Sample Translations
Jong-sik Kim Self Power E ng l i s h
Book Information
Self Power (셀프 파워) OUA Publishing corp. / 2014 / 29 p. / ISBN 9788954623995 For further information, please visit: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/772
This sample translation was produced with support from LTI Korea. Please contact the LTI Korea Library for further information. library@klti.or.kr
Self Power Written by Kim Jong-sik
"Without compensation or reward, they just won't budge. How long do I have to spoon-feed them?" This was the lament from the CEO of a small company that I met during a lecture some time ago. He was fed up and dissatisfied with his employees who would apply themselves only when forced to. Nay, it was more sadness than dissatisfaction that was conveyed in his voice. As someone who started from the lowest lung of the corporate ladder and then worked his way up to become CEO, and as a long-time employee of the company overseeing the younger employees, he knew precisely the possibility of success for those who were self-motivated and the limits of the rest who would not grow by themselves.
However, the employees too had something to say. To working men today, success or self-development are no longer even issues. Whenever I meet working people in their 30s, perhaps the hardest working period in their career, they all said the same thing to me. "Success? You can work as hard as you can, if you like. It'll always be someone else's story. I just don't want to waste my time and energy. I'll just end up doing good things for the company..." "I just want to have long and peaceful career. Is there a way I can just keep my job without being noticed and as quietly as possible?" "It'd be great to make a lot of money, but... I don't like promotions, either. You work your butt off to get promoted but in the end, how long will your success last?" It’s not impossible to understand just how exhausted and powerless they feel in this
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fiercely success-oriented world. They were sweet-talked into believing that they could achieve success by working hard. If they just kept working hard and held on just a little longer, they could achieve the fruit of sweet success. However, what they got at the end was both physical and mental exhaustion and the frustration that success only belongs to a few. A frustrated manager, an exhausted staff, and a complacent organization--can there be a solution?
From "being directed and forced to work" to "making a choice and concentrating"--the secret of those who grow by themselves
I started working at Cummins, an American multinational company, as senior researcher in 1986 and moved up to become CEO of Cummins Korea, a Korean subsidiary of Cummins, the position I held from 1991 to 2009. During this period, I also worked as CEO of Cummins China and Cummins Engine Sales for Asia Region (17 countries including Korea, Japan and Singapore). After that, I worked as CEO of Tartar Daewoo Ssangyong Automobile, a Korean subsidiary company of Tartar Group, an Indian multinational company. I am currently a faculty of Seoul National University of Science and Technology. I am working on finding a way to build a "happy" company as I teach students and work with CEOs of many companies. The reason I have presented the resume of my humble career above is because I was able to find solutions to the problems based on the real experiences of many people I’ve met in my 30-year business career and from the CEOs and business managers I’ve met at school. During this period, I have met thousands of people as a colleague, manager, employee of a partner company, student, and so on. Among them are people whom I remember so vividly, even the accent in their speech and the expressions on their faces, despite having not seen them for a long time. They are of various genders, nationalities,
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professions and social status. However, strangely enough, they all have something distinctively in common.
First, they worked for themselves only and not for others. One of the senior researchers who worked for me when I was at Cummins had a hobby, which was working alone in the lab after everyone had gone home. One day, thinking that perhaps he was trying to please me, I told him to go home, saying, "We don't have any urgent projects that need to be completed this week. Go home." He replied, "I’m here not because I have work to do. I’m here because I have work that I want to do." That's right. He was a person who would work for himself and not the company. To him, working at the company was only a tool to satisfy his own intellectual curiosity and enhance his knowledge. Since then, I’ve met several people who "worked for themselves." From the perspective of the company, they were not necessarily the employees the company was glad to have. It is because they were focused on their own goals and personal growth rather than loyalty and commitment to the company's growth. However, whether they intended to or not, they showed great job performance, often bringing in much more profits to the company than those who showed their loyalty and commitment with words only. To them, what was best for themselves was best for the company.
