January 20, 2005
From the desk of Jane Galt:The wisdom of the ancients
"First," said William Shakespeare, "let's kill all the lawyers." No doubt a worthy goal, but I challenge the Immortal Will's priorities. Killing the lawyers can wait as long as the world remains infested with such a pestiferous horde of hacks writing bad management books. It is bad enough that our nation is, apparently, full of people willing to while away the hours in the airport lounge reading "Management Secrets of the Carmelite Nuns" or "Make a Killing: America's Top Serial Killers Share Their Secrets for Dominating any Market You're In". But they are young; they are naive. It has not yet been pounded through their skulls by fickle fortune that anyone who has a surefire way to make money, or get to the top, will keep their lip firmly buttoned while they exploit it to the fullest.
The people who write the books, on the other hand, have no such excuse. If they didn't know how useless management books are for ensuring success before they got into the racket, they surely realised it as they watched mountains of "The Tao of Sales Projections" being carted into the remainder bin. Yet they keep generating the stuff anyway, knowing that they are preying on our youngest and most vulnerable workers. Silly management fads continue to sweep the nation, devastating far more lives than crack ever did. Why, I ask, why have we, as a nation, taken no action? Do we not love our children?
But all is not lost! Out in the wilderness, one small voice cries out for truth, accuracy, and the American way:
There is a widespread public misperception, particularly among the New Age sector, that the Chinese word for "crisis" is composed of elements that signify "danger" and "opportunity." I first encountered this curious specimen of oriental wisdom about ten years ago at an altitude of 35,000 feet sitting next to an American executive. He was intently studying a bound volume that had adopted this notorious formulation as the basic premise of its method for making increased profits even when the market is falling. At that moment, I didn't have the heart to disappoint my gullible neighbor who was blissfully imbibing what he assumed were the gems of Far Eastern sagacity enshrined within the pages of his workbook. Now, however, the damage from this kind of pseudo-profundity has reached such gross proportions that I feel obliged, as a responsible Sinologist, to take counteraction.A whole industry of pundits and therapists has grown up around this one grossly inaccurate formulation. A casual search of the Web turns up more than a million references to this spurious proverb. It appears, often complete with Chinese characters, on the covers of books, on advertisements for seminars, on expensive courses for "thinking outside of the box," and practically everywhere one turns in the world of quick-buck business, pop psychology, and orientalist hocus-pocus. This catchy expression (Crisis = Danger + Opportunity) has rapidly become nearly as ubiquitous as The Tao of Pooh and Sun Zi's Art of War for the Board / Bed / Bath / Whichever Room.
The explication of the Chinese word for crisis as made up of two components signifying danger and opportunity is due partly to wishful thinking, but mainly to a fundamental misunderstanding about how terms are formed in Mandarin and other Sinitic languages.
Not, mind you, that I think that our friends the management writers would be constrained from making these sorts of errors by any improvement in their understanding of how terms are formed in Mandarin and other Sinitic languages. Indeed, I doubt our erstwhile scribblers could be constrained by anything short of a shillelagh. But one hopes that the victims could be saved from their folly by a swift application of facts.
[Of course, as Winston Churchill said, "A lie is halfway 'round the world while the truth is still putting on its pants". The heart quails in the face of such persistent sillyness.]
One of the signs of the coming Chinese world hegemony (of which I quail at a little) is the appearance of Chinese characters on the arms of heavily tattooed NBA players.
"First," said William Shakespeare, "let's kill all the lawyers." No doubt a worthy goal, but I challenge the Immortal Will's priorities.
Does that mean that eventually I should fear your wrath? Just askin'.
Hey, bonus points for working in "shillelagh".
I think I recall that crisis = danger + opportunity thing in the book _Six Crises_ by Richard Nixon (1962). So (a) the misconception has been around a long time, and (b) we can probably blame Nixon for its initial popularity; that's always fun. But he must have heard it from someplace; where, I wonder?
What about books of investment counsel where the counselor has made most of his money on selling books?
I think that applies to the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series, Sebastian.
