Chart of the Month #5: Total Business Person!

This came from a book on restructuring businesses with an interesting analogy on how one should improve ourselves as a good business person simply by harnessing our bodies and senses better.

How to improve ourselves as human beings?

(1) Use our senses to first receive all the different inputs well
(2) Use our brains to analyze, strategize, think
(3) Use our heart, elevate our EQ and be able to empathize others deeply
(4) Use our gut, have the courage to make the tough decisions
(5) Use our composure, exhibit strength, character, lead by example
(6) Use our mouth, to communicate
(7) Use our arms and hands, these refer to skills we have learnt
(8) Move! Get into action, stop procrastination

It's quite deep if we want to think throroughly about this. For (1), oftentimes we miss the subtle cues like body languages, the meaning between the lines and hence fail to close the deal. It is about polishing our sensory inputs to the level where we capture good signals. For some this might come as natural but for others, it would take years.

(2), (3) would be pretty straightforward. The ability to use both our left and right brains is key to be a successful business person, or rather, a decent human being. Perhaps EQ is slightly more important than IQ today.

(4), (8) seem to go together as well. Human beings are cowards and sloths by nature. We need to overcome huge inertia to just have guts and to get things started. It is overcoming the daily grind that leads to greatness.

(6) has become very important today because speaking well gives the impression of being more capable of getting things done. That is why ang-mohs always get promoted. This is a skillset our education system should really focus on.

Besides talking, there are other skillsets that would be relevant in different fields such as being able to code, or being able to use special software or hardware. This is (7). In the world of finance, it is accounting, corporate finance, stock analysis etc.

Finally, we get to (5), I would put this as "aura". When we are quite accomplished, we somehow exhibit the composure or aura to be able to lead. For some, it is harder but it is almost a pre-requisite to success. Some people are born leaders, but for most of us, we need to develop all the other seven points to be able to get better at this. I think this is the essence of it all.

So, that's the theory of total business person, corny but deep, I would say. Japan didn't become the third largest economy by chance.