Second, they worked independently and not because of incentives. Tartar Group is a company that represents India. It is an excellent example of how a company can fulfill its social responsibilities. Tartar Group is famous for placing priority on the interests of people rather than that of the company. It is not something that could have been achieved with the will of the CEO alone. It was possible because of the employees who,
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rather than seeking a higher salary or promotion, wanted to do meaningful work and become a better person as a result from it. In 2008, a group of terrorists took control of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India, which was being run by Tartar Group. However, not even a single employee of the hotel made an attempt to escape from the situation and worked together to secure the safety of the people staying at the hotel. Could they have done this for promotion and rewards? It was a situation where their lives were at stake. If they did not place value in their jobs, it would have been impossible.
Third, they worked based on their "own solution," not the "solution of others" They also shared a common trait of doing their work based on their own experience and knowledge rather than following the company manual or their manager's coaching. The director of promotion department whom I’d met in a business meeting worked at a corporate planning department of a large corporation. Although he was completely new to promotion work, instead of seeking advice from others or asking help from experts, he and his team tackled the problems at hand head-on. They all thought that they could only achieve as much as others if they sought their advice; but they thought that they could surpass them if they worked using their own solution.
I realized that people who produced outstanding performances by working out of sheer excitement all had the similar traits shown above. I was then studying what it was that defined great business talents and where the source of power that propelled a company to grow might come from. I was able to discover one important keyword as I studied many different examples of business people and companies who showed outstanding performances in their respective areas based on various books, research papers, and materials.
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The keyword was self-power. They all had in common an ability to motivate themselves to work, solve problems using their own solutions, and possessed the power to grow themselves. Instead of using stimulation and rewards given from outside, they were using their own values to generate power to develop their own strength and pioneer their own ways rather than to walk in another's path. As new wine should be poured into new wineskins, I thought I should not use the old terms to refer to people who were using their own ways to work instead of outdated methods. I needed a new expression to call them. So I decided to call people and organizations who possess self-power selfer.
Self-power: Acting upon one’s own motivation and not stimulation from outside, using one’s own solutions to solve problems instead of solutions provided by others, and possessing the power to grow by oneself. Selfer: People and organizations who use self-power to create success.
It was not financial hardship that caused people to become greatly fearful after the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. It was the sense of hopelessness that they were no longer protected by any system whether it be the government or the company. The cold reality that they only had themselves to depend on in this world made them feel lonely and scared at a profound level. As a result, people sought a new refugee in various "healing" and meditation programs. However, these didn’t last long. Consolation was brief and cold reality would quickly set in again. This is why I’m talking about self-power today and asking you to become a selfer. Today, we must be able to stand on our own two feet. In order to go against the storm of a prolonged recession and fierce competition in the middle of nowhere, we are in desperate need of power to protect and grow ourselves--self-power.
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A new world needs a new formula.
We achieved an incredible growth over the last 40 years based on exceptional diligence and quick execution ability. However, are ordinary working people, who were the biggest impetus for achieving such remarkable growth, living a life of happiness and fulfillment? The answer is no. The result of the questionnaire survey shows that only 16 out of 100 people are sufficiently absorbed in their work and only about 37 trust their managers and executives. This strongly suggests the need to break the paradigm that we’ve been using. The inability to become absorbed in one's own job means that even if you are at work, your mind isn’t there. If you can't trust your manager, it means you can't trust the company you work for. Can this organization grow? In truth, most of us have believed in a formula of success that you are bound to succeed if you work hard and, if you succeed, you would achieve happiness. However, as mentioned earlier, this formula has proved be erroneous. We need a new formula now.
Do you think that, even if you dedicate yourself to your job, you won’t receive the rewards that you deserve and will only end up benefitting your company in the end? If that’s so, start working for yourself beginning right now. Are you unhappy because your employees have fallen into complacency and don’t care about growth? If so, create an environment in which they can become a selfer. Your company will be reborn as a "selfer" organization. You may still feel vague about what it actually means to work for yourself and exactly what kinds of environment is conducive for producing selfers. Therefore, I’ve summarized in this book various examples of concrete and realistic methods. I’ve tried to
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come up with practical methods on how you could become a selfer who grows on his or her own strength and how to create an organizational culture in which selfers can work confidently. This book consists of three main ideas: self-motivation, self-power, and self-system. Self-motivation literally means the power to motivate oneself to move forward. I’ve summarized concrete ways on how to encourage oneself and act independently. Self-power is your unique solution that other people do not have; it is different from theirs. All new and amazing achievements have always begun with a difference. Existing methods can produce outcomes that are similar to or slightly better than the existing solutions. On the other hand, a completely new method often leads to a completely different solution. A self-system is an environment that develops selfers and the method of their collaboration. Each selfer works on his or her own, but faces a common direction. That is, they work in concert to achieve the common dream.