Please remember that in Shakespeare, it was a nutcase revolutionary character who wanted to kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare wasn't advocating that, instead he was giving an example of the kind of nonsense revolutionaries are prone too. I'm not sure if he understood just how attractive this particular piece of nonsense could be.
I was just thinking that Jane should write successful management books on how to write successful management books. She'd make a killing!
markm has made a common mistake. Jane has it right on Shakespeare. And who is responsible for the misreading of Shakespeare in this instance? Lawyers.
[Full disclosure: I'm a lawyer, so any anti-lawyer bias I may have is from experience.]
So...anyone else attribute their success in bathroom situations to Sun Zi's Art of War for the Bathroom??
Next you'll be telling us that the one about the ideogram for "trouble" being made up of "two women under one roof" is an urban legend too. Killjoy.
When I finally get access to a time machine I am going back to the moment of Tony Roberts conception and ending his existence before it began.
The second stop I'll be making is the guy that invented drywall screws.....don't ask.
The line is, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." It's uttered by a minor character named Dick in the play Henry VI, part 2 (act 4, scene 2) during a get-together by some erstwhile revolutionaries who are talking about what they'll do once they take over.
It was intended to be a joke (although the character that says it is serious). What's astounding to me is that it plays just as well as a joke now as it did in 1590 when the play was written.
As to the Chinese character for "crisis", seems to me that Marc Miyaki is the guy to ask. I'll send him email and see if he feels like writing a post about it.
I'm no Marc Miyake, but....
In the compound they're thinking of, the first character does, for all intents and purposes, mean "danger." The second is the one that causes trouble. Its original meaning was "loom" (it kind of looks like one if you're moderately tipsy), and from there it came to refer to machines in general, and from there to more abstract mechanisms, occasions, and confluences of events. It is used in one of the compounds translated as "opportunity," but you have to put both characters in that compound together to get that complete meaning. By itself, the character in question really just means "occasion."
Paul, you know what they say... "Only Nixon could make stuff about China."
er,"make stuff up". Forget it. Sorry. Won't happen again. As punishment, I am going to tatoo the Chinese character for "I have a small..." on my butt.
Coincidentally, I was referred to hanzismatter earlier today as the definitive source for bizarre western misinterpretation of Chinese and Japanese characters.
In particular, this post with video clips is a splendid summary of the syndrome.
I asked Amritas about that a while ago; he has already stated that he was unaware of any such configuration but couldn't rule out an obscure less used ideogram as there are just too many to know them all. Too bad; I've found that two women under one roof does indeed mean trouble.
As for the original topic of inspirational literature, I once checked "Who Moved My Process Cheese Food Product" out of the library to see what all the excitement was. It belongs in the children's library, not on the best-seller list. I can't see any reason anyone bought it other than that it is a best-seller so they had to have it. That other one, about throwing fish, has it gotten anyone fired for taking it literally?
Does anyone know if it's true that the symbol for "good" in Chinese is a combination of a boy and a girl? I was told this repeatedly while pregnant with a girl, after the questioner found out that I already had a son. This was in Hong Kong, so the commentators were mainly (although not entirely) Cantonese. But since they all use the same characters, I wouldn't think that there would be a difference between Mandarin, Cantonese "and other Sinitic languages".
I've always been concerned about buying t-shirts with Chinese characters on, for fear that they said "look at what this stupid foreigner bought" or something like that.
The fact that the professor felt he had to write a 1800-word essay on why "crisis" does not equal "danger + opportunity" in Chinese demonstrates the power of metaphor in instruction. Fact is, the association is close enough to make the point. (And in just one sentence, too!) While Western readings of Chinese characters may differ from the way they are understood by Chinese, which is different from the way they are understood by Japanese, who cares? The great thing about ideaograms is that they are embedded with all these great ideas which inspires even native speakers in subtely different ways. What's wrong with a local adaptation? Flip side is reading the way Asians use wacky English on their T-shirts. Fun for them, and good for Western yuks. Cross-cultural linguistic consistency is for nerds and esperanto-heads. Lighten up!
