Let’s say you have two options. If you press the blue button, you will receive 1 million USD, and if you press the red button, you will receive 10 million USD, but the probability of winning is 50%. Which button would you press? If pressing the blue button is business, pressing the red button is gambling. In other words, depending on your attitude toward the relationship between risk and reward, we can determine whether we are suitable as managers. But if you press the red button with a 50% chance of winning and you don’t win, and you have to pay a fine of 1 million USD, would you still press the red button? The relationship between risk and reward influences people’s behavior. Business is about creating a structure that is advantageous to me, and building a system in which the structure continues to benefit me is called management. - Joseph’s “just my thoughts”
There is a country of 607 islands in the West Pacific, Micronesia. One of the islands, “Yap Islands,” used limestone as a currency. The monetary unit is “fei”. Big stones, oh no, big money, 3.6 meters in diameter and weighed 3.5 tons. The bigger and heavier is a more expensive price, because of the harder the carving. The peculiar thing was that when the people moved the stone for trading, they directly moved it with a canoe, and no one marked the money after the transaction. In the meantime, a rich man had to deal with someone and he met the storm while carrying the stone money in a canoe. Securing his survival, he had to throw his money out of the canoe into the water. When he met the counterparty with an empty hand, no sooner did they confirm the force majeure case than the counterparty confirmed that the villagers additionally recognized the value of the sunk money in the water and approved the transaction. Then, the existence of the sunk stone money was recorded on a wooden board,...