chomsky 1965, p-5).
However, the most important point of difference between the two lines of thought is that while the former considers language to be the output as produced by speakers, the latter talks of the language faculty, which is nothing but an organ like other organs such as the visual organ, the auditory organ and so on.
2. Schema-Changing Questions: Do you think that the ‘logic’ in the following two sentences is acceptable?
? 1.1. A boy has grown into an adult because he has read many books.
? 1.2. She has grown up to five feet and five inches because she has received good training on mathematics.
By the reasoning with which we can declare the above conclusions invalid, we can also say that the following notion, which is often assumed to be true, is utterly false:
? 1.3. Humans can use language because they learn it at home and at school.
Let us quote from Chomsky:
Take any ... growth process, say the fact that an embryo grows arms, not wings, or, to taker a post-natal example, that people undergo puberty at a certain age. If someone were to propose that it is the result of experience, people will just laugh. So, if someone were to propose that a child undergoes puberty because of, say, peer pressure ..., people would regard that as ridiculous. But it is no more ridiculous than the belief that the growth of language is a result of experience (Chomsky 2000, p-7).
3. Research Question: Language is some of the things that are too complex to be described and analyzed even with the latest scientific concepts and technology (Cf. Chomsky 2000). How, then, can a child happen to learn its native language so efficiently within so short a time, even without any formal instruction?
Chomsky’s Answer: Language is a faculty of the human mind, an innate ability that grows up just as a person grows up when he or she takes food (Chomsky 2000, p-6). It can neither be acquired nor learned; rather, it can simply be transformed into generally accepted symbols that have developed in the external world. This is the notion that brought about the theory of Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG). The deep structure can be transformed into surface structures according to the re-write rules.
4. Question related to the variety of languages: How is the existence of different languages to be explained, then?
Chomsky’s Answer: The different languages are nothing but the different states that the language faculty attains when a person is exposed to different linguistic environments (See Chomsky 2000, p-6).
5. Question related to the concept of language acquisition: What does the phrase ‘language acquisition’ mean, then?
Chomsky’s Answer: The cognitive system is interwoven with the language faculty. Before exposure to a particular linguistic environment, a child has no content in its language faculty, but it does have a universal grammar, termed Io (Internalized language at its initial, content-free state). If triggered at the right time, this Io state develops into different states through maturation and external experience. What then builds up as a symbolic reservoir is termed as the E-language (Externalized language) (See Chomsky 2000, pp-6, 8). In Chomsky’s words, “ ... to say that somebody knows a language, or has a language, is simply to say that their language faculty is in that state. The language, in that state, provides instructions to the performance systems (ibid., p-8)”.
6. Question related to performance: How is the language faculty linked with the external world, so that competence can build up and different levels of performance can be achieved?
Chomsky’s Answer: There are two main systems of the body and the mind that lie outside but have access to the language faculty. One is the conceptual–intentional (CI) system, which gets the prompt for action from the intention dimension and identifies the semantic unit to be triggered. The other is the sensorimotor system, which organizes information received and sent through the performance devices. Thus each expression has two forms – the symbolic form and the logical form. They in fact act as the interface between the language faculty and the mind–brain systems. From this point of view, the structure of the language faculty gives an approximate account of the structure of the mind (Chomsky, 2000, pp-8-9).
7. Question related to the performance systems: Are the performance systems part of the language faculty?
Chomsky’s Answer: The performance systems such as the ears, the mouth etc. have different functions. However, “to some extent at least, the performance systems seem to be part of the language faculty”. (ibid., p-5).
8. Question related to the relation between the language faculty and the external world: How can the properties of the language faculty be realized in the physical world?
Chomsky’s Answer: Intention triggers inner universal grammar to arrange lexical categories in the top-down process, implying that structures in fact emerge from intentions to express meaning. Although an intention originates from the mind, it has the potential to organize linguistic symbols because the language faculty has the ability to coordinate between the different sub-systems of the mind. Because the language acquired is a certain state of the language faculty of the mind, any movement in it gets manifested as strings of words, which, at the outer level, are symbolic units, but which are in fact abstract ideas.
9. Question related to the inheritability of a particular external language: Are people genetically adapted to one language or another?
Chomsky’s Answer: No, they are not. The language at the level of Io is only ability – and not even a skill, which has to be earned through deliberate efforts. This ability is content-free but structure-rich. The child simply picks up contents from the environment it is placed in.
10. Question related to the commonness of all languages: Is there anything common among all the languages of the world?
Chomsky’s Answer: Yes, there is. The universal grammar as a faculty is the same for all people. However, they vary from one another in syntactic and culturally-conditioned aspects. Such differences can be explained in a parametric way as measures of deviations, called parameters in the Principles and Parameters approach.
11. Question related to the Principles and Parameters approach: What does the Principles and Parameters approach say?
Chomsky’s Answer: This approach is totally different from the TGG approach and the X-bar theory that emerged as an extension of the TGG theory. It assumes that “there are no rules at all and there are no grammatical constructions at all. So there’s nothing like rules for relative clauses in Japanese or rules for verb phrases in German, and so on”. “These things” adds Chomsky, “are real but as taxonomic afterfacts – in the sense in which, say, terrestrial animals are real. It is not a biological category; it is just a taxonomic category (Chomsky 2000, p-14).
In other words, rules are not rules as such because they have been constructed and followed in a normative way. Rather, they happen to be called rules because they represent the inner aspects of the language faculty. Thus, even when there are no rules, there are describable regularities, for which such apparent ‘rulelessness’ is recursive and acceptable.
Rather, it is simply the case that the principles “hold across languages and across constructions”. The variations from one language to another are “parametric variations”, which seem “to be a finite space.” Also, such rules “seem to be limited to certain small parts of the language: some parts of the lexicon and certain peripheral aspects of the sensorimotor system interface (ibid. 14).” This approach explains that although there may be, and really are, exceptions to rules, there can be no exception to the architecture of the language faculty vis-à-vis the linguistic output as observed in any language. That is why Chomsky says that the principles and parameters approach “proposes a way to resolve the tension between explanatory and descriptive adequacy (p-15)” that are expected of any grammar.
12. Question related to the relation between the language faculty’s ability to express the mind: To what extent does the language system of any community represent the language faculty and the mind?
Chomsky’s Answer: Chomsky has the view that language has been inserted into (or has evolved in) the mind as an organ and it has interconnections with the other organs of the mind. Because language expresses the reactions of all other systems to internal or external stimuli, it somehow or other coordinates those systems. The relationships of the language system with these organs, which Chomsky calls boundary conditions, have solutions in the language faculty. Chomsky asks the important question, “... how good a solution is language to certain boundary conditions that are imposed by the architecture of the mind (Chomsky 2000, 17)?” In different places of his works, Chomsky claims that language can be considered as the perfect solution as far as the boundary conditions are concerned.
References:
1. Chomsky, Noam, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, MIT Press, 1965
2. Chomsky, Noam, The Architecture of Language, eds. Mukherji, Nitmalangshu; Patnaik, Bidudhendra Narayan; and Agnihotri, Rama Kant; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000


Continued ...