Not only have I worked at Korean subsidiaries of multinational corporations, but have also worked in China and the United States for long periods. Due to such unique career circumstances, I was able to experience diverse work processes and knowledge. While learning about cultural openness and creative ways of thinking in other countries, I was also able to learn how to work faster and persist with toughness, the chief virtue of the Korean work ethic. It’s my hope that my stories based on such experiences will be able to contribute to success, whether small or large, of business organizations and people who dream of achieving new success.
There were many people who provided me with encouragement and assistance until I was able to publish this book. In particular, I convey my sincere gratitude to Ms. Ko Ara,
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manager of publishing at Munhak-Dongnae publishing group; Mr. Lee Myungwoo, CEO of Dongwon Industry, and Prof. Kim Hyunjin of Seoul National University of Science and Technology. Without the help of these people who are currently working as selfers in their own professional areas, publication of this book would not have been possible.
February, 2014 Kim Jongsik
Part 1 What makes them work like crazy? : Self-motivation
"Self-motivation really means the power to motivate oneself to move forward with action. Motivation of those who are empowered by external stimulation such as the coaching of managers, high salaries, and promotions are unstable. It’s hard to know how long his or her motivation can be sustained. On the other hand, people who are self-motivated can use their own strengths to move forward with confidence. “The principle is the same everywhere. A car that runs on fuel comes to a halt the moment when it runs out of fuel. However, a car that uses self-generated power to run keeps going without having to worry about running out of fuel."
To move the world, we must first move ourselves. Socrates
self motivation 01
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Work not because you are ordered to but because you want to. Then, work out of excitement. Eventually, work like crazy.
A group of people are dancing to music. Ten minutes pass. Twenty minutes pass. Time continues to flow but the dancing doesn’t stop and the excitement keeps building up. However, I notice a strange thing. Everyone is dancing in the same way. The, moves are so simple, too. All they’re doing is to continuously spinning around in the same place. As the spinning speed picks up, people get delirious and feel pain. However, no one is frowning. Instead, they’re enjoying the dancing and their faces are filled with joy. What kind of dancing could this be? It’s a Sufi dance which derives its origins from a religious ritual of Sufism, a branch of the Islam religion. The sequence of torturous dance movements are a process of reaching a state of spiritual communication with God and the dancer can reach the state of nirvana. In this Sufi dance, known as a traditional dance of the Middle East in countries such as Egypt and Turkey, the secret of self-motivation that "generates energy" rather than "receives motivation" is hidden. "Self-motivation really means the power to motivate oneself to move forward with action. Motivation of those who are empowered by external stimulation such as the coaching of managers, high salaries, and promotions are unstable. It’s hard to know how long his or her motivation can be sustained. On the other hand, people who are self-motivated can use their own strengths to move forward with confidence. “The principle is the same everywhere. A car that runs on fuel comes to a halt the moment when it runs out of fuel. However, a car that uses self-generated power to run keeps going without having to worry about running out of fuel."
People who perform a Sufi dance repeat painful and repetitive movements out of
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their wills and for themselves. If one is dancing because one was instructed to do so, it would not be possible for the person to be so absorbed in the act with such joy and happiness. And such self-motivation leads to complete self-absorption. Since he is not distracted by changes in and stimulation of the external environment, he can completely concentrate on himself and reach the state of nirvana as a result. The more he whirls around, the faster he can dance. He reaches the state of complete absorption in his dancing. How about you? Are you barely working relying on the strength that was given to you or moving forward with action in confidence as you encourage and lead yourself?
One day I woke up and found myself CEO.
