Thursday, September 18, 2008

It is all about people, stupid

Nothing makes us more unhappy than to no longer be in control of our lives. When someone else (particularly some nameless, faceless person, somewhere) is controlling everything we do or say (at work or in the domestic environment) it causes a great deal of stress and unhappiness.

We seem now to have lost control of the financial situation. It is spinning out of control and who knows where it will end up – it is developing a momentum and life of its own. And many people are very unhappy indeed, because they have lost control.

Let me see if I can recall the basics of how this whole sorry saga developed: put simply, some bright sparks deep in some financial burrow dreamed up the idea of selling shonky mortgages to people who could not afford them. They then parcelled these with more secure financial products to make them appear more attractive. These reworked products were then on sold to other financial institutions to raise cash to, once more, repeat the whole process. Easy money!! Maybe. But the problem is that human beings were left out of the equation – they were denied, or lost, control of events in their lives. The pain and suffering caused by putting money before people is now only too evident.

The bright sparks of the financial world made their choices. They now have to live with the consequences. All because they forgot, or were never told, that human beings MUST come first in any business consideration. This is what ethics is all about, people like you and I. Without us there would be no business and no money – just remember that!

If you missed it the last time I wrote about it, read it here, now - there is NO viable alternative to ethical conduct. In anything you do, in business or otherwise, answer the following questions:

  1. Are you treating everyone the way you would like to be treated?
  2. If EVERYONE did what you are doing (or propose to do) would the world be a better place?

If you cannot answer “Yes” to both questions don’t do it. If you carry on and do it anyway expect the consequences, but don’t expect to like them! You cannot evade the Law of Cause and Effect.

It is not about the “Economy” stupid (nor “Money”, nor “Business”) it is about people – Human Beings!

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