I'm not so sure this corrective information is correct....see this qoute "Those who purvey the doctrine that the Chinese word for "crisis" is composed of elements meaning "danger" and "opportunity" are engaging in a type of muddled thinking that is a danger to society, for it lulls people into welcoming crises as unstable situations from which they can benefit. Adopting a feel-good attitude toward adversity may not be the most rational, realistic approach to its solution." He seems to want to disprove it because he dislikes the implications should it be true, and his arguements seem to refute information given to me by a friend who was attending University of Chi, who had lived in china till his 16th birthday. I do not speak or write Mandarin, but my friend tried to give me a pretty comprehensive course on the history of the language, even pulling out something by Alfred Huang a chinese Taoist who spent many years in prison in China as a dissident (the book was the I Ching...yea...semi mystical, but confucian...but he uses original pictographs and does some pretty thorough explaining).
Like I said, I'm no expert, but something that article Jane linked to really got in my craw, especially when I got to that final quote. I have to say, his article seems to refute everything I was taught about mandarin. But, hey, who the hell am I to question the wisdom of experts....
This makes me think of the Seinfeld eoisode where a woman named Donna Chang is able to influence everyone's lives because they think she is Chinese. When they find out she is not (by actually meeting her), they disregard and even resent her.
Just saying "Crisis is danger mixed with opportunity" is pithy enough, but apperently not persuasive or motivating. However, if it's based on Chinese characters, well, then let's run our lives by the idea.
The wearing of Kanji is a fashion trend, like the equivalent Japanese fashion of English words on T-Shirts. In Japan, the words will be either nonsense, or lyrics from J-Pop songs. OK, that last sentence was redundant.
We have lots of myths about China. Like "may you live in interesting times" being a curse. That phrase doesn't appear before the 1940s or 1950s. And we didn't run out of regular coffee (f decaf!) here at the office, I might be awake enough to remember the American mystery (?) novelist who made up all these "ancient chinese sayings" to fluff up his books. All I can think of is "Charlie Chan" and "where the f is my coffee?"
Scott Adams (dilbert) mocks (among a lot of other things) mismanagement books. He claims that there is probably someone who uses a tongue depressor, and for some reason manages to be successful, so that mismanager will probably "discover" the tongue depressor management system, and write a book called "Management by rubbing your head with a tongue depressor." Which would be about as useful as "the leadership secrets of Charles Manson." After all, Mr Manson managed to motivate some folks to work for him, doing things I don't think they would normally do, and do them quite effectively. Isn't that the sign of a good manager?
I once had a t-shirt with the kanji "tamashi" on it, which in Japanese means fighting spirit. On a bus an elderly Chinese gentleman was staring at the character in obvious puzzlement. He finally asked me why I had "ghost warrior" on my shirt.
I beleive, also, that at one time (perhaps still) Harvard Business School used the Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho) by Miyamoto Musashi in one of their courses. Miyamoto Mushashi was one of the greatest, and easily the most famous, samurai of Japanese history. It details the stategy and philosophy that allowed him to emerge victorious in the 60 or so duels he fought in his lifetime.
In dissecting management consultants, The Witch Doctors -- by John Micklethwait of the Economist, is a classic.
Paul: Like they say, it took Nixon to be wrong about China.
There is a great quote attributed to an ancient Roman, Petronius Arbiter, to the effect that "we constantly re-organize and nothing ever comes of it." Evidently, however, the quote was made up by management guru Robert Townsend in his book "Up the Organization"
So, yes, kill all the management consultants sounds like a good idea. It would at least eliminate a few made-up ancient sayings.
Love this post. The first time I heard this fable was from a gentleman named Tom Billman. You are too young to remember him but back in the high interest, high inflation days of the '70's and 80's Mr. Billman was the creator of a massive real estate syndication pyramid scheme called Equity Programs Investment Corp. (EPIC). In the mid-80's, as his empire began to come unglued but before anyone else was aware of this fact, Mr. Billman reorganized EPIC and created a new corporation called "Crysopt" ("crisis" and "opportunity, get it?) complete with the aforementioned Chinese character on its letterhead. He transferred all the empire's good assets into this corporation, which he owned, and left the rest (mostly depressed real estate and bad debts) behind with his investors, cronies and creditors. EPIC then promptly collapsed in a welter of lawsuits, savings & loan failures, investigations, indictments and bankruptcies. Mr. Billman took it on the lam to the Riviera, leaving his wife, family, mistress and devoted business partner to face the music.
