Sunday, November 22, 2009

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From the recent Hong Kong TVdrama of “Beyond the Realm of Conscience” to “Office Politics” in real life, how can an executive survive for his success?

While the recent popular TV drama series of "Beyond the Realm of Conscience" was performed with clear portrayal of roles, the audience could easily identify and differentiate “white hats” from “black hats” by watching and following the story track. The “black hats” argued that they needed to do harmful acts to others as their environment had forced them to do so. The environment one was living could be so difficult that one needed to adjust or twist one’s personality in order to survive for success in such an environment. The rare birds of “white hats” insisted that their survival was based on good deeds to other people no matter how difficult the environment could be.

In real life, one may not easily identify “black hats” especially when they are doing any harmful acts covertly but masked with “good reasoning” or "pretended help". One may also simply miss any “white hats” if one tends to believe good people no longer existing in our environment, especially after much experience of being “hurt” or “betrayed” from bad people.

Is men good or evil? It is a philosophical question. Different religions and philosophies have their own understanding and evaluation of human personality and behavior.

But let’s look at yourself and people around you. Do you find more good people than bad people or the other way round? Do you have more good colleague or staff than bad ones in your office? By observation of evidence, we generally have more good people than bad people in our society, right?

However, we also notice that it is almost impossible to find someone who is absolute right or good at all times; that is always perfect even without any careless mistake. Likewise, it is almost impossible that you can’t find at least one small good thing from any person who has demonstrated only harmful acts at all times.

Though “absolute” is not easily observable and attainable in this universe, the truth of the matter can be better expressed somewhere along a spectrum with the two ends of "being 100% good” and “being 100% bad”. Is the person doing more good things than bad things? In other words, is the person constructive rather than destructive with good intention or not?

To live a better, prosperous and flourishing life, it is therefore important to live and work with people who are more constructive than destructive, as sometimes it is hard not to be badly influenced by the destructive people. Though you can say you simply concentrate on your own job in your office that you believe it will be all right, the truth of the matter is that how good the people working in your office can greatly affect your performance especially if you are the senior manager or the owner of the company.

With all the data and resources on hand (even if limited sometimes), when making any sensible (which is in fact ethical) decision, it is necessary to come up the solution for the greatest good to the greatest number of people involved towards a saner goal or purpose. In other words, our decisions and actions do not necessarily affect us alone but also other people around us based on the fact that we do not live alone.

To learn more about the human evaluation for the prediction of their behavior to the best interest of all concerned, write me an email.