The McKinsey Quarterly

Tranquility (www.taoteching.org) Ch. 37 - a commentary

The Way takes no action, but leaves nothing undone. When you accept this The world will flourish, In harmony with nature. Nature does not possess desire; Without desire, the heart becomes quiet; In this manner the whole world is made tranquil. ---------------------------------------------------------- Is this a contradiction? Takes no action, yet leaves nothing undone? I think over this for sometime. I still have my doubt on my interpretation. But why be "right" when I can do what I want to do. In the corporate world, I notice a lot of "make work". The concept of being busy means that one is working to impress the boss remains a culture; albeit a self-deceiving one at best. I interpret this chapter as not doing unimportant or non-impactful things as the principle of work. The Way takes no action on many wasteful tasks. Instead, the Way concentrates on tasks that affect the environmental sustainability and ensure that nature will continue to provide for many generati...

More is Certain

I had been working on an acquisition over the last three weeks and it was the most tiresome experience ever. The target being a public listed company means that any news leakage will drive up the share price. The purchase price of a public listed company will carry a premium on the share price. In Asia, I noted that the premium given is about 10~15% but in the USA, it is between 20~40%! Just imagine, if you spotted a target and you buy into it, and you hit the bull's eye! You could make quite a bundle. Of course, your guess could be wrong, and if so, expect that share price to go down, when the news is announced. For those working on such a deal, expect tons of information to be provided to you, and most of this could be outdated. However the bank (usually) engaged to do the job wants to impress you with documents. After all, more means "we are doing something" compared to "less but quality stuff". So, I have to keep sieving lousy information, to get out what is...

Music from the Mind of a Chinese Maestro, Choo Hoey

I took advantage of the Keppel Nights tickets subsidy of 50% and took the family to attend the "Folklore and Legends" on February 20, at the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO)Concert Hall. It was conducted by Mr Choo Hoey (see photo) with a guest appearance of a young violinist, Mr Jin Li (see photo). I have never been inside the Singapore Conference Hall before, despite having lived in Singapore for the past thirteen years! It is located on Shenton Way, the financial street of Singapore, with a nice view onto the Marina Bay, which is seeing a lot of construction with new high rise office buildings springing up. Ah, this is Singapore, a land of little land but plenty of high rise buildings. This is my first foray into a Chinese orchestra, with Chinese musical instruments. These names are strange to my ears - gaohu, erhu, banhu, zhonghu, yangqin, liuqin, zhongruan, sanxian, daruan, konghou, qudi, bangdi and xindi. Some of these instruments are not known to me, because I do not ...

Sight to Insight

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