Right or Wrong?

Sorry for the MIA from my blog for soooooooo long. There is always an excuse for not writing in my nice blog for so long. Reason being, I guess I have found someone I can confide all my emo moments in that I have grown too comfortable to write.

However, I guess the laziness has to stop as its time to pick up my momentum. For this blog, I would like to talk about what I have learnt in business over these few months. In the past, perhaps mislead by the propaganda of TV, small little kid like me always think that business is about being all righteous and being there for the client all the time. Success will come from hard work and perseverance. Evil businessman will all crash and burn in the end.

All the ideal business ethics mentioned above only happen in TV, in the very fairy tale that kids indulge themselves in. Business world is not as beautiful as shown in Singapore TV as MediaCorp role is to portray good ethics in front of their wide spectrum of TV audience. In actual fact, the business world is colder than most of us view it to be. Profit is the first language that all business man adopts. Numbers are the measurement for effort. Being nice only happens when profits and numbers measures up.

In other words, the evil businessmen that we see in TV are actually the true form of what businessmen are in the real world. Steve Job sold faulty iphone and is a virtual ass hole. But we still love and embrace his product regardless of his conduct in business. He is still well-secured in his throne in Apple because of the fact that we are supporting his numbers and profits in share holders’ meeting. If being an ass hole get him to where he is and gave the share holder a smiling face when they see the dividend they are getting from their shares, please be assured that he will be Apple CEO no matter how many faulty iphone he is going to create and how many people he is going to screw over.

Professionalism is about delivery and not about being nice. Being nice in business equates weakness waiting for others to exploit. When you curse a businessman for being shrewd and cold, I guess that is actually the best compliment for him. Most of us might actually think that the above mentioned traits of a successful businessman are really bad. In actual fact, they are not even remotely close to bad. In retrospect, it is the best kind of conduct any businessman can have.

Why did I say so? Simply because business is a tough organization to upkeep. Only with rationality, good judgment, seriousness and perseverance can one maintain a business and make profit from it. When I mean profit, I don’t mean keeping yourself away from the bottom line; it means loads of cash that you can allow your share holder to pocket as dividend. Businessman has to be tough and appear as cold as they have to make tough decision without putting any emotion to it. Profits come first as that is the fundamental that any company is resting on.

We can voice our displeasure over any bad business conduct but these conducts are the very fundamental of business survival. Those that are caught with bad business practices are not wrong to do so. They are wrong because they are not smart enough to play the game well and avoid getting caught.

So what am I trying to say here? Bad business conduct is the way to go? Not really. What I am trying to say here is that human are judgmental and would, many a time, judge things based on their own perspective. What is wrong in business in our eyes might be because of a lack of understanding of what it takes to keep a business going. What seems wrong to us is because of the very fact that we do not share the same ambition and situation that others are in. This questions the fundamental question if there is any right or wrong in this world? Or is right or wrong just a perspective based on understanding from our own perspective?

Whatever the answer might be, I have learnt to be more objective. To be focus on getting my goals but not sacrificing my principle to be fair to the people who are fair to me. People grow as they aged and I seek break through every year in my life. Learning to be cold and serious, being an ass hole when need be to get things done might be a thing which I need to master in order to advance professionally in my life.

"What is right and wrong if we are wrong of what is right sometimes?"

~James Tan ~