[Hank's Mail]Change with the Times

Dear all,

Good Friday morning!

Everything has changed and keeps on changing along with the elapse of time. Changes require businesses and individuals to adapt and the thing is how to adapt to change! Not adapting means certain death in business.

According to Fortune magazine, 90% of the names on the Fortune 500 have changed since this select group has been tracked for 53 years and so is our case. We have witnessed the collapse of Hwashin Group, which had been the most colossal Korean business from the 1930s through the 1970s but had stuck to a leading department store despite rapidly changing business environments. Many more chaebols disappeared from the list of public companies on KOSPI, including Daewoo, Hanbo, etc.

In a business, the crucial activity to thrive is to identify customer clusters and their needs which keep on changing with the times. Businesses are standing at the crossroads to be either innovative like IBM and 3M, which started out selling typewriters and mining ores, respectively or to end up like Bethlehem Steel, a former colossus that has tumbled off the business landscape.

The recording industry continues to insist that its world is dying. However, the music industry continues to thrive, even if it’s not in the same way it was a decade ago. Record stores try to become destination sites, with free WiFi, workshops and a stage for live performances rather than just music stores. They’ve recognized that record store employees can provide value by being trusted guides. A record shop, therefore, should not be an ordinary one. Instead, it’s playing up the relationship between knowledgeable employees and shoppers, providing a lot of counters for visitors to talk with staff about what kind of music they might enjoy.

Ritz-Carlton, which has been known for over-the-top luxury hotel for generations, tries to be relevant to their future generations by changing its design, mood, restaurants, and even service because their customers are changing. They’re arriving in jeans and T-shirts, toting iPods and laptops, often checking in with kids. They don’t want to wear a jacket and tie to the hotel dining room.

The most notable change in our society is that women are more powerful than we think. Different from the past, female college graduates do not apply for secretarial jobs or stay home before marriage. They are eager to be part of the workplace and such a change makes male graduates’competition in job markets as difficult as a camel’s going through the eye of a needle. No wonder we’ve seen more jobless men in their twenties than before.


For a good example, times have truly changed for women in our society. They are even doing masculine jobs such as tractor-trailer driving, carpentry, etc. They now have numberless options for careers. They are working their way up the corporate ladder, and run highly successful businesses.

As female CEOs of well-known large firms, we can name Patricia Russo with Alcatel-Lucent, Brenda Barnes of Sara Lee, Anne Mulcahy of Xerox, Andrea Jung with Avon, Meg Whitman of eBay, Shelly Lazarus of Ogilvy & Mather, Sally Smith of Buffalo Wild Wings, etc. Further, more people take it a foregone conclusion that Hillary Clinton could be elected as the first female President of America. Our paradigm should, therefore, be modified to the changes we are observing.

Good weekends, you all!

Hank

[The Bottom Line]

There was a man who loved fine art. He loved it so much he lived for it. It had become his whole life, and had literally engulfed him. He would work really hard to save up some money, just so he could buy another piece of fine art. He would buy Rembrandt's and Picasso's and many others’works of fine art.

The man had been widowed some years before but he had a son. As he raised his son, he included him in his hobby of collecting art. As his son grew, he also became a great art collector. His dad was very proud of him. Collecting fine art was something that they both loved to do and it brought them very close together.

Some time passed by and their country suddenly became engulfed in a war. The son, like so many other young men, enlisted and went off to serve his country. He had been gone for some time, and then it happened.

One day the father received a letter. It said, “We regret to inform you that your son is missing in action.” The father's heart was broken. He loved his son so dearly and now he truly realized how much his son meant to him. It hurt so badly not knowing what had happened to him.

A few weeks passed, and then another letter came. This letter just ripped his heart in two. It said, “We regret to inform you that your son has been killed in action.” The father could hardly bear to read on, but as he did he discovered the circumstances that his son had died under. The letter said that his son had made it back to safety. But that he had seen wounded soldiers out on the battlefield. And one by one, he would go back onto the battlefield and carry them to safety. As he was carrying in the last wounded soldier, a bullet struck him and killed him.

A month passed by and it was now Christmas Day. The father didn't even want to get up out of bed. He just couldn't imagine spending Christmas without his son. Then he heard the doorbell ring so he went downstairs to see who was there. When he opened the door he found a young man standing there holding a package.

The young man said, “Sir, you don't know me. But I was the wounded soldier that your son was carrying when he was killed.”

