Are you in-charge?

by Thomas Sim, 28 Nov, 2001

Desmond has just fired his senior sales director because sales had been down for the last 3 months. If decision is based on gut feelings alone, Desmond probably could have retained his buddy friend. He is a helpful guy, sincere and hard working. But then, how is he going to tell his boss about the declining sales? Over a cup of coffee?

Scenario like this had repeated zillions of time over the globe during the economic slowdown. Why? It is simply that if you don't do well, I don't shine and hence my boss thinks that I am wasting his time.

This article is not about employment law or why bosses dismiss subordinates. It is about a universal factor that determines a certain power is circulated among some people to achieve control.

If you look at the core of why business is in going concern - making a profit, you would understand the control factor. For example, En Arjunan has some investment into shop lots. His objective is to make money out of this real property - his capital asset. He looks for tenants to collect rental income. He controls the lease agreement to his advantage. At any time he doesn't like or cannot collect his rental on time, he fires his tenant. He has full control of his "business".

However, En Arjunan doesn't like his profit being restricted to fixed rental income and said to himself: "that is not good enough! I must make more money!" So he invites his friends (now: over a cup of coffee) to a talk about what business to venture into. He finally decides he is going to run a courier service - tapping into the expanding dot-com economy.

Ironically, he has no experience. To be on the safe side, he calls on a close friend who has been long in the logistics businesss and who earlier on initiated this idea to him. His name is Desmond.

Of course, Desmond cannot run this venture himself as it needs proper staffing. He needed runners, so he employed a sales director, a few sales and service executives (simply put: salesmen), some delivery boys and a beautiful receptionist to take phone calls.

Business was good for a start. En Arjunan was very happy and gave them good increments. Desmond was even invited to be a business partner so as to keep him with the company. Then came the dot-com crash, the economic bubble burst and to worsen the situation, the 911 incident!

By now, you should have realized that the man in control is En Arjunan. Not because he has gray matter in business. Not because he is the founder of the company. Not because he has anything apart from him being owner to the shop lots. The universal control factor is his capital asset. And based on common sense, capital asset is employed to achieve profit in a business investment. Whenever this objective is not fulfilled, somebody has to go! That is the easiest way out!

The essence of control on the first look is human resource - the people. En Arjunan controls Desmond as he hired him. Ultimately, good people must stay, and redundancy must go. But, digging deeper, the real controlling factor is the capital asset. If you are not capital asset owner, usually you are not in control.

This is probably a reality in a capitalist society. Inevitably, it is also something good if you are a capital asset owner. It depends on where you are in this capital asset system. If you haven't qualify, it would at least provide you with some motivation to be one in the future. Or else, you get out of the capital asset circle and do away with it! But can you?

The answer is: Yes! My article on Future of a simple man illustrated this principal - the mover, the regulator and the worker. Capital owner are always the mover, unless s/he is brainless. Desmond is the regulator and the poor sales director and the rest are the workers. So, if you don't have capital asset and you don't want to be a worker like the poor sales director, be like Desmond!

At least he still keeps his job!