The story has a happy ending, however. At their criminal trial the mistress and cronies blamed everything on good ol' Tom and walked free as birds. The feds found Mr. Billman holed up in Europe with a new mistress and hauled him back in chains to face trial and a long prison term (which he may still be serving). May such a fate await the hacks who publish management books based on spurious Chinese characters.
PS I learned all this as a lawyer representing one of EPIC's hapless creditors. I hope, come the revolution, Jane will spare me. I long ago hung up my litigator's sword and shield to become a mild-mannered advisor to a non-profit, so perhaps you might show a little mercy.
I didn't realize that Robert Townsend had made up the reorganization quote. Still, his "Up the Organization" is a business book after my own heart. With recommendations like "Fire the entire HR department" and "Fire the purchasing department", he couldn't miss with me. I also like his line about perks like reserved parking spaces for the higher-ups - if you're that big a deal, he said, you should be in before everyone else is anyway.
The Chinese language is very modular in that individual characters (ideograms) are mixed and matched to form different meanings, not unlike the alphabet (except that there are many tens of thousands of characters, not all of them are frequently used.)
The two characters that form the idea of "crisis" (literary it means "dangerous situation") are "wei" and "ji". While "wei" by itself cleary means "danger" or "dangerous," I can't think of a distinct meaning for "ji" by itself. "Ji", however, can be combined with another character to mean a lot of things: machine (ji chi), opportunity (ji hui), machine parts (ji jian), government offices (ji guan), mechanics (ji jie)or anything mechanical, executive (ji yao)(as in executive secretary), mechanized (ji dong), just to name a few.
In my humble opinion, I believe the term "wei ji" should be translated in English as "a dangerous situation."
However, I do think the idea of
"there is an opportunity hidden in any dangerous situation" is philosophically a very solid one.
So, the "ancient Chinese wisdom" (whatever it means) is getting some undeserved credit.
My sister and I made a pact back in high school never to wear clothes printed with a picture of a place we'd never been or containing text in a language that we didn't understand... which has significantly limited our casual-wear wardrobes. On the other hand, it's also enhanced our travel - both our tendency to do so and our chosen destinations - and made our souvenir shopping less pointless.
God love you, Jane, for bringing this up. I’ve long marvelled at the concentrated stupidity distilled into management books, while I reflected on such imponderable questions as how many readers of those books move their lips while doing so.
Flipping through some of those books in airports led me to the conviction that business guys are imbeciles, no more, no less, for failing to recognize the patronizing drivel encased between the covers of those books.
The usually implicit (but sometimes explicit) presumption is that “smart people” out there know something that you, the reader, does not, some easily mastered technique, perhaps a secret handshake, that will make you wildly successful, now that you are “in the know.”
Also, has anyone else noticed the unfailing choice of an odd number, preferably prime, in the titles of these books? I’m going to write my own book, “The 2N+1 (N=1-5) Secrets Primates Have Figured Out, But You Morons Haven’t,” soon to be in airport book shop near you.
Whaddya think?
For those with a malicious sense of humor (looks around sheepishly), I recommend re-reading "In Search of Excellence," which for many of the companies profiled therein can now be renamed "In Search of Solvency."
Let it out, Jane, you will feel better!
As for management theory and our American arrogance, think scientific method in the first half of the 20th century. Then, recognize its real world legacy - Management by Objective (MBO) - and remember most of the old white guys who practice it will be gone within the time frame of your life.
It's really not that bad of a system - it's just all these management process thinkers do have a better idea. I recommend buying only Toyotas if you want to protect yourself.
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Nah, kill all the lawyers first!
(Except for Ann - what's - her - name, the female driver.)
Does she count as a "lawyer?"
(Just take the MBAs away from the others effectively neutering them.)
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