He said, "I'm not a wealthy man. I don't have anything of value that I can give you for what your son did for me. Your son had told me of your love for art, and although I'm not much of an artist, I painted a portrait of your son, and I'd like for you to have it.”

The father took the package into the house and opened it. Then he went into the drawing room and took down the Rembrandt that was hanging over the fireplace. In its place he hung up the portrait of his son.

Then with tears streaming down on his face he told the young man, "This is my most prized possession. It is more valuable to me than any other work of art in my house."

The father and the young man shared a meal and Christmas Day together and then the young man left. A few years later, the father became very ill. A short time later he died. News of his death spread far and wide. Everyone was in anticipation of the great auction that was to take place for all the pieces of art the man had collected.

Finally it was announced that the auction would be held on Christmas Day. Museum curators and collectors came from all around the world.

They were all eager for the chance to bid on the fine art that was to be auctioned.

The house swelled full of people. Then the auctioneer stood up and said, "I'd like to thank you all for coming. The first piece up for auction will be the portrait behind me."

From the back of the room someone yelled out, "That's just a picture of the old man's kid! Why don't we just skip it, and get on to the real treasures?"

The auctioneer said, "We have to sell this portrait first, and then we can move on."

The auctioneer asked, "Who would start the bidding at $100?" No one answered so he asked, "Would anyone bid $50?"

Still no one answered so he asked, "Would any one bid $40?" Again no one would bid on the portrait. So the auctioneer asked, 'Will nobody bid on this portrait?"

An elderly man stood up and asked, "Would you take $10 for it? You see $10 is all that I have. I'm the neighbor from across the street and I knew the boy. I watched him grow up and I really liked him. I'd like to have the portrait. So, would you take $10 for it?" The auctioneer said, "$10 going once, going twice, and sold!" Immediately a cheer went up and the people said to each other, "Oh boy, now we can get on to the real art."

The auctioneer then said, "I'd like to thank you all for coming. It's been a pleasure having you here today. That concludes our auction today."

The crowd grew very angry and asked, "What do you mean the auction is over? You haven't even begun to take bids on all these other works of art!"

The auctioneer said, "I'm sorry but the auction is closed. You see, according to the will of the father, WHOEVER TAKES THE SON GETS IT ALL!!! And that's the bottom line."

[Chair Test]

An eccentric philosophy professor gave a one question at final exam after a semester dealing with a broad array of topics.

The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on his desk and wrote on the board: “Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist.”

Fingers flew, erasers erased, notebooks were filled in furious fashion. Some students wrote over 30 pages in one hour attempting to refute the existence of the chair. One member of the class, however, was up and finished in less than a minute.

Weeks later when the grades were posted, the rest of the group wondered how he could have gotten an A when he had barely written anything at all.

His answer consisted of two words: “What chair?”

시대와 함께 하는 변화

시간의 경과와 더불어 모든 것은 변했으며, 계속 변하고 있습니다. 변화는 기업과 개인에게 (이러한) 변화에 적응하기를 요구하며, 문제는 어떻게 변화에 적응하느냐 하는 것입니다! (변화에 대한) 적응 거부는 피할 수 없는 사업의 실패를 뜻합니다.

포천지에 의하면, 53년간 포천 500대 기업을 선정해온 이래 그 중 90 퍼센트가 바뀌었으며, 우리의 경우도 마찬가지 입니다. 우리는 1930년대부터 1970년대까지 국내 최대 그룹이었으나 사업 환경의 급변에도 불구하고 최고의 백화점만을 고수해왔던 화신 그룹의 몰락을 보았습니다. 그리고, 대우, 한보 등 더 많은 재벌들이 증권거래소의 상장법인 명단에서 사라졌습니다.

사업이 번창하는 데 가장 중요한 활동은 시대와 더불어 계속 변하는 고객 집단과 그들의 요구를 파악하는 것입니다. 기업들은 타자기 판매에서 출발한 IBM과 에서 채굴 광석 판매에서 출발한 3M처럼 혁신적이거나 아니면 베들레헴 철강처럼 굴러 떨어져 과거의 거대기업으로 끝을 맺거나 하는 기로에 서 있습니다.

레코드 산업은 계속 레코드 업계가 죽어가고 있다고 주장합니다. 하지만, 음악 산업은 비록 십 년 전과 방식은 다르지만 계속 번창하고 있습니다. 레코드 가게들은 단순한 음반 가게이기 보다 무료 와이파이, 워크