The Psychology of Waiting Lines
(about pdf)
by David Maister 1985
Introduction
In one of a series of memorable advertisements for which it has become justly famous, Federal Express (the overnight package delivery service) noted that: “Waiting is frustrating, demoralizing, agonizing, aggravating, annoying, time consuming and incredibly expensive.” (1)
The truth of this assertion cannot be denied: there can be few consumers of services in a modern society who have not felt, at one time or another, each of the emotions identified by Federal Express’ copywriters. What is more, each of us who can recall such experiences can also attest to the fact that the waiting-line experience in a service facility significantly affects our overall perceptions of the quality of service provided.
Once we are being served, our transaction with the service organization may be efficient, courteous and complete: but the bitter taste of how long it took to get attention pollutes the overall judgments that we make about the quality of service
The mathematical theory of waiting lines (or queues) has received a great deal of attention from academic researchers and their results and insights have been successfully applied in a variety of settings. (2) However, most of this work is concerned with the objective reality of various ‘queue management’ techniques: for example, what the effects are upon average waiting times of adding servers, altering ‘queue discipline’ (the order in which customers are served), speeding up serving times, and so on. What has been relatively neglected, however, is much substantive discussion of the experience of waiting.
As Levitt reminds us, “Products are consumed, services are experienced.” Accordingly, if managers are to concern themselves with how long their customers or clients wait in line for service (as, indeed, they should), then they must pay attention not only to the readily-measurable, objective, reality of waiting times, but also how those waits are experienced. It is a common experience that a two minute wait can feel like nothing at all, or can feel like ‘forever’. We must learn to influence how the customer feels about a given length of waiting time.
In this paper, I shall discuss the psychology of waiting lines, examining how waits are experienced and shall attempt to offer specific managerial advice to service organizations about how to improve this aspect of their service encounters. down in separate components, so that practicing managers can begin to think about the available tools they can use to influence the customer’s waiting experience.
I also hope to identify testable propositions offering the opportunity for future research. The First and Second Laws of Service. Before we discuss the laws of waiting, it is necessary to consider two general propositions about service encounters and how these are experienced.
The first of these is what I have come to call “The First Law of Science is simple, but powerful, and can be stated as a straightforward formula:
S = P – E.
In this formulation, ‘S’ stands for satisfaction, ‘P’ for perception and ‘E’ for expectation. If you expect a certain level of service, and perceive the service reviewed to be higher, you are a satisfied client. If you perceive the same level as before, but expected higher, you are disappointed and, consequently, a dissatisfied client.
The point, of course, is that both the perception and the expectation are psychological phenomena. They are not the reality. In a benevolent world, both the perception and the expectation will have some connection to reality, but they are not reality. Accordingly, all service managers must pay attention to three things: what was actually done to or for the client, what was perceived by the client, and what the client expected. Fortunately, all three can be managed.
Sasser (et al) provide good examples of both managing the perception and the expectation of waiting times. For the former, they offer the example of ‘the well-known hotel group that received complaints from guests about excessive waiting times for elevators. After an analysis of how elevator service might be improved, it was suggested that mirrors be installed near where guests waited for elevators. The natural tendency of people to check their personal appearance substantially reduced complaints, although the actual wait for the elevators was unchanged. (5)
As an illustration of how expectations can be explicitly managed, they note that “some restaurants follow the practice of promising guests a waiting time in excess of the ‘expected time’. If people are willing to agree to wait this length of time, they are quite pleased to be seated earlier, thus starting the meal with a more positive feeling. (6)
This last example deserves further exploration. When I have discussed this anecdote with a variety of serving personnel, they always reaffirm its wisdom. As one waiter pointed out to me: “If they sit down in a good mood, it’s easy to keep them happy. If they sit down disgruntled, it’s almost impossible to turn them around. They’re looking to find fault, to criticize.”
As a result of these conversations, I offer by ‘Second Law of Service’:
It’s hard to plan catch-up ball.
The corollary to this law is the proposition that there is a halo-effect created by the early stages of any service encounter, and that if money, time and attention is to be spent in improving the perceived quality of service, then the largest payback may well occur in these early stages.
Having established the importance of the interplay between perceptions and expectations, we shall turn to an examination of the various tools available to managers in influencing these. In each of the sections that follow, the title of the section should be considered a proposition concerning the psychology of waiting.
We begin with one of the most familiar:
Occupied Time Feels Shorter Than Unoccupied Time.
As William James, the noted philosopher observed: “Boredom results from being attentive to the passage of time itself. (7) A more colloquial version might be ‘A watched pot never boils’. The truth of this proposition has been discovered by many service organizations. In various restaurants, it is common practice to hand out menus for customers to peruse while waiting in line. Apart from shortening the perception of time, this practice has the added benefit of shortening the service time, since customers will be ready to order once they are seated, and will not tie up table space making up their minds).
A similar tactic is to turn the waiting area into a bar, which also adds to revenue as well as occupying time. Use can be made of poster, reading material (or even shifting lights, rolling balls and other ‘adult toys’) to distract the waiter’s attention away from the passage of time. ‘Theme’ restaurants (such as Victoria Station) which provide interesting memorabilia to examine also are applying the lesson of occupying waits as part of the service.
In some situations, such as telephone waits, it is difficult to “fill up” time in a constructive way. The familiar ‘Muzak’ played by some organizations when their telephone-answering agents are busy is, to many people, an added annoyance rather than a benefit. In large part, this is because the activity (listening to music) is totally unrelated to the service activity to come (whereas, the use of menus and bars cited above successfully integrated the waiting experience into the total service experience).
This suggests that the activity provided to ‘fill time’ should (a) offer benefit in and of itself, and (b) be related, in some way, to the following service encounter.
The best example of this I ever encountered in relation to telephone waits was the story of the sports team that, when lines were occupied, played highlights of the previous week’s game. In one memorable incident, a caller was transferred from the queue to the receptionist, whereupon he screamed “Put me back, (so-and-so) is just about to score!”
It should also be noted, however, that there can be circumstances where a service may choose to fill time with an unrelated activity. In certain medical or dental waiting rooms, there appears to be a conscious attempt to distract the patient’s attention from the upcoming activity, perhaps on the grounds that to remind the patient of what is about to occur might heighten fears and hence make the wait more uncomfortable.
The wisdom of this I cannot attest to (I have read too many National Geographic magazines). Even in this context, it is possible to provide service-related distractions. Many medical clinics provide weighing machines and eye charts, in the waiting room: I have even seen patients merrily occupied with self-testing thermometers, breath-strength equipment and the like.
People Want to Get Started.
One of the other virtues of handing out menus, providing a drinks bar and other methods of service-related time-fillers is that they convey the sense the ‘service has started: we know that you are here’. I would hypothesize that people waiting to make their first human contact with the service organization are much more impatient than those who have ‘begun’: in other words, preprocess waits are perceived as longer than in-process waits.
Again, I appeal to common experience to reflect the fact that one’s ‘anxiety’ level is much higher while waiting to be served than it is while being served, even though the latter wait may be longer. There is a fear of ‘being forgotten’. (How many times has the reader gone back to a maitre d’ to check that his or her name is still on the list?).
Many restaurant owners instruct their service staff to pass by the table as soon as the customers are seated to say “I’ll be with you as soon as I can, after I’ve looked after that table over there”. In essence, the signal is being sent: ‘We have acknowledged your presence’.
One walk-in medical clinic that I studied decided to introduce a triage system, whereby all patients were first met by a nurse who recorded the patient’s name and symptoms and decided whether or not the patient could be treated by a registered nurse practitioner or should be seen by a doctor. Even though the addition of this step in the process had no impact on the time it took to see a medical service provider, surveys showed that patients were pleased with ‘reduced waiting times’. The point, of course, was that they felt they had been ‘entered into’ the system.
Anxiety Makes Waits Seem Longer.
A large part of the concern that we feel to ‘get started’ is due as noted above, to anxiety. In the cases cited, the anxiety was about whether or not one had been forgotten. Anxiety can, however, come from other sources. Nearly everyone has had the experience of choosing a line at the supermarket or airport, and stood there worrying that he had, indeed, chosen the wrong line. As one stands there trying to decide whether to move, the anxiety level increases and the wait becomes intolerable. This situation is covered by what is known as Erma Bombeck’s Law:
“The other line always moves faster”
Is there anyone who has not had the experience of choosing a line at the supermarket or airport, and stood there worrying that we had, indeed, chosen the wrong line? On a recent (open-seating) Eastern Airlines shuttle fight, my fellow passengers formed an agitated queue at the boarding gate long before the flight was due to depart, leading the attendant to announce: “Don’t worry, folks, the plane’s a big one; you’ll all get on.”
The change in atmosphere in the waiting lounge was remarkable. Similar effort to deal with customer anxiety can be seen when airlines make on-board announcements that connecting flights are being held for a delayed flight, when movie theater managers walk down the line reassuring patrons they will get in, or when customer service agents in airport lobbies reassure waiting patrons that they are indeed waiting in the correct line and have sufficient time to catch their flight.
One of the poorest examples I know of manning anxiety is when I am on standby for a flight, and the agent takes my ticket. Now I am anxious not only about whether I will get on the flight, but also about whether I will get my ticket back. I have been asked to give up control of the situation. At least if I had my ticket I could change my mind and go to another airline. The prescription for managers resulting form this discussion is: ask yourself what customers might be worrying abut (rationally or irrationally), and find ways to remove the worry.
Uncertain Waits Are Longer than Known, Finite Waits
The most profound source of anxiety in waiting is how long the wait will be. For example, if a patient in a waiting room is told that the doctor will be delayed thirty minutes, he experiences an initial annoyance but then relaxes into an acceptance of the inevitability of the wait. However, if the patient is told the doctor will be free soon, he spends the whole time in a state of nervous anticipation, unable to settle down, afraid to depart and come back. The patient’s expectations are being managed poorly. Likewise, the pilot who repeatedly announces “only a few more minutes” adds insult to injury when the wait goes on and on. Not only are the customers being force d to wait, but they are not being dealt with honestly.
A good example of the role of uncertainty in the waiting experience is provided by the “appointment syndrome.” Clients who arrive early for an appointment will sit contentedly until the scheduled time, even if this is a significant amount of time in an absolute sense (say, thirty minutes). However, once the appointment time is passed, even a short wait of, say, ten minutes, grows increasingly annoying. The wait until the appointed time is finite; waiting beyond the point has no knowable limit.
Appointment systems are, in practice, troublesome queue-management tools. They suffer form the problem that some customers may make appointments without showing up (a problem endemic to airlines, hotels, dentists, and hair cutters) and also from the fact that it is often difficult to decide how far apart to schedule appointments. If they are too far apart, the server is left idle waiting for the next appointment. If they are too close together, appointments begin to run behind and, since they cumulate, tend to make the server further and further behind.
This is a particularly acute problem because a customer with an appointment has been given a specific expectation about waiting times, and a failure to deliver on this premise makes the wait seem longer than if no appointment had been made. This does not mean that appointment systems should never be used. They are, after all, a way of giving the customer a finite expectation. It should be recognized, however, that an appointment defines an expectation that must be met.
Unexplained Waits Are Longer than Explained Waits
On a cold and snowy morning, when I telephone for a taxi, I begin with the expectation that my wait will be longer than on a clear, summer day. Accordingly, I wait with a great deal more patience because I understand the causes for the delay. Similarly, if a doctor’s receptionist informs me that an emergency has taken place, I can wait with greater equanimity that if I do not know what is going on. Airline pilots understand this principle well; on-board announcements are filled with references to tardy baggage handlers, fog over landing strips, safety checks, and air-traffic controllers’ clearance instructions. The explanation given may or may not exculpate the service provider, but is it better than no explanation at all.
Most serving personnel are repeatedly asked about the circumstances in waiting situations. The lack of an explanation is one of the prime factors adding to a customer’s uncertainty about the length of the wait. However, knowing the length of the wait is not the only reason a customer wants an explanation. As the Federal Express advertisement points out, waiting is also demoralizing. Waiting in ignorance creates a feeling of powerlessness, which frequently results in visible irritation and rudeness on the part of customers as they harass serving personnel in an attempt to reclaim their status as paying clients. In turn, this behavior makes it difficult for the serving personnel to maintain their equanimity. For example, on a significantly delayed flight, one cabin attendant was force to announce to the passengers: “Please pay us the courtesy of being polite to us so that we can reciprocate in kind.”
Naturally, justifiable explanations will tend to soothe the waiting customer more than unjustifiable explanations. A subtle illustration of this is provided by the practice of many fast food chains which instruct serving personnel to take their rest breaks out of sight of waiting customers. The sight of what seems to be available serving personnel sitting idle while customers wait, is a source of irritation.
Even if such personnel are, in fact, occupied (for example, a bank teller who is not serving customers but catching up on paperwork), the sight of serving personnel not actually serving customers is “unexplained.” In the customers’ eyes, he or she is waiting longer than necessary. The explanation that the “idle” personnel are taking a break or performing other tasks is frequently less than acceptable.
Unfair Waits Are Longer than Equitable Waits
As Sasser, Olsen, and Wycoff (1979) note, one of the most frequent irritants mentioned by customers at restaurants is the prior seating of those who have arrived later. They observe: “The feeling that somebody has successfully ‘cut in front’ of you causes even the most patient customer to become furious. Great care to be equitable is vital” (1979, 89)
In many waiting situations, there is no visible order to the waiting line. In situations such as waiting for a subway train, the level of anxiety demonstrated is high, and the group waiting is less a queue than a mob. Instead of being able to relax, each individual remains in a state of nervousness about whether their priority in the line is being preserved. As already noted, agitated waits seem longer than relaxed waits. It is for this reason that many service facilities have a system of taking a number, whereby each customer is issued a number and served in strict numerical order. In some facilities, the number currently being served is prominently displayed so that customers can estimate the expected waiting times.
Such systems can work well in queuing situations where “first in, first out” (FIFO) is the appropriate rule for queue discipline. However, in many situations customers may be ranked in order of importance, and priorities allocated that way. A good example is a walk-in medical facility which will frequently break the FIFO rule to handle emergency cases. Also familiar is the example of the restaurant that has a finite supply of two-person, four-person, and large tables, and seats customers by matching the size of the party to the size of the table. A final example is the use of express-checkout lanes in supermarkets, whereby customers with only a few items are dealt with a special server.
All of these cases represent departures form the FIFO system. In some, the priority rules are accepted by the customers as equitable and observed-for example, the supermarket express checkout. In other illustrations, such as the restaurant with varying sizes of tables, the priority rule that seats customers by the size of party is less accepted by the customers, and frequently resented. The rule may serve the restaurant, but the customer has a harder time seeing the equity benefit.
Similarly, special service facilities for important customers may or may not be accepted as equitable. For this reason, many service facilities physically separate premium servers (for example, first-class airline check-in counters) form the sight of regular customers sot hat the latter will not resent the special service rendered.
A slightly different example of the equity problem in queue management is provided by the serving person who is responsible not only for dealing with customers present in the serving facility, but also for answering the telephone.
How many of us have not had the experience of waiting while a receptionist answers the telephones, and consequently felt a resentment that some distant customer was receiving a higher priority than we who have made the effort to come to the service facility? The example can be extended to those people who answer their telephone while you are in their office. by answering the phone, they are giving you a lesser priority than the random caller.
The main point to be stressed here is that the customer’s sense of equity is not always obvious, and needs to be explicitly managed. Whatever priority rules apply, the service provider must make vigorous efforts to ensure that these rules match with the customer’s sense of equity, either by adjusting the rules or by actively convincing the client that the rules are indeed appropriate.
The More Valuable the Service, the Longer the Customer Will Wait
The example of the supermarket express-checkout counter reminds us that our tolerance for waiting depends upon the perceived value of that for which we wait. Special checkout counters were originally provided because customers with only a few items felt resentful at having to wait a long time for what was seen as a simple transaction. Customers with a full cart of groceries were much more inclined to tolerate lines.
Airlines, too, have discovered this principle and provided separate lines for those with simple transactions (such as seat selection), medium-difficulty transactions (baggage check-in), and complex transactions (ticket purchase or modification). Specialization by task does not necessarily reduce the aggregate amount of waiting in the system; however, it serves well to allocate the waiting among the customer base.
That perceived value affects tolerance or waits can be demonstrated by our common experience in restaurants-we will accept a much longer waiting time at a haute cuisine facility than at a “greasy spoon.” In universities, there is an old rule of thumb that if the teacher is delayed, “You wait ten minutes for an assistant professor, fifteen minutes for an associate professor, and twenty minutes for a full professor.” This illustrates well the principle that tolerance for waits depends upon perceived value of service-perhaps with the emphasis on the perception.
It follows from this principle that waiting for something of little value can be intolerable. This is amply illustrated by the eagerness with which airline passengers leap to their seats when the airplane reaches the gate, even though they know that it will take time to unload all the passengers ahead of them, and that they may well have to wait for their baggage to arrive at the claim area. The same passenger who sat patiently for some hours during the flight suddenly exhibits an intolerance for an extra minute or two to disembark, and a fury at an extra few minutes for delayed baggage.
The point is that the service (the flight) is over, and waiting to get out when there is no more value to be received is aggravating. A similar syndrome is exhibited at hotel checkout counters. Just as preprocess waits are felt to be longer than in-process waits of the same time duration, so are post process waits; these, in fact, feel longest of all.
Solo Waits Feel Longer than Group Waits
One of the remarkable syndromes to observe in waiting lines is to see individuals sitting or standing next to each other without talking or otherwise interacting until an announcement of a delay is made. Then the individuals suddenly turn to each other to express their exasperation, wonder collectively what is happening, and console each other. What this illustrates is that there is some form of comfort in group waiting rather than waiting alone.
This syndrome is evidently in effect in amusement parks such as Disneyland, or in some waiting lines to buy concert tickets when a sense of group community develops and the line turns into almost a service encounter in its own right; the waiting is part of the fun and part of the service. Whatever service organizations can do to promote the sense of group waiting rather than isolating each individual, will tend to increase the tolerance for waiting time
Conclusion
The propositions presented here are by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of all the psychological considerations involved in managing customers’ acceptance of waiting time. Not discussed, for example, is the importance of explicit apologies and apologetic tones in preserving the customer’s sense of valued-client status.
Similarly unmentioned are cultural and class difference in tolerance for waiting. It is said of the English, for example, that if they see a line they will join it. I hope, however, that the managerial reader will have gained a greater appreciation both for the psychological complexity of queues, and for the fact that the psychological experience of waiting can be managed.
The propositions given here can be researched not only by academics for their general applicability, but also by managers for application in specific service situations. The main point of this chapter is that the waiting experience is context specific. By learning to research and understand the psychological context of their own waiting lines, managers can have a significant impact upon their customers’ satisfaction with the service encounter.
Notes
1. Fortune, 28 July 1980, p. 10
1. A notable exception is the brief discussion given in Sasser, Olsen, and Wyckoff (1979). A good summary of the work of psychologists in this area is provided by Doob (1960).
References
Buffa, E.S. (1983), Modern Production/Operations Management. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Doob, L.W. (1960), Patterning of Time. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Sasser, W.E., J. Olsen, and D.D. Wyckoff (1979), Management of Service Operations: Text, Cases and Readings. New York: Allyn and Bacon.
This article is from THE SERVICE ENCOUNTER edited by John a Czepiel, Michael R. Solomon and Carol Suprenant, © 1985 by D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington Books.
The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Book Description:
Don Keough, a former executive at Coca-Cola & at present chairman of the elite Allen & Company investment banking firm, has experienced numerous setbacks in his career of sixty years (including New Coke). He was also friends with some of the most successful people in business history, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Rupert Murdoch, & Peter Drucker. Now this elder statesman reveals how companies get into trouble. Even the smartest executives can fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility. When this happens, more bad decisions are sure into follow. The slight “how-not-to” book includes anecdotes from Keough’s long career, as well as other infamous failures. His commandments for failure include: Quit Taking Risks; be inflexible Assume Infallibility; put all your faith in experts; send conflicting messages, & fear the future. As he writes, “After a lifetime in business, I’ve not been able into develop a formula step-by-step that will guarantee success. What could I do, however, talked about how into lose. I guarantee you that all who follows my formula will be losing a lot of success. ”
Rating: 4.5
Price:$5.16

