Candor

February 8th, 2008 Filed under English entries

This is some thoughts and digest after reading Jack Welch’s WINNING.

I checked this word in Merrian-Webste dictionary and found one of the explanations is unreserved, honest, or sincere expression. I think that is what Jack Welch means by using this word in business management. Jack calls lack of candor the biggest little dirty secret in business world. Candor is in rarity. Instead of candor, the bureaucracy, layers, politicking and false politeness prevails in companies and organizations.

So, why candor so hard to get? It’s because human nature. Candor unnerves people. We are socialized from children to soften bad news and make nice about awkward subjects. You never insult your mother’s cooking or call your best friend fat if he doesn’t like it. You will get conflicts by doing this. When you tell like this, you are so easily go create a mess – anger, pain, confusion, sadness and you have to clean all of this. Nature let people tend to avoid this.

But lack of candor block smart ideas, fast actions and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It actually a killer.

When you get candor – though you never can completely get it – things will be faster and better. There are three ways that candor will help with business.

First and foremost, candor gets more people in the conversation and thus gets idea rich. Everyone opens up and thus you can improve your own, learn from others and finally get better ideas.
Second, candor speed things up. When communicate straightforwardly, ideas can be debated rapidly, expanded and enhanced and actioned up on.
Third, candor cut costs than cant be put into precise number. Just think how it eliminates meaningless meetings and bull shit reports that confirm everyone already know.

In my opinion, it’s even harder to instill candor into organizations here in China. We have a saving face tradition and a culture of 中庸 which tells us always try to avoid conflicts. But in a global marketplace which changes fast, organizations have to speed up. Considering this, the Chinese companies are born with disadvantage. There’s way away for the so called Chinese international companies to install candor in the system.

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Tags: Candor, Jack Welch, WINNING

One Response

Come on buddy, give some response.

找不着北
on February 8th, 2008
1
We tend to think that our traditional culture has put us in disadvantage facing global competition, coz its indirect, face-saving, encouraging 低调、中庸 which are all but opposite to western culture…. but is it really so negative? Aren’t some Chinese merchants doing well but still holding some traditional principles? Is the culture to blamed that we’ve been left behind economic wise?

Maybe we should think over it before we criticise our cultural heritage..

Anyway, reflection is good..