I have a college friend who became CEO of a company under a large business conglomerate. He is a self-made man who gradually climbed up the corporate ladder to eventually become CEO of company. In a large corporation where not just ability but politics and power struggles play important roles, he was a rare breed of manager who relied solely on his own ability to become CEO. When he told me, "I never had a goal of becoming CEO," I was very surprised. At first, I thought he was just boasting about achieving success without really having set up a goal. It turns out that he was not. "As for me, I just worked hard. Learning the ropes one by one was a lot of fun for me. When I first started out, it was more like attending a graduate school than working at a company. However, in this case, I didn't have to pay tuition and even received a salary from the company. It was like winning the lottery. I’m telling the truth. I’d tell this to my colleagues and they’d look at me like a freak. However, I really meant it. It was fascinating to see how the knowledge I learned in college was being transformed into real world knowledge and experiences. So I kept working, or learning, every day and one day, I found myself CEO.
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Ha, ha." Many people say you must have a clear goal so that you don't lose your way and keep going forward. However, selfers turn the traditional success formula upside down. They don't make half-baked goals to begin with. What’s important to them is not an unsure destination that they don't know when they’re going to reach, but the road on which they’re currently walking at the moment. They’re not willing to suffer boring and unrewarding work for an idea that they will someday be compensated for by their efforts when they achieve success. To them, if they’re satisfied and happy at the moment, that’s success. Achieving success by winning small every day -- this is one of the main characteristic of selfers.
Kang Sue-jin, the world famous ballerina, became the youngest member of Stuttgart Ballet in 1986, one of the world’s major ballet companies. However, she wasn’t satisfied with the title the "youngest." As a result, the title of the "best" follows her name today. In 1999, Kang Sue-jin received the Best Female Ballerina Award in the Benois de la Dance, the Academy Award of dance. Also, in 2007, she became the first Asian dancer to receive the title, “Kammertanzerin” in Germany, which confers the status of Meister to a dancer. She achieved everything that a dancer could dream of in her career. However, she, too, said in an interview with a newspaper that "I've never dreamed of such success. I just gave my everything to dance day after day." "People want to hear from me marvelous stories. However, my life was not marvelous at all. Perhaps it was the boring daily repetition that made me who I am today. Had I dreamt of something marvelous, I do not think I could have remained on the stage for that long." She called it "boring repetitions," but it could be translated into "small successes." What she meant was probably that she was able to repeat boring and hard practice sessions
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without stopping because of the small improvement in skills she was making every day and the sense of achievement she felt from it. Most of all, Kang Sujin is a great example of self motivation in that she placed "I" at the center of her life and not "others." In her book, I Do Not Wait for Tomorrow, we find a story that illustrates what it means to place "I" at the center of one's life and work. "Everyone says that they practice in order to ‘survive,’ but to me, they weren’t really practicing to survive. Many people didn’t focus on themselves. Instead, they were very conscious of their competitors and were fraying their nerves in spending more time to practice than their competitors. That’s not what is truly meant by practicing to survive. Practicing to survive is about practicing for oneself and oneself only. In practice, the eyes of others are not important. What matters is not whether I appear to others that I practiced for 18 hours, but whether I truly feel like I practiced for 18 hours."
The CEO of a big corporation who found himself at the top after just working hard every day. A ballerina who never dreamt of success and just gave everything she had day after day. What moved them was not the goal, dream, responsibility, or rewards. The male friend just kept working hard every day because he liked the feeling of growing every day and, as a result, he became a CEO. The ballerina just focused on practicing without even having the time to dream and eventually became the world's best ballerina. Selfers are not motivated by force or recognition from the outside. Selfers work not because of a force from outside, but because of their own desire inside; not because of the acknowledgments of others but because of the excitement of their work. A "happy egoism" in which they are the center of their work and in which they work for their own gratification and not for anyone else or for any other goals--this is the source of energy for selfers.
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Snowballing effect that creates a "big success" using "small successes"
Snowballing effect refers to a process in which an event or phenomenon that starts on a small scale gradually escalates into a big scale event or phenomenon. Although it is generally used with negative connotations as it refers to small mistakes made in the early stage of a process that rapidly turn into a rampant and widespread error, it is also used with a positive connotation where many small successes come together to achieve a great success. It is in this latter connotation that selfers take advantage of the snowballing effect.