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5 Responses to “The Ten Commandments for Business Failure”
1. Robert Morris Says:
July 4th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
A fantasy dinners I occasionally think about would include several CEOs and one of them would certainly be Donald Keough. I followed his career at Coca-Cola and its association with Allen & Company as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet him (much less dine with him), but was not surprised by the intelligence and sensitivity and circumspection, who stated in his book. Keough is principled, but it also has what Ernest Hemingway once characterized as “an integrated bullshit detector anti-shock.” It confirms a suspicion I’ve had for years: there are many different paths to business success, but all business failures share common causes. Keough discusses ten of them, detailing (with tongue somewhat in cheek) as a “commandment.” He frankly admits that throughout his career, he has broken (or at least bent) several of them in a bad or at least ill informed decision, including that he and former CEO of Coca-Cola, Roberto Goizueta made involving New Coke. It draws heavily on his years with the company (1981-1993), citing real-world examples of business failures in a wide range of businesses, some of indeed very successful and very reputable.
useless would be served if I merely listed the “Ten Commandments”. Keough devotes a separate chapter to each of his ideas are best revealed in context. However, I will provide a representative selection of brief excerpts to indicate the direction and flavor of Keough story, adding a comment or two of my own.
Excerpt: “A company does not fail to do anything. Individuals do and when you dig a bit you usually find is that failure is not a litany of strategic mistakes – though they may all be present in one form or another – but the fault is real, as Shakespeare noted, in ourselves, the leaders of the company. Businesses are the product and the extension of the personal characteristics of its leaders – the long shadows of men and women who run them. (Pages 9-8)
Excerpt: “As Peter Drucker said it is nearly fifty years, there are major tasks prudent risk management of existing assets of a company order ensure its future existence. In fact, if a company has never failed, I submit that their management is probably not discontented enough to justify their salaries. Xerox was not discontented in any way. They were very, very comfortable, and as I noted, when you are comfortable, the temptation to quit taking risks is so great, it was almost overwhelming. And failure is almost inevitable. “(page 23)
Excerpt: “Charles Kettering, the engineering genius who helped steer a big General Motors during its glory years, said,” Do not bring me anything that trouble. Good news weakens me. “It is instructive to note that during the Second World War, Winston Churchill created a special office whose sole duty was to bring him bad news. He wanted the unvarnished truth, no matter what it was … [Isolation from] painful realities, carried to its most extreme form, tends to engender a feeling of almost divine right. (Pages 51 & 57)
Excerpt: “Beware of bright lights that surround bulbs Sun!” (Page 55)
Excerpt: “The distinguished Jesuit priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin noted that” no future awaits man except in association with all other men. “Therefore, it is not just to treat human beings with compassion and respect, it is essential for our collective survival. unethical men and women can flourish for periods, sometimes very long periods, but ultimately their lack of morality – and their lack of humility – destroys them. You can not build a solid and sustainable on a rotten foundation. “(Page 77)
Excerpt:” If you want to do anything, make sure that administrative concerns take precedence over all others! Love your bureaucracy! … There are layers upon layers of people, but when a customer calls, Nobody’s Home. They are all in meetings. These meetings generate more paperwork, more e-mails, more calls, more meetings. In fact, most often there are meetings to schedule meetings. Meetings are the religious service of bureaucracy and religious fervor are bureaucrats. “(pages 116 and 120)
In Concerning the last sample, I am again reminded of the observation that many obstacles James O’Toole change initiatives are cultural, resulting from what he aptly describes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom. “Bureaucrats tend to be the strongest defenders of the status quo until convinced that any proposed changes will not threaten their own subculture. It should also be noted that waste is one of the br the most important themes in Keough’s book, which is directly relevant to most (if not all) of his commandments. Drill down to determine the causes of business failure and you will probably find extensive waste of resources and opportunities. In 1963, Peter Drucker shared this vision remains true today: “There is surely nothing so useless that do with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”
Although most real-world examples that Keough cites involve major corporations such as Coca-Cola, IBM, Montgomery Ward, Republic Steel, and Xerox, I think his comments and its recommendations are useful to almost any organization, whatever its size and nature can be. Although it is a single command, “Quit Taking Risks,” at the top of his list of ten, my opinion is that the last, “Lose Your Passion for work – for life” should be there . Among the most common causes of failure, not only in business but in life, I agree with Friedrich Hegel: “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.” Notice of a man. . . .
Those who share my high regard for this book are encouraged to consult these books written by other guests Fantasy: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Peter Drucker’s Adventures of a spectator and the management profession, Winning Jack Welch (with Suzy Welch), and James M. Kilts’ s Doing What Matters: How to Get Results That Make a Difference – The Revolutionary Old-School Approach (with John F. Manfredi and Robert Lorber ). Also on Authentic Leadership Bill George: Rediscovering the secrets of creating lasting value and its more recent True Blood: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, John C. Whitehead “A Life in Leadership: From D-Day to Ground Zero: An Autobiography, and Sydney Finkelstein’s Why Smart Executives Fail: What you can learn from their mistakes.
Rating: 5 / 5
2. Viriya Taecharungroj Says:
July 4th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
“Although no company can never embrace all the world and all humanity, Coca-Cola is as close as any.”
“The Ten Command failures of Business “by Donald R. Keough, a former president of Coca-Cola is a small book which, if you follow the instructions will guide you to be a highly successful loser. If you do not want to be, what book is a must read and to take those lessons as a cautionary tale.
Coca-Cola is one of the best known brands on the planet, but it was still vulnerable to outages . In this book, Keough tells stories of Coca-Cola, among other companies on how they became successful and how it has failed at times. When you read the words “failure” and “Coca- Cola, I bet the word “New Coke” sprang to mind. Despite all the stories of any book or manual of cases in this book, you’ll have a chance to know the former president of Coca-Cola itself.
Contents
single command: Quit Taking Risks
“It is reasonable to think that because when you achieve something, even very little, there is a temptation leave the risk taking. “Apart from telling you why to stop taking chances is a sure way to fail, Keough wrote briefly about how they quited Xerox and risk taking.
Two Command:
be inflexible Keough began this chapter with a history of Coca-Cola bottlers in the 1940s-1950s and how they almost brought the company because inflexible practice. This chapter also examples of IBM and Ford. Overall, “when the conditions around you change, remains adamant. Continue to keep. Hold on, you will fail. “
Three commandment, that you isolate
This chapter aims to those who purchase a Great Big office in any corner of the floor most remote management and closing the door. And also put a sign: “Do not the boss mad. Bring me no bad news.”
Four command: Assume Infallibility
“If something seems to be heading in the wrong direction, cover up, better yet, wait until you have a real crisis, they blame on an external force – or blame someone else. ” Keough writes a brief ignorance of Coca-Cola, which has damaged the reputation expensive in Belgium. There was also a history of Coca-Cola in Germany that Keough admitted he was wrong because it assumes a bit infallibility.
Five Command: play the game almost the foul line
He wrote about the problem with the Wall Street Journal, which was CFO of rock stars now instead of being guardians of transparency and financial integrity of companies. “There is no such thing as business ethics. Just ethics. This is not separate from the rest of your life.”
Command Six: Do no time to think
Keough wrote that we are the generation that is obsessed with technology. People said that we are in the information age “but he denied that we are in the age data” with all the ICT (Information and Communication Technology). We need to think and vice Keough tells you not to think.
Commandment Seven: Put all your faith in experts and outside consultants
chapter case study popular, New Coke, and not on how it failed, but the way it was done. There is also a story Nice wine trade Coca-Cola.
Command Eight: Love Your Bureaucracy
“The bureaucrats who control these rituals (bureaucratic) to protect their lives, since any change affects their own power or authority. ” He also mentioned that the tape in one of the main reasons talented people have left the company. There are some short stories of Coca-Cola, Dell, NASA, etc. love on the bureaucracy.
Command New: Send a mixed message
“It has no matter what you do, you’ll be rewarded. ” is an example of a mixed message on who wrote Keough. Mixed messages create confusion. He has written about Colombia and how the purchase of Coca-Cola has sent a mixed message at all.
Ten Commandment: fear of the future
The pessimists will not push anything before either company or corporation. This chapter, Keough was struck on the face of those pessimism.
Eleven Command: Lose Your Passion for work – for life
This is the chapter and bonus Keough wrote about how it is most important.
. . .
Then I will compare this book to a book ideal for business or a book that is easy to understand, distinct, convenient, reliable, insightful, and brings an experience of great reading.
ease of understanding: 9 / 10: It is a small book written in simple language and all the commandments were beautifully in sync. You do not have to worry about statistics or numbers, everything is easy to learn and absorb.
Distinction: 4 / 10: The big difference between this book and other is that it is written by Donald Keough. All commands and stories in this book are not new, just the opposite view.
Practice: 8 / 10: It is somewhat confusing to define “practice” this book. After the book will lead you to failure and this book is written in a sarcastic tone. So, do the opposite and use of commands in this book as a warning.
Reliability: 9 / 10: It is very difficult to challenge his commandments. Look at the ten (eleven) commands and try to say that we will not lead to bankruptcy. I can not, and I do not think anyone can. Although his only experience is large enough, Keough set up different and interesting (even if no limits) stories of other businesses and industries.
Insight: 5 / 10: This book is small and the stories are short. I want stories, especially those of Coca-Cola, are over with more insight and detail. However, another thing I like about this book is quotations from various people. They are not numerous, but I like myself.
Reading Experience: 9 / 10: You will finish this book in no time. It is a pleasure to read. The book’s tone is sarcastic, relaxed and happy. I have never and will never have the chance to talk to Donald Keough, but my experience of reading the book, I come to think that the foreword by Warren Buffet may be true that “the meaning of such interviews Don and inspiring example. Don can tell you to go to hell if you enjoy the wonderful journey. “
Overall: 7. 3 / 10: Get this book and you will like it. There are some flaws, because it is very short, but I really think you can find great use of it. Hang this book it at your desk to remind you that you should not do in your business and you close the door to failure. By the way, I rarely pay attention to praise and foreword, but this book is probably one of the best compilations, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jack Welch and Rupert Murdoch… well… and George W. Bush!
Rating: 4 / 5
3. Bill Gossett Says:
July 4th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Anyone reading Donald Keough book would do well to first review books like How to Measure everything: find the value of “intangibles” in business and the halo effect:. . . and eight other business delusions that deceive managers just to keep things in perspective. These two authors why should temper “expert opinion” even when it is presented as entertaining as the book Keough.
As someone who has been reading studies case and “the world as I see it” books by senior year, I find that many examples Keough lists are very familiar. Of course, the example of New Coke has been around since I am in business school, but since he was there, Keough gets an “insider” pass and do not give a useful overview of news. The other cases are also a bit worn, but I do not think I’ve been reading all this entertaining event.
The Ten Commandments are also individually familiar. Is this an exhortation to keep his passion and remember to take risks really ring deep? No, but come to think, I have not found all in one place and I think I found them as engaging as you find in this book.
Keough also get additional credit for a convincing appeal to authority. The authors much more mediocre careers have written books with similar observations but Keough comes off as knowing what he is talking – and still manages self-mockery.
It was a reading quick and enjoyable and I found myself dying of laughter, emphasizing the paragraphs in the book to my friends, and quotations from the eBook. I intend to deliver this book anonymously to a couple of people who need it most (they can not take a joke, but I will).
Rating: 5 / 5
4. Robert Petty Says:
July 4th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
The author used this book to write his autobiography in part, but a condensed version, but it has also begun to define what success means in describing how to fail. It is interesting in that it made you smile a little, knowing that some of the things the author tells you not to do if you want to fail, or vice versa, takes you along a part of your life. Certainly not a manual on success, but more a book to read while at the beach, pondering your past, present and future and on ways to better yourself with advice from the author. I recommend it as a beginner’s guide to business and career, serving as a springboard to bigger and better text on the subject.
Rating: 4 / 5
5. Stephen T. Hopkins Says:
July 4th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Former President of Coca-Cola Don Keough has written a book of plain-spoken wisdom, breathing reflection Executive. Although the title is The Ten Commandments of corporate failures, there are actually eleven. Rather than trying to provide a formula for success that is unlikely to be replicated, Keough uses his many years of experience to draw attention to the trends and approaches in each of us when we practice are likely lead to failure. Although each of these commandments sounds simple, and can be avoided in the extreme, each of us is likely to follow a certain extent quite often. In addition to his own experience, especially coke, Keough uses recent examples of leaders and companies who have followed these commandments and achieved failure. I read this book at the end of the year, and provided an excellent opportunity to reflect on these commandments and to examine which of them I may be the sequel to my detriment. I highly recommend this book to any reader who likes plain, simple approaches, and are willing to reflect on their work efficiency.
Rating: Four stars (highly recommended)
Rating: 4 / 5

Why Vision and Commitment Can Lead to Failure
Vision and commitment—the same characteristics that define strategy for great business success—are also associated with business failure, according to Michael Raynor, distinguished fellow for Deloitte Research and author of The Strategy Paradox.
“The problem is, how are you supposed to know what to commit to?” Raynor told the student-led Corporate Management and Strategy Group at the Hyde Park Center on April 10. “How are you supposed to know what to have a vision of? Implicitly—and often explicitly—in this particular approach to strategy, the notion is embedded that strategic planners are able to predict the future to some material degree of accuracy.”

