Speaker: Professor Huang Chung-Hsing （former director of the EMBA program at NTU）

Management brings a group of people toward a common goal

It is not that difficult to sustain our lives, but it is extremely difficult to maintain an organization, as it involves “management”. Why are for-profit and non-profit organizations established? It is due to an objective, an aim to contribute value towards human society. This objective must evolve with the times, and management comes into play as certain changes need to be made while other aspects need to remain intact. Actually, management has a deeper aim of bringing a group of people together and uniting them towards a common goal unattainable by a single individual. There is a common saying that aptly describes our shared mentality, “I want a high paying job with little responsibilities, located close to home where I will be able to count my salary until my hands cramp up and wake up whenever I want.” In order for an organization to continue operating, there must be a distribution of responsibilities and various rules and regulations in place. Enforcing this goes against our greedy and indulgent nature, thus it is actually very exhausting for the manager.

When we speak of “good management”, it is not about handling sudden crisis situations well, but about routinely being able to organize tasks in a systematic manner; a manager’s competency is defined by examining what he is routinely doing. For example, if there is an organization with fifty thousand employees, the manager has to look after them as a whole without neglecting other aspects. Similarly, the brain is a vital organ but we don’t just focus solely on it, as it would be rather strange if we were without any fingers. Organizations are just the same. There are numerous complicated aspects to it and a qualified manager, apart from managing the parts and the whole, must certainly not forget an essential responsibility: to continuously ask himself whether there is an ongoing contribution to society.

Do you still remember your motivation?

Many enterprises confuse cause and effect, failing to conduct self-examination and introspection. Likewise, the hardest person to see is the self, and this is why we require a teacher who is very strict and criticizes us when we are overwhelmed with pride. Many people in the business world are full of themselves, and this sense of accomplishment has robbed them of their original motivation. If you are a head of a company, you have to create an environment wherein employees are allowed to point out mistakes you have made; as an employee, there will be times to remind your boss to not be too arrogant. By retaining a receptive openness to reminders, we can foster communication with others and not let success get to our heads.

Currently, all Taiwanese enterprises face the problem of appointing successors. Training potential successors in the U.S. requires a duration of thirty years. They may pick thirty candidates for the training, removing and adding people in the process, eventually ending up with probably only three who fulfil the requirements. They spend an enormous amount of time and effort evaluating and training candidates. However, since enterprises in Taiwan do not understand the essential core of management, you will find that many still do not consider selecting a successor as a problem.

Khenpo Lhabu spoke of managing the mind in terms of listening, contemplation and meditation. I will explain it through Confucianism. The first is to study broadly, to accumulate a vast amount of knowledge by reading a lot of books, akin to Khenpo’s description of “listening”. Confucian thought describes “contemplation” as knowing how to think, investigate, deliberate and discern. Finally, the “meditation” Khenpo refers to is practice, the stage of implementation. Thus, what is the core of management? It is to know how to plan, and starting afresh annually according to the plan. We must ask ourselves frequently, “For what aim was this enterprise initially established? Have we forgotten our original motivation? Do we still have this motivation? If not, is it due to the changing times or have we simply forgotten it? Should we make adjustments?” New directions will spontaneously arise when we take the opportunity to make some reflections.

The wisdom between changing and staying put

New directions emerge for enterprises as the times change, but a secure anchor is required to ensure its continuous operation. It is similar to topology, which is actually concerned with a very straightforward concept: certain properties remain preserved amidst continuous changes. For example, when we crumple a piece of paper into a ball, there must be a point in the paper that remains unaltered during the process of crumpling. While learning management, we need to discover the balance between evolving with the changes and remaining steadfast. Percentage wise, perhaps we have to make 80% of changes and retain 20% of the old, or maybe we need to alter 50% of it and keep the rest intact.

Laozi once notably said, “Governing a large country is like cooking a small fish”. Here I will take it a step further and compare the skill of seasoning food with how a prime minister mediates political affairs. During ancient times, the emperor owned the country while the prime minister governed it. In contemporary society, the president of the Executive Yuan is akin to the prime minister as both are responsible for seasoning and flavoring political matters. Historically, prime ministers with extreme views usually don’t end up well, proving that good management should not fall into extremes but requires smoothly balancing everything together.

According to Management Science, the most challenging aspect is general management, which sustains the daily operations of an enterprise in a smooth, balanced manner. In my opinion, this kind of general management is actually not that difficult at all. If we understand the goal of an enterprise sufficiently, ensure that everyone puts their selfish desires aside, and fulfils their responsibilities, the operation will not only evolve and improve, but also become sustainable.