First, make success a habit. When people set a big goal and fail to achieve it, people either think that the goal was unrealistic to begin with or feel frustrated about their inability. Therefore, it’s important to have positive experiences of tasting small successes by dividing a big goal into many small objectives and achieving them one by one. I mentioned earlier that selfers tend to work for the satisfaction of the present rather than for a goal in the future. Satisfaction in the present could be taken as small successes. It has been demonstrated through much research that small successes can produce a strong power and bring a leverage effect to an individual or an organization, ultimately resulting in great achievements. It is well known that the human brain is effectively trained by repetitive practices. Let's take the example of a person who loses his vision due to an accident. He goes through many practice sessions to gradually learn how to read Braille. Scientists placed a sensor on both Braille-reading fingers and non-Braille-reading fingers to measure brain activity. The result of the experiments showed that brain activity goes up the moment a Braille-reading person’s fingers were placed on the slate board. On the other hand, the brain did not respond when non-Braille-reading fingers were placed on the slate board. As demonstrated in this
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experiment, human brains are equipped with the ability to adapt to external environment relatively fast. Accordingly, the habit of achieving small successes through repetition is a way of training our brain to get used to achieving success. This approach of "making success a habit" is much more efficient than the approach of trying to accomplish a single big success. Of course, in a corporate organization, small successes may not be sufficient. The average growth goal of many corporations is more than 10 percent a year. From 2005 to 2012, the growth goal of big Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics, LG, Hyundai Automobile, SK Innovation and POSCOs was almost 100 percent. They recorded an increase in annual sales of more than 10 percent to double their sales in seven years. However, this was possible only because they had been making long-term investments not only in manufacturing enhancement but also in new market and talent development since the 1990s. This is a case of small successes building up to create great success. Therefore, for average companies, the growth goal for the first project should be 3-5 percent higher than the previous year; the second project, 5-7 percent higher; and the third project, 7-10 percent higher.
Place higher importance on the reason why you work for than the goal itself. At the beginning of every year, each company publishes its business plan for the year including the sales goal. They make ambitious goals: 20-30 percent growth over the previous year, becoming a global company, etc. However, by the end of the first half of the business year, people start voicing concern about whether they can make the goal. As they approach the end of the business year, they are busy setting a goal for next year instead of trying to make this year's goal. The situation is no different for people in general. The goals they set up at the
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beginning of the year don’t last longer than three days. This happens because they don't think seriously enough about the reasons for setting their goals and only focus on setting a goal itself. We often ask "Why?" to things that have gone wrong. Why didn't we perform well? Why did the grade drop? Why did I have a fight with him? Of course, it’s important to ask questions about why we failed. That way, we can find solutions to the problem. However, it’s also equally important to ask why one has to work. Why do I have to do this? Why do I need to achieve this objective? Knowing the reason why one has to do a given work and achieve given objective becomes a powerful source of energy that does not die out easily. A goal is meant to be shown to someone. On the other hand, a reason is for convincing yourself. In the end, it is I that moves me. I am the one who must convince myself to start working proactively.
How to lead myself Selfers work for themselves; then they work out of excitement; and, finally, they work like crazy. However, for ordinary people, motivating oneself is not an easy thing to do. There must be people out there right now saying, "Don’t you think I know that?" So, here, I want to introduce a few methods for motivating and leading oneself.
First, define your own work. It has become a famous story that employees at Disneyland define their work as "making happiness for people." There is a world of difference between operating theme park equipment and giving people the gift of happiness. An equipment operator cannot bear the suffocating boredom of being locked up inside a small space and repeating the same work over and over. To him, even the joyful laughter and cheers of visitors would sound like
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painful noise. On the other hand, the happiness-giving employee will derive a sense of happiness and reward knowing that every action he takes, small or large, contributes to the creation of happiness. Happy laughter and the cheers of visitors are proof that he is doing a good job, which makes him glad and courteous. Defining your work in your own language is to make your work valuable. If you are working in the marketing department, how about defining your work as providing friendly guidance to people to make sure that they do not miss the products they really need instead of the boring traditional definition of providing information and selling products and services to customers? There are plenty of marketers in the world who promote and sell products but the only marketer who can improve the quality of a customer's life by helping them not miss the products they need is the one who has defined his work as such.