Any planner using this strategy can be a victim of that uncertainty, but not because he or she is incompetent or implemented strategies poorly, Raynor said. For example, Sony’s 1974 launch of the Betamax videocassette has become synonymous with business failure even though the company’s strategic choices were fundamentally reasonable and entirely consistent with the prescriptions of successful strategy, Raynor said.
Sony executives made a commitment to their vision—leading the burgeoning video industry, which meant consumers could use videocassettes to tape television programs so they could watch them later and skip the commercials. Within three years, Betamax failed because film studios began releasing movies on VHS videotape for rental.
“Sony could have taken a much less commitment-intensive approach to rolling out its consumer strategy,” Raynor said. “It could have gone one step at a time, learn as you go. But that would have come at the price of foregoing the opportunity to dominate the market completely.”
To maximize margins, firms typically cope with strategic risk by targeting the extreme positions of cost leadership or product differentiation, he said. Most firms stuck in the middle with smaller margins are generally regarded as stupid, lazy, or greedy for growth, Raynor said.
However, it is possible to get the large margins at “daredevil” firms with less risk, he said. Microsoft, which is regarded as a strategic giant today, grew from a company that in 1988 dabbled in myriad products, including the MS-DOS menu-driven operating system, OSII graphical operating system, Windows, UNIX, and Apple-based applications, Raynor said.
“Microsoft created a portfolio of what I call strategic options,” he said. “Strategic means an option on an ability to pursue a fundamentally different strategy within a defined market product space. Microsoft’s diversification was not random portfolio diversification in defense of ignorance. They had a very clear sense of where they wanted to compete, but they understood and accepted they had no idea precisely how they were going to compete in that space.”
A solution to this strategical paradox lies in the traditional vertical hierarchy, Raynor said. “Employees at the division level are responsible for competitive strategy, which involves making commitments to how you create and capture value in a product market. But executives responsible for corporate strategy must manage strategic uncertainty. That means identifying the strategic risks that division-level folks are exposed to as the consequence of making commitments, then creating options that mitigate that risk.”
Students in the Corporate Management and Strategy Group said they chose Raynor as a speaker because The Strategy Paradox represents a great innovation in thinking about business strategy, said first-year student Rafael De Leon, co-chairman of the group. “These are breakthrough ideas, and they are a great complement to what we’re learning in class.”
A failure of the Singapore education system
I think that the main purpose of education is to impart knowledge and comprehension ability so that human beings will be able to understand what goes on around them and subsequently, be able to make informed decisions by themselves.
Being a product of the Singapore education system, I would say that the system is truly one of the best in terms of producing people who can ace examinations. Unfortunately, the system fails spectacularly in preparing one to make informed decisions about one critical aspect of life, and that is finances.
Of course, some people would point out that we are promoting entrepreneurship in schools. That teaches you, or rather encourages you to make money. However, it does not teach you how to spend money wisely. With the entrepreneurship drive, it seems to me that we are teaching that the solution to money problems is even more money.
This is a huge fallacy. How many people can actually be so sucessful at entrepreneurship that money is never a problem ever again? Most people either end up being a salaried worker, or perhaps owning a small-medium enterprise. For many of us, money will always be a constant headache.
It need not be a headache if we had the knowledge of how to manage our money properly. We need to teach our kids that the proper way to financial freedom is control of spending. It is certainly a whole lot easier to control spending compared to controlling income. We usually can make decisions on how much to spend, but we usually have little say over how much income we get.
It is not surprising that many people, especially young people are in debt. Our society has glamourised consumption. Symbols of success are often material objects, such as the size of the car, the size of the property, the size of the bank account and so forth. Credit is easily available through credit cards and easy loan schemes. It is small wonder why many young people are in debt.
So, what did we do to address the problem? Financial counselling avenues are set up to help these people. While it is good to have financial counselling to help those who are already in debt, the question now is why are we not doing anything to prevent them from getting into debt in the first place?
Personally, I didn’t understand anything about financial planning until I came to university and made myself take courses in accounting and finance. It wasn’t rocket science, but it opened my eyes, especially when I learnt the power of interest. I suspect that many peoeple don’t even know the exact cost of taking up a loan or racking up credit card debt because they do not understand how interest works.
Take for example a car loan. If you pay cash for the mid-size car (e.g. the Nissan Sunny or Mitsubishi Lancer), it’ll probably cost you about $55,000 upfront. The person trying to sell you the loan tells you that it only works out to be a monthly sum of about $700 over ten years, with zero downpayment. For a graduate with a good degree earning $3000 a month, $700 is not that big a deal. However, if you do the math, $700 x 12 months x 10 years = $84,000. Over ten years, you paid $29,000 of interest to the institution that gave you the loan.
Shocking figures? Actually, $29,000 is not your actual loss. If the money had been invested instead of being given to the bank, you would have earned interest on it. Assuming that you invest $2,900 annually over 10 years at a return of 5%, the $29,000 would have been worth about $36,500 at the end of the ten years. With $36,500, I can probably go on annual 2 week trips to any part of the world for the next 10 years.
To illustrate the concept of how interest can work in your favour, let’s take the same example again. Assuming that you invest $2,900 annually over 30 years at a return of 5%, you would have paid a total of $2,900 x 30 = $87,000 for the investment. However, your return at the end of the 30 years is about $192,000. You earned $105,000 by simply doing nothing but investing your money wisely. Of course, if you increase the amount of your investment, or if you manage to achieve more than 5% returns, you will certainly get back alot more money.
Therefore, I really think that our education system should incorporate some form of financial education. The concept of interest is not not some esotoric concept. It’s something that can be easily explained to the person in the street. Armed with this knowledge, I am sure it will save many people from suffering future hardships. For those who still get into huge debt when armed with sufficient financial knowledge, at least they suffer not as a result of ignorance.
While providing simple financial education to our young is not all that difficult, I wonder why has it not been done. The only explanation that I can come up with is that it is not in the interest of the economy to have the bulk of the population being financial savvy. Interest accounts for a huge chunk of income for many financial institutions. If people are not going to get into huge debt, how can these institutions make money?
If you take an economic perspective, debt is probably a good thing for the economy because it increases the circulation of money in the economy. However, from a moral perspective, debt is not a good thing, especially when people are unable to pay their debts. Bankruptcy has a social stigma attached to it. The individual who is in debt often will have to worry about how to pay the debts, and this can strain relationships with their loved ones. It can affect their ability to work, or even their ability to function as a normal human being.
It’s really about time that we consider implementing financial education. If we can have things like moral education and sex education, why not financial education? After all, an education is abut equipping a person to be able to make informed decisions, no?
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Print article This entry was posted by Aaron Ng on 20/10/2006 at 3:23 pm, and is filed under Perspective. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

• Comments (48)
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#1 written by Just a Passerby
about 3 years ago
Sorry, abit of sidetracking from your money topic. Recently, I have been reading this book “Ancient Wisdom, Modern World” by the Dalai lama and from his book, there was this section that says that most people living in materially developed countries are less happy, and to some extent suffer more than those living in least developed countries. And they are so caught up with the idea of acquiring that they make no room for anything else in their lives”
Do you see this happening slowly in Singapore whereby good values are depreciating because people become more stress and frustrated due to materialistic life; chasing after money all the time. They neglected the importance of sharing and showing love & concern towards others but instead are always putting blame on people when they do not get what they want.
I think financial knowledge is important in school but good values should be re-incorporated, otherwise, our society will become one that is only concern about money and not on relationships or our environment.
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#2 written by Layman
about 3 years ago
Quote
I read your post with interest. You write this beause you see people in debt and some die because of this. It is failure to you but have you ever think it is success to others. There must be rich and poor in this world or else there will be no power. Ever wonder why this aspect was not taught after the signs were there for so many years. In order to learn about finances, one has to open their minds to the different scenerios in money matters. It is dangerous thing to think with many options in so early in life. Education is a powerful tool amd must be controlled “for your own good”, you will learn the books. Will you learn to be “independent” from what you have taught? At the end of day, there will always be money around but in whose hands. There is a bigger picture.
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#3 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Hi Passerby,
I suppose you are quite right. The money chase has certainly caused a loss of focus on other areas. It is sad, but that’s the way it is. Our society has developed in such a way that success in material terms is the only definition of success.
However, that doesn’t mean that we should abandon materialism totally because it’s simply not practical to do so. I don’t think that anyone wants to return to the pre Industrial Revolution times. What we can do is to question whether life is more than single-mindedness in pursuing material comfort.
I for one believe that I only need to be comfortable, not rich. That’s why I choose not to try my luck in business. I believe that as a salaried worker, as long as I moderate my material demands, I will be able to afford a roof over my head, with 3 meals a day. Maybe a car and a yearly holiday for a little extra luxury. The rest of my time, I want to spend on doing something meaningful, such as humanitarian work.
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#4 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Dear Layman,
Your point is well taken. Indeed in life, there are winners and losers. The one who wins does so at the expense of the one who loses, and without losers, there can be no winners.
However, I don’t think that it is justifiable not to do anything about educating people just to perpetuate the system of winners and losers. What I am concerned about is that people are losing out financially because of ignorance. I’m perfectly fine with people losing against someone who’s better, but I think it’s a different story when people lose out financially because they were not educated enough. In fact, this smacks of cheating to me. It’s unfair competition.
And, I disagree the because education is a powerful tool, it has to be controlled “for your own good”. This kind of ideas only seek to preserve the status quo and not seek improvement, not to mention that controlling education can lead to disaster, especially when the control is abused. Just look at how Hitler brainwashed school children.
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#5 written by Layman
about 3 years ago
Dear Aaron,
Thank you for your response. It is good that you are clear about who wins and loses. I am glad that you see that education should not be used for “brainwashing” and the disaster of a “controlled” education. You would like to see people get better financial knowledge, let see how this can be done by our educational system. And the next thing to do is wait …
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#6 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
I probably won’t want to wait that long. If I can, I will try to do something. If everyone waits for someone else, nothing will happen. I don’t know what I can do though, but if my efforts can reach a few people and save them from disaster, it’s better than having nothing attempted at all.
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#7 written by Chiaw
about 3 years ago
“Our society has glamourised consumption. Symbols of success are often material objects, such as the size of the car, the size of the property, the size of the bank account and so forth.”
You said it. That’s really the root of the problem. While “financial ed” is a worthwhile persuit, it dosen’t stop the perpatuation of the culture of excesss and obessive consumption, which unfortunately, is one of the banes of our largely capitalistic times.
What we need is a paradigm change. Like you, I think schools are a good way to start that process of change.
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#8 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Well, changing society would take some time, but at least if you make people more aware of the importance of minding their finances, you save them from immediate disaster.
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#9 written by Priscilla
about 3 years ago
Hi, nice post! I was from the same course as you…though it was known as ICM then.
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#10 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Yeah, I’m an in between.. 2 years of ICM and 2 years of CNM.. heh
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#11 written by loanshark
about 3 years ago
Hello,
Financial education has already been implemented wor
http://www.moe.gov.sg/speeches/2006/sp20060331.htm
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#12 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Hi loanshark,
I quote this from the website that you have given me:
“Financial education messages are taught through subjects such as Social Studies and Civics and Moral Education at the primary and secondary levels.”
I’m arguing that financial education should be taught as a subject in itself, and not just a part of another subject. I think it is important enough to be a subject by itself.
In anycase, it is good that something has been done. The only sad thing is, it should have come earlier. I now shudder for my friends who are willingly getting themselves into debt because they don’t know what they are in for.
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#13 written by loanshark
about 3 years ago
Hi Aaron,
I understand how you feel coz I know better than you because I am one of those blood sucking bank officers who hound debtors for payment until they are adjudged bankrupt. Ultimately, it’s matter of self discipline, youngsters nowadays should learn how to live below their means and not just within their means.
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#14 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Haha, no wonder you nickname yourself as loanshark.
Discipline is one thing, but I personally think that ignorance is to be blamed just as much, if not more. I always advocate that it’s alright to get yourself in trouble, provided that you know you are heading for trouble in the first place!
If you get into trouble not knowing why you got into it, I think that’s sad.
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#15 written by Akira
about 3 years ago
It is true that financial education is really important, but there is such a thing known as vicious cycle of poverty. I suspect that is what the family had fallen into. How much can you begin to save if each month you earn just enough, or less than what is needed to survive? Financial education only works for people with enough money in the first place. You have to go one rung below that to truly understand the family’s situation I’m guessing.
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#16 written by garble
about 3 years ago
Intentions are angelic however, in which the knowledge that create such a city must not be and if it does exist and persist, the inevitable contention that comes from running to and fro as the derivative increases its grip in society will number its toll exponentially in the arithmetic permutation according to time past. Nevertheless, your assertation is not without merits though somewhat dewy.
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#17 written by elaine
about 3 years ago
I did learn a bit about financial matters when I was in school. For our math curriculum, I remember doing stuff on interest rates (standard vs compound) and exchange rates (buying or selling currency). Of course, by the time I really needed to apply this knowledge, which was about 10 years later, I’d already forgotten how to use it. But at least I did learn a bit of it while still in school.
However, I must qualify this by saying that we learnt it in math, where there was no value judgement on these realities of life (e.g. “Interest is bad” or “Debt will reduce your quality of life”, etc). So maybe that’s what’s needed?
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#18 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Hi Akira,
I disagree that you need a certain amount of money to be able to plan financially.
I don’t have much now as a student, but I still plan. Financial planning isn’t so much about managing your current wealth, but rather, charting a direction for future accumulation of wealth.
It’s not only about looking at current income and expenditure, but projecting future income and expenditure as well.
Ultimately, it’s just a guide and the most important thing about financial planning is discipline. If you’re ill disciplined, you can do what I do. Buy financial products that requires you to put in money at regular intervals and that these products have a penalty for premature cancellation.
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#19 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Hi Elaine,
You are right. There is no point about learning how to compute interest without putting it in context. What we need is to open the eyes of people as to how such useful such things are when applied to life.
And, we must inculcate the notion that everyone can be well-off, if they plan properly. Earning compound interest is a surer way to get rich than spending time to calculate the probability of striking TOTO.
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#20 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Dear Garble,
I might be somewhat idealistic, but I just think that it is unfair for someone to get into trouble not knowing that they are getting into trouble. I only hope that we have a society where we make people know and understand enough the weight of their actions. Everything else they choose to do, that’s their own free will.
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#21 written by Masindi
about 3 years ago
What you see in Singapore is almost nothing compared to how much personal debt you see in the United States.
Most college students in the US use credit cards to get monthly and I’d say it’s a good guess to estimate this:
One average, most college grads in the US have an average debt of USD 5,000. I knew a couple of classmates from the US who are in debt as much as USD 15,000 by the time they reached 25 and had to declare bankruptcy.
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#22 written by Masindi
about 3 years ago
Let me add this from MSN
:

It’s hard not to be worried when confronted with numbers such as these:
* About 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year.
* Average households carry some $8,000 in credit card debt.
* Personal bankruptcies have doubled in the past decade.
It’s not clear exactly where the debt trend will take U.S. consumers or the U.S. economy. But it is clear that both are sailing in uncharted waters.
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#23 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Hi Masindi,
I don’t hope for Singaporeans to get there.
As it is now, many undergraduates take loans to finish their university education. For a 4 year course, it will amount to about $20,000. So, the graduate is already in big debt by the time they graduate.
If we don’t educate our young, ignorance will lead them to rack up credit card bills and take car loans to live up the good life.
If they marry, there’s the housing loan too. We’re almost in debt our whole life once we start working.
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#24 written by chris
about 3 years ago
Financial education only works for people with enough money in the first place.
This isn’t true, you don’t need a surplus of funds before you begin to manage it. In fact, quite alot of poor people do practice finance management to survive. However, their forms of finance management is probably rudimentary in an educated person’s eyes.
While some poor people moderate their cash, there are some that don’t. Lets not even talk about interest rates for cars, because its beyond a ‘poor’ family. Aaron and I have already done to death the topic about how poor families have too many kids and subsequently, fail to move out of the poverty cycle.
As for young executives, who wish to buy cars and condos to fuel their ambitions/ego. Well, they really should know better. I read this article about a women who bought a merc because she was a manager at some MNC and her parents encouraged her to do so. Later, her finances became a mass of unpaid bills and she blamed her parents for not teaching her financial planning. Which was quite ridiculous.
Schools could teach financial planning, but just like degree holders who don’t apply what they learn at their jobs……ppl won’t apply what they learn about financial planning.
Materialism is a very dangerous thing.
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#25 written by Kelvin
about 3 years ago
Yo Aaron,
I have been reading some posts on your blogs after you got tomorrowed. As a cog in the financial system myself, I feel that debt should not necessarily be seen as a bad thing. Like many things in life, debt is amoral. It is not good, neither is it evil. Imagine a world without debt. No-one would be able to afford to ‘own’ their own homes (actually, technically you don’t own your home until you pay off your mortgage, but that’s another story for another day) and tertiary education would be beyond the reach of a big percentage of the population. But debt can be a dangerous thing if not managed properly.
I agree that financial education is important, but I’m not sure if it would necessarily solve the problem. The problem may not be one of head knowledge but one of the heart. In this age of consumerism, people are easily blinded by instant gratification and the need to keep up with the Joneses. Even if they know the power of compound interest, they may feel that it’s better to enjoy now than later. So it could be a conscious choice for some people. Just like smoking – just an example of the top of my head.
Just my initial thoughts. Now back to work.
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#26 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Hey Kel,
I never claimed to solve problem in its entirety. If people want to head for disaster, they will go down the road to hell no matter what you do.
I’m more concerned about those who unintentionally go down the road to hell. By giving financial education, at least before the ignorant guy walks down the road to hell, there’s a big sign there saying “This road leads to hell”.
Whether they choose to walk that road or not, that’s up to them!
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#27 written by mj
about 3 years ago
“Financial education only works for people with enough money in the first place”
That person who said that obviously needs financial education.
I definitely agree with you that learning about managing your finance would be a good idea. Being able to plan for your retirement, knowing and understanding the basic functionings of securities and the options avaliable for investments are extremely useful skills.
I think they can incorporate that in maths…like teaching compounding of interest rates when teaching geometric progression for example.
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#28 written by mj
about 3 years ago
Oh and I also think that this is a good idea because it might spark some students’ interest in finance and more importantly demistify the idea of financial management.
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#29 written by Akira
about 3 years ago
Hi Aaron,
Imagine this situation, where you start out already in debt through no fault of yours. You don’t have a high level of education, hence your take-home salary is less than 1000 a month. How do you even begin to plan financially? You are a student now, but your projected income will be reasonably high. Ever met anyone in Singapore whose family survives on 800 dollars a month? Well, I have… I agree that financial planning is really important, but there are those whom we cannot even begin to explain the concept.
>>This isn’t true, you don’t need a surplus of funds before you begin to manage it. In fact, quite alot of poor people do practice finance management to survive. However, their forms of finance management is probably rudimentary in an educated person’s eyes.
Well, I sure want an example of this.
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#30 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Hi Akira,
The premise of my argument is that financial planning should start in school. If you start out on the wrong foot, it is quite hard to recover. This is why I say we should try and tackle the problem before things turn so bad that it is impossible to manage.
Of course, planning is not foolproof. You can plan all you want but something can just happen to wreck everything. I’ve always emphasized that my aim is not to solve the problem for everyone. My aim is to prevent disaster for the bulk of the people from courting financial disaster through their own actions.
For other people who are genuinely suffering through no fault of their own, that is where the government and charitable organisations come in. When I say you don’t need big sums of money to plan, all I am trying to say is that what you need for planning is a projection of future spending power, and not current assets.
And, financial planning is a fluid process. The principles are rigid, but the execution is not. If for some reason life is throwing lemons at you, just modify the plan according.
Ultimately, financial planning is nothing more than a preventive measure. You can think of it as a ‘vaccine’. No vaccine works after the person has developed a full blown disease, right?
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#31 written by chris
about 3 years ago
“This isn’t true, you don’t need a surplus of funds before you begin to manage it. In fact, quite alot of poor people do practice finance management to survive. However, their forms of finance management is probably rudimentary in an educated person’s eyes.
Well, I sure want an example of this. ”
Why do you need an example? *scratches head* I thought it was quite self-explanatory. More well off people plan financially in terms of fixed d’s, projected interest costs of loans, implications of childbirth and childcare. They plan projected savings by a certain age and try to calcualate a possible retirement age. They factor in the possibility of retrenchment, or overseas education for their children.
People who live on a more day-to-day basis, plan how much they spend everyday on meals. They plan the cost of school books for their kids. They set aside money for their utilities and are some try to be more frugal in terms of R&R. They carefully set aside a portion of their pay for their HDB loans. They make sure their 800bucks lasts them throughout the month, even if they can’t save anything, they’re happy.
This is what I mean by simple forms of finance management
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#32 written by wj
about 3 years ago
“However, it does not teach you how to spend money wisely. With the entrepreneurship drive, it seems to me that we are teaching that the solution to money problems is even more money.”
Any backup to that please? This whole argument revolves around this assertion, so please show that this is really true. My school didn’t teach financial planning, but my parents taught me common sense and thrift.
Thanks =)
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#33 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
As you said, your parents taught you common sense and thrift, and you should be grateful to your parents for that.
Unfortunately, not every parent teaches their children how to curb spending. Entrepreneurship is about starting a business, and growing it. What’s the primary motive of entreprenuership? Profit.
I think it’s quite self explanatory that profit making and curtailment of personal spending are two different issues. My point is that teaching students the steps to money making is good, but it’s lopsided education. The other side needs to be looked at too. Holistic education, if you like.
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#34 written by wj
about 3 years ago
What children learn does not just come from schools and parents, but also experience; unless they are repeatably unable to learn how to manage their allowances, mobile phone bills, etc, through personal experience, schools should teach finance management, as you have explained above.
I find your blog a pleasant read. Thanks! =)
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#35 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Indeed. I think we have to start the cycle of making our people financially literate. By educating the young now, when they grow up, they will inculcate these values into their kids, and coupled with more in depth teaching from the school, we can certainly avert many potentially disasterous scenarios.
I’m glad you enjoy my blog. It’s been nice discussing with you too. Thanks for helping me further my thoughts with your questions. Appreciated.
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#36 written by wj
about 3 years ago
Perhaps you could send post this to MOE and the ST forum? That would let more people know your views.
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#37 written by Aaron Ng
about 3 years ago
Well, I’m sure they are reading my blog. I just hope that the journalists reading my blog will be ethical enough to attribute their source, and not pass off my writing as their work.
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#38 written by Fish
about 3 years ago
Very well written! We share the same thoughts, although I learn through the hard way and were abit of late… glad you written this out. I come across many that are in debt be it due to house, car, credit cards, education, gambling even helping etc.. Sometimes is predicament…
Ironically our world or society has evolved and change into a place where financial ‘Webs’ are cast all over. We do need new skills, knowledge and tools in order to steer safely across, once you fall into the trap you will be immobilize, and slowly wait for your turn to become meal of that spider. I fully support the idea of educating the young with financial knowledge and also good values. Without a good heart, the knife will not be put to good use either.
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#39 written by Bellame
about 3 years ago
Thanks man, i agree
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#40 written by Yuak
about 3 years ago
( spam (
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#41 written by Madoa
about 3 years ago
Is it ok?
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#42 written by gamonie
about 3 years ago
I haven’t gotten much done these days. So it goes. What can I say? I’ve just been letting everything pass me by. Basically not much going on lately, but it’s not important. I’ve basically been doing nothing worth mentioning.
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#43 written by wadanub
about 2 years ago
Singapore’s Education System Is a Failure
I think that the main purpose of education is to impart knowledge and comprehension ability so that human beings will be able to understand what goes on around them and subsequently, be able to make informed decisions by themselves.
Being a product of the Singapore education system, I would say that the system is truly one of the best in terms of producing people who can ace examinations. Unfortunately, the system fails spectacularly in preparing one to make informed decisions about one critical aspect of life, and that is finances.
Of course, some people would point out that we are promoting entrepreneurship in schools. That teaches you, or rather encourages you to make money. However, it does not teach you how to spend money wisely. With the entrepreneurship drive, it seems to me that we are teaching that the solution to money problems is even more money.
However, this is a huge fallacy. How many people can actually be so successful at entrepreneurship that money is never a problem ever again? Most people either end up being a salaried worker, or perhaps owning a small-medium enterprise. For many of us, money will always be a constant headache.
thanks for my project
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about 2 years ago
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#45 written by cytoh
about 1 year ago
hi aaron,
I am just a typical secondary school student who well complains about everything. Haha. Tomorrow is my GP test on education and i really appreciate the insights that you have sighted in your blog posts. Thank you very much
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#46 written by cytoh
about 1 year ago
hi aaron,
I am just a typical secondary school student who well complains about everything. Haha. Tomorrow is my GP test on education and i really appreciate the insights that you have sighted in your blog posts. It really gave me an impartial thinking of our own education system. Thank you very much
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#47 written by winson
about 1 year ago
Hi Aaron,
I read your post with great interest. I am from the other side of the Straits and I must say in Malaysia it’s quite the same thing.
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#48 written by PG
about 8 months ago
Singapore is not alone , a large number of so called developed countries have an edcuation system that appears to work , but when examined in detail does not produce the type of people of ideas required . Education should primarily teach people the basics an instill the wish to learn more , during their whole life , to be inquisitive .
Also the education base is too narrow today , a study done quite a few years ago in Europe indicated that some people could have to do up to 7 different types of job in their life , this requires a wide base.
The problem in Singapore ( and other SE Asian countries) is not just classic education , it is also political , don’t let people think too much , or have too much general education , control them with fear , keep them at work , so they don’t have time to reflect on society and development .
Why do you think so many Singaporeans who study and work abraod don’t come back , the governmant hides this .
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Most organizations do a relatively good job of figuring out what must be done to solve their problems or exploit their opportunities. The difficulty is that the vast majority just doesn't implement these solutions very well. They plan the proper courses of action for the circumstances they face, but the reality of actually fulfilling their ambitions is a task that often proves beyond their reach.
The problem is this: Most organizations unwittingly apply their resources toward installing new solutions rather than realizing the anticipated benefits. Installation occurs when a new solution (merger, reorganization, updated processes, etc.) is introduced to the organization. The sequence of events may include announcing the project, providing new equipment or software, training, or a host of other related activities. Realization, however, is achieved when the organization goes beyond just deploying the change and reaps the full business benefits that were anticipated when the resources were allocated to pursue the initiative.
Realization has become a major differentiator because one of the crucial issues facing businesses today isn't what strategy or solution to put in place, but rather how to implement these endeavors in such a way that they have their intended impact. In volatile markets, leaders can't afford to risk their organization's future on important strategies and projects that are simply "installed." Today, success also depends on being able to ensure that the promised benefits are delivered.
2. Moments of Truth
All too often, executives feel like they have determined the right thing to do, but then something happens after the decision is made... the intended outcome just never seems to happen. Regardless of what the initiative involves (opening new markets, realignment of strategy and structure, altering corporate culture, etc.), there are inevitably "moments of truth" that dictate whether or not an organization actually receives the value the decision makers hoped to achieve. Companies come to these crucial crossroads each time they must decide whether to pay the true price of change or face whatever consequences exist for maintaining the status quo. As change initiatives move through these critical decision points, there are four possible outcomes: early termination, meltdown, installation, or realization.
3. Early Termination
Occasionally, approval is secured for a new initiative, but the project never really gets off the ground. Agreements are reached about what is to be done and budgets are set, but before any official announcements can take place, everything is discontinued. This is sometimes the result of an obvious financial or political crisis. Other times, the reasons behind these abrupt terminations are less clear. Regardless of the cause, when efforts to introduce change are blocked after being approved but before being officially launched, it clearly indicates that the organization was not ready to fulfill its aspirations.
4. Meltdown
Sometimes a project is announced and engaged, but at some point during implementation, it is discontinued with a complete withdrawal of resources and activity. Meltdowns are visible failures for all to see, and the economic and political price they incur are so costly they are generally avoided if at all possible. Because of the high visibility and vulnerability associated with such defeats, it is easy for decision makers and internal change agents (or external consultants) to informally (sometimes unconsciously) conspire to camouflage a meltdown as a project that was completed even though it never achieved the desired results. This will later be described as "dysfunctional installation."
5. Installation
When change projects are first introduced into a work setting, they are deployed (i.e., announced, set up, or in some way inaugurated) but have not yet achieved their ultimate intent. Installation is about placement-managing the tangible aspects of inserting a new initiative into the work environment (logistics, plugging in hardware and software, training schedules, work sessions, etc.).
Installation is an essential part of the overall implementation process, but it is a two-edged sword. With it comes the potential for either furthering the primary purpose of the intended change or actually preventing it from ever truly taking form. For this reason, we make a distinction between two forms of installation: beneficial and dysfunctional.
