A Day at Works

Ancient Greek philosophers identified 3 ideals: truth, good, and beauty. Chinese add in the 4th: abundance.

Science is dedicated to pursuit of truth, and technology to its application. Ethics and morality, to pursuit of the good, Aesthetic to beauty, and Economics to abundance.

Although management or economics mainly to pursue abundance, working without truth, good & beauty would be suffering.

Management should embrace technology, guided by ethical values, & in aesthetic way. How?

Aesthetic is related to creation & re-creation. Work should be creative to innovate something new. This could happen when company re-fresh mind, heart & body of her employees, it is promoting fun & enjoyment.

The idea of loyalty program is good. The firm identify loyal customer, rewards them based on their personal needs captured by firm’s dB through data mining activities.

The problem is that the programs have already become generic. The rewards is similar, the system is mechanistic – thus although customer is greet personally, we know that the system actually do it. “We are bits of data not a person”, customer said. As the result the program fail to develop true loyalty of customers, even worse customers getting loyal to the one giving the more rewards or loyal to the rewards NOT the firm who provide it. Customer would go shopping at Metro when Metro Dept Store giving more points and discount than Matahari. As program become commodity, the programs becoming the cost of doing business for those industry, i.e. as an entry barrier. As an escape, firms back to customer service and brand (precisely branded experience) – the two, that are could not be copied easily.

The second problem is that, as program could not cover all customer need, then program becoming segmented and educate customer to loyal in certain ways or behavior. For instance take a look HSBC Credit Card. This Credit Card attracts certain customer, that is a group of customer who travel a lot. All benefit provided by HSBC tend to cover on traveling, thus customers will use HSBC Card when they are on a traveling or vacation. For food (restaurant, café, etc.), customers now using Mega Visa and for car related need they use AstraWorld Credit Card (co-branding with BCA, and BII).

So actually we educate customers to loyal to certain program (for this example are programs linkage to credit cards), related to certain behavior or partial loyalty. A young dynamic individual who drive a Yaris, would use AstraWorld Credit Card when having a transaction at workshop, but when he wants to see a firm at 21 Cineplex, he would use BCA Visa, and when he has a dining with friend he will use Mega Visa.

So what’s the solution?

A: When we want a clan, create for them a common culture which then create a community (~ having something in common). You can do it by establishing value, communicate and express the value throughout verbal and non verbal ways, and creating unique artifacts.

In one of the company, there is a female Manager who has been known of her bitchy attitudes.
She is in 35s, single but has a reputation as a girl of married man across level of the firm. When she was an Officer, she was intimate to her Branch Manager. When she was a Supervisor she was known as a concubine of a rising star Regional Manager, and last but not least her charm also touching the Board of Director. Amazingly she often manages multi intimate relationship at once.
Hearing this story, I felt a shame. A trophy girl who also a Manager is in action and let go because no one have enough courage to consider attitude than output.
As a Manager, she gives wrong example, and some Officers start doing the same bitchy attitude and appearance to manipulate weak man in power.

This model of behavior certainly starts because supported by ‘management’, for instance something that is consider not dangerous, straightly for the purpose of the business such as hiring sexy woman as a marketing officer. The intention to seduce customers then slow but sure become a weapon to manipulate the boss. Yes the boss, because when we influence colleague & follower, love and fear generally cost less and quite productive. In managing or influencing up, sex is the productive weapon even compared to networking with authoritative person in top.

Love, different to sex. Love is not manipulating because self-sacrifice (some people say that we should find the best for ourselves or “to have” – but I think the old value, find the best in others or “to give” is greater). Thus love is positive, while sex is love influenced by egoism, that is the fear of left alone. So when we behave to win sympathy of others (sub ordinate or super ordinate), then actually it is not love – it is sex in subtle was; like when we talk about hard core and soft porn or erotism – both are focusing on oneself.

The insight is that, we simply tolerate un-ethical behavior especially concerning sex as a private and extra office business but evidence shows that healthy corporate culture, especially in performance evaluation, promotion and the most importance, morale are destroyed. Employee understands that there is more than one-way to reach the top, including using sex and love.
Secondly, because woman naturally falls to this misconduct thus a man need to beware of this.
Third, because we naturally have fear in heart… easily do anything for ourselves.
Forth, the last is because without organizational support (company, state, community, etc.) becoming the one which is manipulative is more reasonable moreover evidence shows that a wolf is always a king in a kingdom of sheeps.