Second, make an accurate calculation. At the moment work becomes boring and unexciting, most people think this way: do I have to work like this just to get a small salary the size of a rat's tail? If you think salary is the only thing you get by working, you’ll easily get tired. Think about what you get from your work by making an accurate calculation. I’m not talking about amorphous emotions such as a sense of rewards and achievements. It must contain concrete things such as money. The people you work with and the people who work at your partner companies are human capital you couldn’t have accumulated without working in your current job. Monthly salary + people. Also, you will probably read a lot of materials and books in order to perform your work. This way, you’ve accumulated new information and knowledge you hadn’t gained before. Monthly salary+people+information+knowledge. If you make concrete what you are getting from your current work in this way, you’ll reduce skepticism and increase a sense of rewards from your work. There’s probably a lot more you’re gaining from your work than
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you think. The more you work, the more you get.
Third, consider your personal growth rather than the results of work. Two cosmetic designers finished creating a new product design. One designer said "Ah, a new product is finally being launched." The other designer said, "Ah, I’ve created a new design once again." The former treated work as work only whereas the latter thought of it as a new opportunity for growth. When you start out a new project or begin a day's work, instead of thinking about what results the work will produce, think about what benefits you will enjoy as a result of this work. You’ll be able to experience the amazing power that this small difference can generate.
If you really try, you will be able to find a needle in the middle of a desert.
In 1986, I started working as researcher for Cummins, an American multinational company. Cummins is a Fortune 500 company that manufactures diesel engines, power generators equipped with diesel engines, and other parts needed for diesel engines. At Cummins, I literally worked like crazy. Nobody forced me to. Cummins had a reputation for taking care of their employees in addition to being the leading diesel engine technology company. You could not find excessive work allocation or a coercive atmosphere within the organization. Even so, I often worked late into the night and worked alone in the office even during the weekend. In short, I was a "workaholic." For success? For money? No. I didn’t even have time for that. Then, I was just crazy about my work. All I saw was my work, all I could think about was my work, and all I did was to keep working. To be honest, it did occur to me that it would be difficult for an employee of a foreign nationality with relatively poor English communication skills to
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receive a fair assessment of his abilities when compared to American employees. I had to produce a much superior performance compared to theirs in order to be recognized. There was only one way, as I saw it: to work at least 30 percent harder than American employees. In a foreign country where culture and the way they work were different, the fastest way to learn was to gain as much experience as possible. As I did that, I was able to solve problems using different methods that other people hadn’t thought of and discover ways that had not been tried before. As the process repeated, one day I found myself becoming CEO of the company (Yes, just like my college friend who became a CEO). When Cummins created a branch office in Korea, I became CEO of Cummins Korea.
Since the psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi introduced the concept of "flow," it has become one of the prerequisite qualities for a person and for organizations. Flow refers to a state of complete concentration where no distractions can enter. It is a state where you are completely absorbed to the extent that you cannot think of anything else. You cannot request flow from someone. You cannot create a spark for flow unless you are self-motivated. Flow is not a trait that can be enhanced by monitoring the performance of employees or by making them busy enough so that they do not get distracted. It’s an idea that is completely different from that of continuously assigning work to soldiers during military training to remove mental distraction. Flow is very intrinsic psychological response and instinctive human behavior. In order to reach a state of the flow, one must understand the meaning of his work and have an awareness of how his work contributes to his organization and society. Also, he must have positive conviction that he can handle the work he is performing with his capacity. In other words, you can reach a state of the flow (work like "crazy") when you’re at the
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center of your work (self-motivated to work) and have positive conviction (excited). In chapter 22, Zhīběiyóu, in Zhuangzi, a Chinese classic, there appears a story of an old craftsman who made hooks for the minister of defense. The old man says to a man surprised by the way he makes hooks without a single mistake: "I liked making hooks for a belt since I was twenty years old. I was never distracted by anything else other than making hooks for a belt."