>> Beneficial Installation: Installation is a phase all change endeavors go through where attention is focused primarily on physically inserting projects into an organization. Installation is an asset when decision makers: 1) see it as a critically important step in the overall implementation process, and 2) realize that much more work is involved to fulfill the true purpose of their investment.
>> Dysfunctional Installation: Installation is dysfunctional when it becomes an end state, not a phase in the sequence of necessary action steps. When this happens, people within the organization engage in self-protective behavior that results in the appearance of change without the substance. Employees participate in the farce by saying all the right things, going through the motions of complying, disguising old habits with new rhetoric, and/or fabricating the intended outcomes. While all of this is taking place, the real goals of the effort are being diluted or completely bypassed.
6. Realization
Realization takes place when the key purpose for an initiative (for example, confirmed cost savings, measurable increases in customer loyalty, and documented productivity gains) is actually achieved. Only when installation has taken place are the necessary elements there to ensure that the installed solution is fully used as intended.
7. Change Containers
Executives and managers who have attempted to execute major initiatives with substantial change implications commonly report that the results of their efforts and investments were usually far more expensive, time-consuming, and less influential than they anticipated. Why is realization such a difficult challenge?
Change is a powerful force that has a major influence on our lives, but we can't actually touch or directly see it. You can't hold change in your hand; you can only confirm its presence by observing the trail of influence it leaves behind as it passes through people and/or organizations. Because of its elusive nature, change requires tangible "containers" that allow it to be transported into an organization and be recognized.
True transformation always enters our lives embedded within some type of recognizable package (i.e., a person, event, thing, or circumstance). But these packages actually only carry the seeds of change, not change itself. As an example, a well-crafted sales training program exposes participants to the elements needed to develop effective customer relationships, but the course may or may not foster the acquisition of the desired skills, attitudes, and behaviors that will actually lead to more productive relationships. New, enterprise-wide software may create the possibility of sharing information across departments, but it will not necessarily create the mental and cultural shifts needed to create the environment of trust, openness, and collaboration required to truly achieve the potential synergies.
New initiatives are vessels of change, packages that carry the unrealized potential for the organization to achieve what it wants. One of the main implementation problems is that many leaders confuse the containers that hold the potential for change with the actual change that is desired. The seeds of change within a project can be planted, but the true purpose of the endeavor must then unfold. And this can happen only if the surrounding "human landscape" has been made ready to absorb the inherent disruption.
8. Human Landscapes
What differentiates those organizations that simply install change containers from those that are able to fully realize the hoped-for benefits? The critical element is their ability to manage "human landscapes."
At its most basic core, a work environment is composed of two types of building blocks-those that are "inert" (dealing with such things as structures, policies, technology, strategies, capital, and tools) and those that are "human" (dealing with such things as perceptions, assumptions, resistance, fears, aspirations, beliefs, and values). Each work environment has its own configuration of inert and human components that form a unique identity or landscape that distinguishes it from any other work setting.
The inert aspects are isolated, independent features of the landscape that have no inherent connection to one another (i.e., a change in software does not by itself trigger a shift in the way budgets are managed). It is the human component of a landscape that provides all the links, bonds, and affiliations that exist within work settings. Without the human component, meaningful integration of the various inert components wouldn't exist. For example, a procedure could stand alone, unaffected by a report showing declining quality, which would be completely detached from employee performance ratings, which would be unrelated to the new IT system, which would be disconnected from the implications of the recent merger. People are the bridging agents between themselves and all inert features of a work environment; therefore, it is the human landscape that is most crucial to the success or failure of efforts to change the way an organization functions.
When new initiatives are introduced into a work environment, they cause shock waves of disruption to emanate from their initial points of impact. These points of impact are the physical and political locations where new entities (advances in technology, new organizational structures, leadership changes, etc.) are introduced and potentially affect the people they touch. Around each point of impact is a human landscape that reacts to and dictates the success of the change being introduced. The degree to which a new initiative spreads throughout a work environment or dies an early death is directly dependent on the human dynamics reflected in these landscapes (how much commitment or resistance exists, how many other changes are competing for people's attention, etc.).
Why are the human dynamics around change so problematic? Human landscapes are the breeding grounds for resistance because all initiatives designed to bring about change, by definition, interrupt the status quo. The greater the promise of change, the more disruption required. Despite wishful thinking to the contrary, most people are reluctant to disturb the routines that have formed in their lives. We are a species addicted to our established habits, and we often cling to them even when doing so is unproductive or, worse, self-destructive.
This reluctance to depart from the familiar makes it difficult to bring about true organizational transformation. Who has not witnessed employees and mid-level managers hesitating to depart from familiar territory when something new was announced? Even executives who sanction what they say are important changes often hope to somehow accomplish their intentions without having to personally leave their comfort zones. Furthermore, even if leaders are attuned to the importance of human landscapes, they often lack the knowledge and tools to deal with these issues adequately. Whether done because of ignorance, avoidance, or ineptness, the human landscapes that surround important business solutions are all too often left unattended or poorly addressed. And when this happens, these landscapes become incredibly effective at undermining and preventing projects from achieving their full potential.
Because of the powerful influence people and their reactions have on the success of change initiatives, it is vitally important for decision makers to ensure that the human landscapes encircling key business solutions are managed properly. Many leaders, however, choose instead to deal rather peripherally with or ignore altogether the people dynamics associated with the major changes they attempt to implement. Why?
Much of the time, it's because executives have not fully grasped that leadership today involves more than making the right decisions about "what" should be done. In addition to correctly determining the proper course of action, senior officers must also know "how" to orchestrate the human infrastructure to ensure that there is enough support from the key people involved to actually achieve the true purpose of the endeavor.
9. The Promise
When decision makers formally approve important change efforts, a promise is made to the shareholders that the value being pursued will emerge as intended. Of course, such promises extend to employees and customers as well. But for purposes of this discussion, our focus will be on the promise made to shareholders.
Regardless of the nature of the initiative, introducing change into an organization is always a resource-consuming activity (capital, time, energy, attention, etc.). These resources are corporate assets that ultimately fall under the ownership of shareholders. As such, a decision to engage change, in effect, is a decision to borrow owner equity and apply it toward funding the endeavor.
As is true with any investment of someone else's assets, there is an implied, if not explicit, commitment made that the resources being allocated will result in an appropriate return for the shareholders. When initiatives are positioned at strategic levels, and shareholders are made aware of (or, through the Board of Directors, actually participate in) the decision to move forward, the return on investment (ROI) obligation is directly expressed. But even when the initiative is more tactical in nature (below the level where a board would be involved or even informed), the same obligation still exists to do everything possible to create the expected return.
The fact that the promise of change is entered into through a tacit understanding makes the accountability of decision makers to their shareholders no less valid.
The problem is that all too often the promises made about impending change fail to actually translate into the intended results. Usually this is due to decision makers being dangerously naive about what is required on the organization's part for a major initiative to succeed. What's usually missing is either: 1) an awareness that impeccable decisions about what to do can still fall flat when not supported by the people being affected or 2) access to the tools and techniques needed to successfully direct the human aspects of the project's execution.
A third issue inhibiting decision makers from fulfilling their change-related promises is the assumption that the burden of accountability for achieving their goals can fall on staff or consultants. Although internal staff can play key supporting roles and external consultants can deliver sound recommendations, the decision makers carry the greatest obligation for success. They are the ones who must ultimately ensure that the surrounding human landscape is ready to support whatever needs to happen.
Regardless of how leaders may contribute to the problem, dysfunctional installation takes place when correct business solutions are inserted into human landscapes that have not been properly prepared to provide the necessary support. When this happens, initiatives offer little more than temporary, superficial relief from whatever symptoms the organization was trying to resolve. Under such circumstances, the promised ROI cannot be fulfilled. Maximum return on the shareholder's investment and full realization of expected value can only be accomplished by delivering on the promises made. Fulfilling these promises is unlikely unless the corresponding "human landscapes" have been properly addressed.
10. Two Aspects of the Same Journey
For important initiatives to reach their "realization" potential, it is usually necessary to call into play two disciplines: project management and change management. Project management deals with the logistics of implementation (functional milestones, scheduling, training, cost control, etc.). Change management uses behavioral science research and techniques to deal with the dynamics that unfold within the surrounding human landscapes (developing commitment, minimizing resistance, fostering resilience, etc.).
It is best when these two disciplines are integrated into a single implementation methodology. This allows the logistic and human components to be seen, as they truly are-as two equally important and interdependent requisites to successful change investments. The vast majority of rollout strategies, however, fail to incorporate both aspects, as they should. Many efforts to transform organizations are actually "spray and pray" operations that lack the discipline offered by project management. Of those strategies that do apply project management tools and techniques, most ignore or treat superficially the concerns change management seeks to address.
When deployment strategies do attempt to include change management issues, many end up reflecting more rhetoric and good intent than the level of structure and discipline needed for sound results. Whether change management is ignored or simply applied in a shallow manner, the results are the same: Project management that fails to adequately address the human dynamics of change usually has little chance of going beyond installation-type outcomes.
11. What Leaders Need to Know
Leaders don't need a deep expertise in the psychology of change to deal with human landscape issues, but a solid, working understanding of the dynamics involved is essential. The problem is that many executives are not predisposed to focus on the "people" aspects of their work environments at all, and those who are interested often lack the knowledge of how human landscapes operate and/or how to influence them. For change promises to be realized rather than installed, leaders need to know enough about how key transitions unfold to provide the proper guidance to their organization. For example, they need to know how to assess their organization's readiness to adapt and what actions to take if sufficient readiness is lacking.
Human landscape readiness involves four critical elements.
The status of these elements reflects people's predisposition toward realization success:
>> Sponsors: The management structure responsible for ensuring that initiatives are applied appropriately.
>> Capacity: The availability of the resources people need to adapt to the desired change.
>> Culture: The formal and informal ground rules for how things are really done on a day-to-day basis.
>> Targets: The people whom the initiatives are intended to influence.
Creating the proper readiness around important initiatives requires that the following four questions be asked and the necessary actions taken to ensure the key people are adequately prepared to absorb the changes being introduced. The critical questions are:
>> Sponsorship: To what extent are the appropriate leaders, managers, and supervisors unwilling or unable to provide the level of commitment needed to sustain the project?
>> Capacity: To what extent do users lack the intellectual, emotional, and physical resources needed to adjust to the changes required by the initiative?
>> Culture: To what extent do the behaviors, beliefs, and assumptions necessary to achieve the goals of the change differ from those that are currently shared throughout the organization?
>> Resistance: To what extent are various stakeholders exhibiting overt and/or covert reluctance to support the effort?
12. Summary of Common Implementation Challenges
A key challenge facing leaders today is delivering on the commitments they make when announcing critical changes. "Installation" of change is seldom in jeopardy; it is the "realization" of the promise to shareholders that is typically at risk. Fulfillment of these promises is possible only if leaders are careful to limit their initiatives to those they are serious about implementing. For each of these business imperatives, they must require proper preparation of the human landscape as a non-negotiable part of the rollout strategies being formulated.
*Reprinted by permission of Conner Partners
Businesses Benefit from a Low-key Spirituality
At a Babson College symposium, businesspeople discussed the importance of integrating spirituality with business.
By Frederica Saylor
(May 12, 2005)
Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade ice cream company, used inequities in the federal budget to stress the need for ethics in business
(Photo: Laury Hamel) Julius Walls Jr. begins each day with a prayer for the workplace.
“I want to be clear about who’s leading my workday,” said Walls.
As CEO of Greyston Bakery, Walls was one of several businesspeople who discussed the importance of integrating spirituality in business at a recent Babson College symposium.
“You won’t find me standing in front of my employees preaching the Gospel,” said Walls, adding that he doesn’t want to push his beliefs on anyone. But he said his religious beliefs are integral to how he runs his business.
Walls said that by realizing he is not “it” and that God takes care of him, he has been able to view goals differently, avoid a paralyzing fear of failure and reflect carefully when handling employee relations.
“My idea of spirituality in the workplace is how I am when I’m in there, what motivates me to do what I do,” said Walls. “We’re not there practicing a religion, we’re there practicing a personal spirituality.”
Ben Cohen, cofounder and former CEO of Ben and Jerry’s Homemade ice cream company, echoed Walls’ beliefs.
“At Ben and Jerry’s, we learned that there’s a spiritual life to businesses as there is in the lives of individuals,” said Cohen. “As you give, you receive. As you help others, you are helped in return. For people, for businesses, for nations — it’s all the same.”
Cohen said he and Jerry Greenfield developed a two-part bottom line that looked at how much money they had left over and how many people they had helped at the end of each month. This included obtaining all of their milk and cream from Vermont dairy farms and using sustainable rain-forest products in Rainforest Crunch ice cream.
Some people accused Cohen and Greenfield of doing “nice things” to sell more ice cream. But Cohen said they only did what they believed in; it just happened to have a positive effect on their sales.
“Our actions are based on deeply held values,” said Cohen. “We’re all interconnected, and as we help others, we cannot help but help ourselves.” Creating a consonance of values with employees and customers builds loyalty and even more value, he added.
In a time when international business leaders recognize a need to better infuse business with values, Richard Goosen, a professor of entrepreneurial strategy and finance at Trinity Western University’s business school, said he believes spiritually should be part of entrepreneurship curricula.
“The money’s just not enough,” said Goosen, who is also CEO of M and A Capital Corp. He said that although money is the oxygen of a business, it’s not the purpose.
He presented three models that lead to finding meaning in life. One model is a spiritual approach in which the pursuit of entrepreneurship is infused with finding this meaning and where entrepreneurship is the vehicle for the spiritual.
“Even nonreligious people are seeking meaning in their lives,” said Goosen. “Being an entrepreneur, rather than a businessperson, offers you a unique means to craft meaning in life.”
Laury Hammel, programming leader for the Responsible Business Association of Greater Boston and symposium founder and co-organizer, said the definition of “spirituality” in the context of the symposium is significant. He said it is important to leave the meaning open to people of all religious traditions, and those who are nonreligious. While some may define the term as faith in a higher power, others may consider it a set of values or a state of mind.
“We do spend a tremendous amount of time talking about our values: caring, loving, inclusive, supportive, empowering, joyful,” said Hammel. “Those kinds of values we talk about a lot because that’s why we’re here.”
Hammel said that creating this inclusive environment for those in business has allowed the conference to be the longest-running one of its kind. But there are still challenges, however, he said. Certain religious sects work against each other and create polarization. Another is that though businesspeople may realize the importance of bringing spirituality to their work, they do not make it a priority.
“A lot of times in business, people lose focus and think about getting the job done and achieving some goal,” said Hammel. “It’s important, but the process by which you go about it is equally important.”
Frederica Saylor is health editor at Science & Theology News.
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Religion in the Workplace
(cover Story, Business Week Magazine)
The growing presence of spirituality in Corporate America

