A Short Inquiry of Business

By: Stephen K. Ainsah-Mensah

1. The chaos that could ruffle business is the best test of the competence of the business executive. This is the time the finest creative ability is pressed on consciousness. If the executive does not subscribe to old principles that insist: “follow routines”, then new ways of doing things could be far more reaching for corporate development than was previously envisaged. Chaos simply presents the best room for remarkable creativity.

2. With time, we fail to succeed in business. Failure here could be due to a rush to compete, not compete in a rush; and this is a kind of menace business managers tend to overlook.

3. Business advancement is not merely a matter of the use of prudence but also of the use of unintended carelessness. Unintended carelessness produces errors. In fact, prudence alone spawns dull constancy in creativity while errors activate the intellect and will to act in ways other than before. Ultimately, an exciting creativity gets hold of business, which proves to pay far more than before.

4. Your vision of international business becomes consistent with sound business principles when you understand that, in business relations, what conforms to acceptable standards is nothing but like reverence for other forms of culture.

5. If civilization grows in relation to the quality of life of a people, then doing business must avoid tampering with other people’s way of life. A way of life fixed within the boundaries of culture is meant to encourage quality. What does a business from one culture hope to achieve when it enters a relation with business from another culture? The answer, of course, is that the growth of civilization is anticipated. If one culture wants growth so much at the expense of another or others, we have imposed the curse of business tyranny on the general structure of business. Cultures, civilizations tremble since their respective natural elements have been tainted by unnatural business intrusions.

6. Routine is the mother of discipline; yet inexorable discipline that derives from inexorable routine does not bode well for a business that expects creativity to direct its pace of development.

7. A business executive, a male for example, who spends much of his time complaining about the petty errors of his employees instead of praising them suffers from destabilized emotions, fear of failure and the specter of pessimism. Analyze the history of his life, and you will recognize that these traits got cultivated largely from his family.

8. The main reason the conscience of business executives grows to help in the corresponding growth of business is that they hold fast to the principle of tolerance, not courage. The principle of courage incites bold decisions and acts though it does not necessarily give the desired weight to the moral character along with responsibility in business relations. If business is to yield domestic and international peace, harmony, cultural stability, the principle of tolerance ought to guide it, not courage; yet we need courage to activate the soul of tolerance.

9. The man who chooses to do so many different things when his business is flourishing at a fast pace brings confusion to bear on his intellect and will. For how can he focus pertinent ideas on his business to enable it have steady progress? His problem is that he has shifted a large amount of attention towards winning public accolades, not on encouraging business advancement.

10. The business executive who does little but has been able to let his/her employees do almost all the great work for him/her is much better than the business executive who does so much and has not been able to let his/her employees do almost all the great work for him/her. For sure, the former business executive has better communication skills than the latter; the latter may have better technical skills than the former but lacks the ability to win the passion and soul of his employees. This shows that in business, a business executive’s communication skills play a far more important role than technical skills.

11. The greatest bore among employees is the one who excels and prides in his/her technical skills while failing at every turn to express even basic - or moderate - communication skills. This employee lacks the team spirit and may prove wanton in the corporate family so vital for keeping the elements of production running in a steady, progressive fashion.

12. A business that spends so much time on conformity to the corporate culture fails to emphasize the role of creativity in the progress of business. Standards, rules, regulations: these are boredoms, impediments to creativity. We need a hodgepodge of ideas to shake up the edifice of business, the business process on hand. Herein lies a vital way to arouse product(s) advancement, business progress.

13. The prudence we need in business is of this kind: take care to do things, so that you do not fail to have the resources to accommodate the doings. The entrepreneurial spirit has to conform to this business prudence.

14. When over-ambition rules the intellect, the conscience, the will, the manners of the business executive, it tends to overshadow business prudence and personality gets debased.

15. There is a certain kind of thing about business that discourages the moralist from subscribing to all the tenets of business. It is this: where business prevails, profit rules and the natural character of the natural environment as well as the health of the people lose through nobody’s fault. On such an issue, the moralist is right; for the environment and the people this kind of business ignores are the things that bear the weight of business.

16. The agony of business comes, not from crushing deficits, but from the reluctance to shake off old ways of doing things even as the social culture is changing in its demographics and the acquired or/and natural tastes of the people. So, the warning goes like this: change your business style when the social culture is changing!

17. A man walks into a company that is hiring. He is fit for the job, but the (business) interviewer tells him he can’t be hired because it is likely this man will devote much more attention to his spouse and four children than the company. But, then, personal and family cultures are wedded to social culture, which means by denying this man a job the company has caused a ruin in the social culture. What we need to understand, then, is that business culture only functions along the paths of social culture. In business, to think merely of the business culture without due consideration to the social culture is a miscalculation.

18. I keep coming back to the issue of social culture as we tend not to recognize its pervasive influence on business culture, not the contrary. Suppose social culture is falling apart for the reason that it has gone through misguided planning, then business culture crumbles or breaks at a faster pace to torment the overall culture.

19. To understand how business ought to accord with the structure of culture - the cultural phenomena - study the following two kinds of businesses in two different societies. In society X, technology has advanced to towering heights resulting in a small human input regarding the production process. In society Y, technology is just basic while human input towards production comes mainly from the use of the hands - and is overwhelming. Plentiful production is typical of society X but for society Y, production is pretty small. But, then, both X and Y have their weaknesses and benefits. Society X ought not to be said to be superior to Y, nor Y to X. What we have here is that human needs are better met in X than in Y, especially where the population is sprawling; but the retention of much of the sanity of the environment is better met in Y than in X. It is, therefore, as if we are being pressed to say that the development of technology should go on hand-in-hand with that of the crafts. This condition will be espoused by devotees of the principle of balance. The same condition embellishes the environment with wellness.