Not looking at anything else other than one's own work. Thinking only about and doing only one's chosen work. This is the true state of flow. I, too, have had the same experience. In the early winter of 2000 when I was working as CEO of Cummins Korea, I happened to take a business trip to the head office in the United States. I was scheduled to have a business meeting with business executives at the head office until Friday, then spend a weekend and have a meeting with important business partners in Korea starting from Monday. I took care of the scheduled meetings that began as soon as I arrived in the United States and took time to visit a small ski resort in Steamboat, Colorado during the weekend with the staff who accompanied me from Korea. The short vacation helped us relieve stress from hard work. When we arrived at the airport on Sunday morning to catch a flight back to the office, we found ourselves in panic as we listened to the airport announcement. Due to sudden and heavy snowfall, all air flights going by the way of Denver, Colorado were canceled. I found myself in a state of shock. There was a very important meeting scheduled the following day and I was stranded at the airport. There would have been no problem had I stayed at the hotel nearby the office as usual. Instead, I took my staff to a ski resort to entertain them over the weekend and now this had caused a problem. However, it was too late for regrets and the priority was to now find a solution. Since all flights were canceled, I
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needed an alternative means of transportation. However, going over the snow-covered Rocky Mountains by car was way too risky. My staff suggested that perhaps it would be better to postpone the meeting. However, that wasn’t what I wanted. It had been difficult to arrange the meeting schedule to begin with and I couldn’t let an important business opportunity like this pass by when I knew that it might never come back again. I had to go back to the office at all costs. That was the only thing that I could think of. Then, I thought of an idea. I picked up my phone and called the head office. "This is Kim Jongsik. We’re stranded at the airport in Steamboat. All flights have been canceled due to heavy snowfall. We have an important meeting tomorrow at the head office. Would you please send a company jet to here?" "What? A company jet? Do you know how much it costs every time it flies? Wouldn't it be better to postpone the meeting?" "No. I cannot do that. I must go to this meeting. I will take care of all costs incurred. I’ll pay out of my own pocket, if I had to. Please send the company jet." I had no idea how much it would cost to use a company jet--10,000 dollars or 100,000 dollars. It did occur to me that the head office might disapprove of my action. However, I couldn’t think of anything but returning to the head office to have this meeting. The secretary listened to my explanation for several minutes and told me she would call me back after finding out whether it was possible. She also said I shouldn’t expect too much. Then, a few hours later, a slim small jet plane arrived at the airport. It was a seven- passenger Learjet sent by the head office. There were no questions from the company about the jet. No reprimands, either. Instead, they thought highly of my aggressive attitude to try to solve the problem at all cost. It was amazing how quickly the head office responded to my request to send the company jet
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only several hours after my request. After this, my loyalty to the company increased greatly. I tried to work even harder to increase profits for the company. Perhaps, from the point of view of the company, they made a small investment to reap much greater profits. Everyone may differ in their opinions as to what flow is. However, I was in the state of flow when I focused on finding a solution at the airport out of desperation. I was completely absorbed in finding a solution and used all my capabilities to find a solution. Then, I finally found one. I learned from this experience that if you really want to, you can find a needle in the middle of a desert. There are many things in this world that cannot be done. However, the thought that it cannot be done is an obstacle that prevents even the things that can be done from being done. No one can predict the outcome until it has been tried. The way I responded to the crisis at the time was closely in line with the way I’d been working until then. An interesting character appears in the 1999 Korean film Attack the Gas Station. It's the character called "Mu Dae-po" played by Yu O-seong. Mu Dae-po doesn’t lose a fight under any circumstances. Even in 17 against 1 fight, he comes out the winner in the end. Interestingly, it’s not because he’s a "divine warrior of combat" equipped with supernatural fighting power. His secret is in his "pick only one guy to attack" strategy. In a gang fight, he keeps attacking only one guy he has chosen. He doesn’t look at anybody else. No matter how much he’s attacked by everyone else around him, he doesn’t stop attacking the guy he has chosen. He only fights one guy with such fierce tenacity and persistence. Eventually, everyone becomes scared of becoming that "guy" and starts running away from him. In a way, I employed the same strategy of "picking only one guy to attack." When I worked, I only concentrated on one thing and one thing only, which was how to do the work right. There was no room for distractions to come in such as what responsibilities there were if I failed or what rewards I would get if I succeeded. My habit of concentrating on only one
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thing alone helped me to find a solution when I was in a difficult situation. Selfers do not go around peeking here and there or get picky about various things. A selfer is busy enough concentrating on only one thing, the work that lies before his eyes.
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