The big splash at the Young Presidents' Organization powwow in June at Rome's palatial Excelsior Hotel wasn't a ballroom seminar about e-commerce juggernauts or computer blowups. Instead, the buzz at this confab of some of the world's youngest and most powerful chief executives was about the shamanic healing journey going on down in the basement. There, in a candlelit room thick with a haze of incense, 17 blindfolded captains of industry lay on towels, breathed deeply, and delved into the "lower world" to the sound of a lone tribal drum. Leading the group was Richard Whiteley, a Harvard business school-educated best-selling author and management consultant who moonlights as an urban shaman. "Envision an entrance into the earth, a well, or a swimming hole, Whiteley half-whispered above the sea of heaving chests. He then instructed the executives how to retrieve from their inner depths their "power animals, who would guide their companies to 21st century success.
Spiritual events like these aren't happening just at exclusive executive enclaves. For the past six years, 300 Xerox Corp. employees--from senior managers to clerks--have participated in "vision quests as part of the struggling copier company's $400 million project to revolutionize product development. Alone for 24 hours with nothing more than sleeping bags and water jugs in New Mexico's desert or New York's Catskill Mountains, the workers have communed with nature, seeking inspiration and guidance about building Xerox' first digital copier-fax-printer.
One epiphany came when a dozen engineers in northern New Mexico saw a lone, fading Xerox paper carton bobbing in a swamp of old motor oil at the bottom of a pit. They vowed to build a machine that would never end up polluting another dump. Later, at the company's Rochester (N.Y.) design offices, the "quest continued as co-workers "passed the rock in Native American talking circles, in which only the person holding the stone can speak. This forced even the loudmouths to listen.
Sure, some of the button-down engineers cracked up over the use of such words as "spirit and "soul. But, says John F. Elter, the Xerox chief engineer who headed the project, "for almost everyone, this was a real spiritual experience. The eventual result: the design and production of Xerox' hottest seller, the 265DC, a 97%-recyclable machine. Word of the program's success spurred senior executives from companies as diverse as Ford, Nike, and Harley-Davidson to make pilgrimages to Rochester in September to get a firsthand look.
GOD SQUAD. Bottom-rung workers are also getting a sprinkling of the sacred at the workplace. Companies such as Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and subsidiaries of Wal-Mart Stores are hiring Army-style chaplains who come in any religious flavor requested. Members of these 24-hour God squads visit employees in hospitals, deal with nervous breakdowns, and respond to suicide threats. They'll even say the vows on a worker's wedding day or deliver the eulogy at her funeral.
If America's chief executives had tried any of this 10 years ago, they probably would have inspired ridicule and maybe even ostracism. But today, a spiritual revival is sweeping across Corporate America as executives of all stripes are mixing mysticism into their management, importing into office corridors the lessons usually doled out in churches, temples, and mosques. Gone is the old taboo against talking about God at work. In its place is a new spirituality, evident in the prayer groups at Deloitte & Touche and the Talmud studies at New York law firms such as Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Haroller.
Across the country, major-league executives are meeting for prayer breakfasts and spiritual conferences. In Minneapolis, 150 business chiefs lunch monthly at a private, ivy-draped club to hear chief executives such as Medtronic Inc.'s William George and Carlson Co.'s Marilyn Carlson Nelson draw business solutions from the Bible. In Silicon Valley, a group of high-powered, high-tech Hindus--including Suhas Patil, founder of Cirrus Logic, Desh Deshpande, founder of Cascade Communications, and Krishan Kalra, founder of BioGenex--are part of a movement to connect technology to spirituality. In Boston, heavy hitters such as retired Raytheon Chairman and CEO Thomas L. Phillips meet at an invitation-only prayer breakfast called First Tuesday, an ecumenical affair long shrouded in secrecy. More publicly, Aetna International Chairman Michael A. Stephen has extolled the benefits of meditation and talked with Aetna employees about using spirituality in their careers.
That's not to mention the 10,000 Bible and prayer groups in workplaces that meet regularly, according to the Fellowship for Companies for Christ International. Just five years ago, there was only one conference on spirituality and the workplace; now there are about 30. Academic endorsement is growing, too: The University of Denver, the University of New Haven, and Minnesota's University of St. Thomas have opened research centers dedicated to the subject. The number of related books hitting the store shelves each year has quadrupled since 1990, to 79 last year. The latest: the Dalai Lama's Ethics for the New Millennium, a new business best-seller. Says Laura Nash, a business ethicist at Harvard Divinity School and author of Believers in Business: "Spirituality in the workplace is exploding.
In part, what's happening is a reflection of broader trends. People are working the equivalent of over a month more each year than they did a decade ago. No surprise, then, that the workplace--and not churches or town squares--is where American social phenomena are showing up first. The office is where more and more people eat, exercise, date, drop their kids, and even, at architecture firm Gould Evans Goodman Associates in Kansas City, Mo., nap in company-sponsored tents. Plus, the influx of immigrants into the workplace has raised awareness about the vast array of religious belief. All over the country, for example, a growing number of Muslims, such as Milwaukee lawyer Othman Atta, are rolling out their prayer rugs right in the office.
With more people becoming open about their spirituality--95% of Americans say they believe in God or a universal spirit, and 48% say they talked about their religious faith at work that day, according to the Gallup Organization--it would make sense that, along with their briefcases and laptops, people would start bringing their faith to work.
DEEPER MEANING. At the same time, the ultratight labor market has companies tripping over themselves to offer scarce talent any perks and programs that will get them through the door. One recent poll found that American managers want a deeper sense of meaning and fulfillment on the job--even more than they want money and time off. Moreover, the New Economy itself has hot-wired an interest in systems thinking and chaos theory, which have forged some common ground with religion by showing that science is partly about irrational and inexplicable things. The Internet's nonlinear nature is pushing people to take unconventional, intuitive approaches to their work.
But perhaps the largest driver of this trend is the mounting evidence that spiritually minded programs in the workplace not only soothe workers' psyches but also deliver improved productivity. Skeptics who scoff at the use of the words spirituality and Corporate America in the same breath might write this off as just another management fad.
But a recently completed research project by McKinsey & Co. Australia shows that when companies engage in programs that use spiritual techniques for their employees, productivity improves and turnover is greatly reduced. The first empirical study of the issue, A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, published in October by Jossey-Bass, found that employees who work for organizations they consider to be spiritual are less fearful, less likely to compromise their values, and more able to throw themselves into their jobs. Says the book's co-author, University of Southern California Marshall School of Business Professor Ian I. Mitroff: "Spirituality could be the ultimate competitive advantage. Fully 60% of those polled for the book say they believe in the beneficial effects of spirituality in the workplace, so long as there's no bully-pulpit promotion of traditional religion.
That's exactly the danger. Even in an era that's more accepting of spirituality, the prospect of religion seeping into secular institutions, especially corporate ones, makes many uneasy. At the fringes, some businesses are running up against the bizarre, such as the maintenance worker who insisted he was the Messiah, the administrative assistant who routinely dropped to her knees outside of people's cubicles to speak in tongues, and the male witch who insisted on having Halloween off. And the more receptive companies are to Bible groups or Buddhist seminars, the more conflicts are erupting. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports a 29% spike since 1992 in the number of religious-based discrimination charges, making those the third-fastest-growing claim, after sexual harassment and disability.
WEBHEADS. But that's no deterrent to spiritually minded CEOs. S. Truett Cathy, an evangelical Christian and chief executive of Chick-fil-A Inc., hosts a hymn-filled prayer service on Monday mornings for those employees of the Atlanta company who want to take part. On Sundays--when McDonald's Corp. and Burger King Corp. are doing a brisk business--Cathy closes his 1,000 fast-food shops because he believes in keeping the Sabbath. For Cathy, it's not so difficult to negotiate the religious differences of his employees because so many of them are evangelical Christians, too.
Shoemaker Timberland Co.'s chief executive, Jeffrey B. Swartz, is in the opposite position. Swartz is one of the few orthodox Jews at the Stratham (N.H.) company. Employees who travel with him on business often razz him about his penchant for pulling out his well-worn prayer book on planes. But he uses his religious beliefs to guide business decisions and, in some instances, company policy, often bouncing work problems off his rabbi. Because community service is such a bulwark of Swartz' faith, all employees at Timberland get 40 hours a year off to volunteer at the charity of their choice.
For Kris Kalra, chief executive of BioGenex, it's the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy text, that offers the best lessons for steering a business out of trouble. Five years ago, Kalra was a hardheaded workaholic who had long missed his kids' baseball games and Brownie troop meetings. He worked holidays and weekends and often expected his 140 employees to do the same, holding his secretary hostage even if one of her kids needed her at home. But as the blowups with his family got worse and his medical-lab technology business stumbled, he had a breakdown. "I realized we were living in a completely material world, Kalra says, referring to the Internet-rich Webheads with their theme houses in the hills. "The higher purpose was being lost.
He dropped out of corporate life for three months, studying the Bhagavad Gita for eight hours a day. After he returned to work, he started listening to other people's ideas and slowly let go of his micromanaging ways. With the approval of 12 patents, Kalra's new products helped increase sales. Instead of putting in those workaholic hours, people on the leafy corporate campus are starting to use flextime.
Employers in old-line industries are also getting in on the trend. Ever since Austaco Inc., the sixth-largest Pizza Hut and Taco Bell franchisee in the U.S., began hiring chaplains in 1992 through a nonprofit called Marketplace Ministries, the company has reduced its annual turnover from 300% to 125%. In fast-food time, that's like having workers stay on for an eternity. The company credits the chaplain program for the drop. Employees such as Taco Bell cashier Kim Park, who has a husband in prison, a daughter in rehab, and two mouths to feed at home, say they wouldn't dream of leaving for another position that didn't have the religious lifeline. "A lot of times I get real depressed, and I have to talk to somebody, or I'll explode, says Park, sitting in a Taco Bell booth just before the lunchtime rush starts. "If I didn't have that support, I don't know what I'd do.
That help comes in the form of her weekly meetings with chaplain Angie Ruiz, who also visits employees at 13 other Taco Bells and Pizza Huts around Austin, Tex. After pulling up to the restaurants in her powder-blue Ford Crown Victoria with the backseat full of Bibles, Ruiz heads straight to the kitchens. She grabs arms and pats backs as she saunters through, quipping about the cashier's stolen junker: "Wanda, we'll have to pray about your car. She checks in on a waitress with a drug-addicted daughter and acts as an interpreter following a dustup between a Mexican busboy and his English-only boss. She even offers a new dishwasher a paperback Bible.
NEW SWIRL. All this may seem counterintuitive at a time of scientific and technological apotheosis. But, just as industrialization gave rise to social liberalism, the New Economy is causing a deep-seated curiosity about the nature of knowledge and life, providing a fertile environment for this new swirl of nonmaterialist ideas. "In this kind of analytical framework, says Harvard's Nash, "suddenly it's O.K. to think about forces larger than yourself, to tap into that as an intuitive source of creative, analytical power. And the Internet's power to blast through old paradigms and create previously impossible connections is inspiring fervent feelings that border on the spiritual. "This new sense of spontaneity has caused even the most literal-minded to say, `Wow, there's this other force out there,"' says Nash.
Spiritual thinking in Corporate America may seem as out of place as a typewriter at a high-tech company. But the warp speed of today's business life is buckling rigid thinking, especially now that the sword-swinging warrior model has become such a loser. Besides, who has time for decision trees and five-year plans anymore? Unlike the marketplace of 20 years ago, today's information and services-dominated economy is all about instantaneous decision-making and building relationships with partners and employees. Often, spiritual approaches can be used to help staffers get better at the long-neglected people side of the equation. It's no wonder high-tech companies are packing nerdy programmers off to corporate charm schools to teach them how to talk to customers and each other. "More and more people are going to spiritual processes for help," says consultant Whiteley, whose clients include Goldman Sachs, Sun Microsystems, and Ford.
Yet as the workplace opens up to such things, "more and more conflicts are going to continue to erupt," says San Francisco-based employment lawyer Howard A. Simon. The clashes split along the same lines the country does. On one side of the divide are evangelical Christians, some of whom want workplace spirituality to focus on a conservative message about Jesus Christ and who think New Age efforts are demonic. On the other are those who fear the movement is a conspiracy to proselytize everyone into thinking alike. Somewhere in between are the skeptics who think it's yet another one of management's fads, exploiting people's faith to make another dollar.
Because of this, many institutions keep away from the issue. Harvard business school initially turned down a gift from industrial cleaning company ServiceMaster Co. for a religion-and-business lecture two years ago; Harvard officials were nervous about sponsoring anything with religious content. In Silicon Valley, career coach to the high-tech stars Jean Hollands said she had to change her company's name to the Growth & Leadership Center from the Good Life Clinic, lest she scare off clients such as Intel Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. "They thought it sounded like a Mormon touchy-feely group," Hollands says. To this day in the Valley's heavily left-brain culture, Hollands says she has to use euphemisms for talking about psychology and spirituality, such as "internal response system" instead of "feelings" and "concerns" instead of "fears." "We're still cautious about putting out that we're holistic, even though we are," she says.
That's why most companies and executives are careful to stick to a cross-denominational, hybrid message that's often referred to as secular spirituality. It focuses on the pluralistic, moral messages common to all the great religions, such as plugging into something larger than yourself, respecting the interconnectedness of all actions and things, and practicing the Golden Rule. But it also puts a premium on free expression and eschews cramming beliefs down other people's throats.
Not everyone sticks to this script, though. Abuses have included everything from management consultants who employees alleged were fronts for the Church of Scientology to cult members who use the workplace as an arena to woo fresh members into their folds. Some lawyers are even getting calls from companies worried about employees who seem to be gripped by a "millennium madness," says Garry G. Mathiason, senior partner at Littler Mendelson, the largest employment law firm in the country. These Y2K zealots often call for violence, and the worry is they'll act out their missions at work.
Generally employers are compelled to make "reasonable accommodations" to employees with religious needs, just as they are required to do for the disabled. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 offers broad protections to the religious. However, the courts have been equally strict about not allowing one employee to create a hostile work environment for others by harassing them about what they do or don't believe.
"STEALTH BOMBERS." Jennifer Venters, who used to be a radio dispatcher in the Delphi (Ind.) police department, says she knows this drill from her ex-boss, former police chief, Larry Ives. In a lawsuit filed against Ives, Venters claimed her life changed when he showed up for duty and told her that he had been sent by God to save as many people from damnation as he could. Things got worse, alleges Venters in court documents, when Ives objected to her female roommate, asked her if she had entertained male police officers with pornographic videos, and accused her of having sex with family members and sacrificing animals in Satan's name. According to court documents, Ives capped it all off by suggesting that if she wasn't going to reform her depraved ways, she would be better off just killing herself. Ives, who calls the accusations "totally false," says he did discuss religion with Venters but only when she asked him about his evangelical faith. The Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals found that Venters had a reasonable basis for a religious harassment claim and ordered that the case go to trial, but it was later settled for $105,000 without any admission of liability.
But not all of these religious disputes are being fought out in the legal arena. Fearing that the rising pluralism in the workplace might lead to the spreading of the "wrong" kinds of religion, some fundamentalist Christians have taken to advising other believers on how to act like "stealth bombers" to perform "religious takeovers" of their organizations and "capture" them for Christ. Some advocated techniques: keeping a Rolodex listing each co-worker's spiritual progress and using Biblical names for e-mail addresses.
All this spiritual revival may have a fin-de-siecle feel--in fact, what's happening now is something of a replay of the spiritual movement that took place at the last turn of the century. The difference is that in those days, workers were considered extensions of machines. Then in the 1930s, the arm-around-the-shoulder theory of management was born. The idea was that bosses need just issue a little praise, and productivity would soar.
Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, thinking shifted toward viewing workers not just as bodies needing sustenance but as people with minds, says University of New Haven Management Professor Judi Neal. Fueling today's trend, too, was the collective revulsion over the greed in the late 1980s. That's when CEOs, determined to rout insider trading and other skullduggery from their organizations, furiously crafted ethics statements as a way to give their employees a new moral compass.
Once words like "virtue," "spirit,'' and "ethics'' got through the corporate door, God wasn't far behind. Best-sellers such as Jesus, CEO and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (one of which is to cultivate spirituality) began to line the oak-paneled bookshelves of America's managers. Seizing the moment, such spiritual gurus as Deepak Chopra and M. Scott Peck began advising corporate chieftains about how they could tie the new secular spirituality into their management techniques. Team-building programs sprouted like mad. So too did the Dilbertian sendups of these efforts, some of which swept through organizations at the same time that downsizing was crushing morale.
Body, emotion, brain. The only thing missing from the equation was spirit. But will this revival amount to anything more than a momentary sensation? No matter how it shakes out, in the wake of the Internet's creative destruction, new rules will have to be made. And the physical and human capital that powered the latter part of the 20th century is likely to be coupled with a new kind of social capital. Perhaps it's already coming.
By MICHELLE CONLIN
Business Week Cover Story: November 1, 1999
Copyright 1999 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to (1) terms and conditions of this service and (2) rules stated under "Read This First'' in the "About Business Week'' area.
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Making room for religion at work
Employers are taking steps to accommodate workers' faiths
By GARY HABER, The News Journal
Posted Monday, July 31, 2006
Top
Lunchtime Bible study groups, flexible hours that allow Jewish employees to leave early Friday in time to light Sabbath candles and Muslim employees to leave work for Friday afternoon prayers and on-site meditation rooms: These days more employers are accommodating religious practices.
They're responding to a growing number of workers seeking to meld workplace responsibilities with religious observance.
Take Jamil Tourk, a New Castle resident who works as operations manager for a company that owns fast-food restaurants. Tourk, a Muslim, is required to pray five times daily and attend a worship at his mosque on Friday afternoons.
In the five years he's been with the company, which he did not want to name, Tourk has prayed in the office with his employer's approval.
He has a longstanding agreement with the boss that he can attend Friday prayer services. He either comes in early or stays late to make up the time. Tourk says the key was having an open discussion about his religious needs.
"They understand my religion, and they know I pray. There's a relationship there," he says of his employers.
More than ever, U.S. workers are looking to bring religion and spirituality into the workplace, experts say. Whether it's asking for Kosher meals in the cafeteria or keeping a Bible on their desk, or a verse from scripture on their cubicle wall, what for many people used to be confined to their home or house of worship is now finding expression on the job.
"People are becoming a lot more open about their religious practices, and unwilling to shut off that part of themselves at work," says Michelle Weber, who directs the Religious Diversity in the Workplace program at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, in New York.
Weber says many workers feel, "This is something I shouldn't have to leave at the door. It's a part of my life."
A new openness to religion
While a 2002 study by Human Resource Executive magazine found only 10 percent of companies said they had a formal religion accommodation policy, and only one in five said they allowed meetings in the workplace for prayer or religious purposes, Weber and other experts sense an increasing number of employers are becoming more accepting of religious expression on the job.
Companies such as AstraZeneca and Bank of America, for example, said they strive to accommodate their workers.
Workers feel increasingly comfortable asking their bosses to accommodate their religious requirements because the mood in the country is more accepting of discussions of religion and spirituality in general, Weber says.
When employees hear the country's leaders openly discuss their religious beliefs and how they guide their decision-making, they feel free to discuss the same things in their own workplace, she says.
Part of the new openness to religion also may be attributable to a number of lawsuits in the late 1990s brought by workers who felt their religious rights were being infringed, says Don McCormick, a business professor at the University of Redlands, in Redlands, Calif., who teaches a course on spirituality in the workplace.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans religious discrimination in the workplace and requires that employers make reasonable efforts to accommodate their workers' religious needs.
The trend has been for courts to broaden the scope of workers' rights in this regard, says Barry Willoughby, who chairs the employment law department at Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, a Wilmington law firm.
Willoughby says it's not easy for employers to know where the lines are, because the law speaks in general terms, and the courts interpret it on a case-by-case basis.
The courts' decisions are "very specific to the case, the nature of the job and the employee's religious needs," he says.
Workplace chaplains
Experts say many stressed-out workers want to bring their spiritual values, as well as their religion, into the office.
To respond, a growing number of companies are offering workplace chaplains to help them better cope with life's problems.
"I think companies are offering more of a variety of things that help workers who are going through a spiritual crisis," says Rev. Diana Dale, executive director of the National Institute of Business and Industrial Chaplains.
Dale said there's no definitive number of chaplains in the workplace, but she estimates it to be in the thousands.
Pastor Mal Utleye is one of them.
Utleye, the transitional pastor at Bethany Baptist Church in Newport, also works as chaplain for Allied Automotive Group, a car transporter company based in Decatur, Ga.
Allied contracts with 75 chaplains of different Christian denominations to minister to workers at its facilities around the country, says Huey Perry, director of corporate chaplaincy services for the parent company, Allied Holdings. The chaplains are available to workers of all faiths, Perry says.
Utleye, who retired in November after 16 years as pastor at Hockessin Baptist Church, counsels Allied's workers in Delaware and Pennsylvania. He says it's not much different than ministering to people in church.
"You try to be a friend and let them know you're available," he says. "It's a person-to-person type of thing."
While many employers are more accepting of religious expressions by their employees, the rules should be different for the boss, says Ellen Barrosse, CEO of Synchrogenix, a Wilmington-based company with 35 employees that does marketing and advertising and also writes reports for pharmaceutical companies.
Barrosse, a devout Catholic, is president of the Wilmington chapter of Legatus, an international organization of Catholic businesspeople, whose mission is to help them grow in their faith.
Still, she says she wouldn't put a religious symbol on her office wall, because that could give workers the impression that promotions or assignments depend on sharing her faith.
"How would you feel if your boss had a lot of religious symbols on their office wall relating to a religion you don't belong to?" she says.
Afraid to pray openly
While signs indicate more employers and executives are becoming sensitive to religion in the workplace, some employees feel they're being left out.
Hisham Sabrin, who is Muslim, works in marketing for a pharmaceutical company he did not want to name. The Claymont resident doesn't pray during work hours, even though his religion requires it.
Sabrin worries that praying in the office would damage his relationship with his boss and his co-workers. He saw how co-workers reacted with discomfort and a lack of understanding when another Muslim employee began praying in the office.
"They found it quite awkward," he says. "They didn't know how to handle the situation."
Sabrin was also stung by the reaction he got from his boss when he worked in the banking industry. When he explained his religious requirements to his employer, "I feel it was dismissed as something unimportant," he says.
Weber, of the Tanenbaum Center, says employers are obliged to enlighten their workers about the needs of different faiths.
In the end, she says, employers will benefit from happier, more productive workers, who feel valued as people, not cogs in a machine. "It helps their employees become more engaged when the employer sees them as a whole person."
Posted at Delaware Online http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060731/BUSINESS/607310319/1003
who undoubtedly holds all Copyright reservations.

A Blue Ribbon to Make a Difference
June 25th 2009 13:17
Category: Contemporary n Modern
True Story by: Helice Bridges
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A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in high school by telling them the difference they each made.

She called each student to the front of the class, one at a time. First she told each of them how they had made a difference to her and the class. Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon imprinted with gold letters which read, "Who I Am Makes a Difference."

Afterwards the teacher decided to do a class project to see what kind of impact recognition would have on a community. She gave each of the students three more ribbons and instructed them to go out and spread this acknowledgment ceremony. Then they were to follow up on the results, see who honored whom and report back to the class in about a week.

One of the boys in the class went to a junior executive in a nearby company and honored him for helping him with his career planning. He gave him a blue ribbon and put it on his shirt. Then he gave him two extra ribbons and said, "We're doing a class project on recognition, and we'd like you to go out, find somebody to honor, give them a blue ribbon, then give them the extra blue ribbon so they can acknowledge a third person to keep this acknowledgment ceremony going. Then please report back to me and tell me what happened."

Later that day the junior executive went in to see his boss, who had been noted, by the way, as being kind of a grouchy fellow. He sat his boss down and he told him that he deeply admired him for being a creative genius. The boss seemed very surprised. The junior executive asked him if he would accept the gift of the blue ribbon and would he give him permission to put it on him. His surprised boss said, "Well, sure." The junior executive took the blue ribbon and placed it right on his boss's jacket above his heart. As he gave him the last extra ribbon, he said, "Would you do me a favor? Would you take this extra ribbon and pass it on by honoring somebody else? The young boy who first gave me the ribbons is doing a project in school and we want to keep this recognition ceremony going and find out how it affects people."

That night the boss came home to his 14-year-old son and sat him down. He said, "The most incredible thing happened to me today. I was in my office and one of the junior executives came in and told me he admired me and gave me a blue ribbon for being a creative genius. Imagine. He thinks I'm a creative genius. Then he put this blue ribbon that says 'Who I Am Makes A Difference'" on my jacket above my heart. He gave me an extra ribbon and asked me to find somebody else to honor. As I was driving home tonight, I started thinking about whom I would honor with this ribbon and I thought about you. I want to honor you.

My days are really hectic and when I come home I don't pay a lot of attention to you. Sometimes I scream at you for not getting good enough grades in school and for your bedroom being a mess, but somehow tonight, I just wanted to sit here and, well, just let you know that you do make a difference to me. Besides your mother, you are the most important person in my life. You're a great kid and I love you!"

The startled boy started to sob and sob, and he couldn't stop crying. His whole body shook. He looked up at his father and said through his tears, "I have been contemplating suicide, Dad, because I didn't think you loved me. Now I know you care."

The boss went back to work a changed man. He was no longer a grouch but made sure to let all his employees know that they made a difference. The junior executive helped several other young people with career planning and never forgot to let them know that they made a difference in his life. The young boy and his classmates learned a valuable lesson.
Who you are DOES make a difference.
One Glass of Milk
June 2nd 2009 13:36
Category: Contemporary n Modern
One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school, found he had only one thin dime left, and he was hungry.

He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water. She thought he looked hungry so brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, "How much do I owe you?" "You don't owe me anything," she replied. "Mother has taught us never to accept pay for a kindness." He said..... "Then I thank you from my heart."

As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but his faith in God and man was strong also. He had been ready to give up and quit.

Year's later that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease. Dr. Howard Kelly ! was called in for the consultation. When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes. Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to room. Dressed in his doctor's gown he went in to see her. He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day he gave special attention to the case. After a long struggle, the battle was won.

Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill. She read these words..... "Paid in full with one glass of milk"

Signed Dr. Howard Kelly. Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happy heart prayed: "Thank You, God, that Your love has spread abroad through human hearts and hands."

Based on real event
Reference:snopes.com