Is it being childish or just business?

[jajrussel]

When I was young, at home I was faced with the attitude “ You do as I say or get the hell out!”

Not every job was like that, but a lot were. My favorite job was serious about work, but worked with problems without a lot of regard to the problem and how ridiculous it sounded. Basically it was you wanna keep your job show up tomorrow on time if the problem was an argument borne of frustration. Then the company was bought by a corporation. Everything changed... we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

Then came the crash, the burst bubble, whatever you want to call it, then the lay-offs... So, when the last job ( literally ) was, after seemingly forever, landed I was not overly surprised by the corporate structure attitude found in the business next door. You do as I say or get the hell out, and what they said got harder and an harder with every decision they made. If you did your best to do what they said they didn’t just toss you when they made one of their hard business decisions, but it still got harder and harder to do what they say... At the end, after two department closings. One due to restructuring, the other due to hiring out. I could keep my job if at the age of 62 I wanted to stack 55 pound boxes at an assembly line pace, meaning you do the job, or you don’t do the job. If you can’t do the job there’s plenty of 30 year old linebackers who want a job. I retired, and good luck to them.

The thing is I don’t see a lot of difference between Trumps Attitude and the corporate attitude of the people I used to work for. The media says that Trump is childish, and yes it seems so, but it also seems like corporate structure placed in the wrong environment. So, maybe selfishly, I’m hoping good...  Maybe they will wake up figure out they need to start acting sensibly, and then it will trickle down in an Reganomics kind of way to the rest of us.

So literally, I see little difference in the Presidents behavior, “What the media calls childish,” and the way local businesses next doors now do business within their own doors, the new corporate structure attitude. So, is it childish, or is it just business?

Personaly, I’m hoping that  a little of that Democrat sensibility will move from the political arena to the business next door arena, since the majority of them likely work next door, cause I’d like to go back to work, but I sure as hell don’t want to go back to the  environment I left.

Welcome to orientation. Your not in Kansas anymore, so; Click your heels three times, and repeat “ You do not fail, you do not fail, you do not fail...” Well no more than once...

Okay, there is a lot of personal opinion here, but still the questions is he really being childish or does he just personify business to the extreme? In a place it doesn’t necessarily belong? Like a government ment for people rather than extreme ideals?

 

Edited December 24, 2018 by jajrussel

[swansont]

It can be both. There are people who are just bad at the job.

[iNow]

You’re making a fundamental attribution error. You worked for ONE corporation that had ONE type of culture, and you mistakenly assume ALL corporations behave that way and it’s just how business is done.

That’s not the case at all. 

There is some overlap in needs, but culture matters most in large enterprises and that culture is set by leaders. Those leaders succeed by setting a vision and getting people to collectively strive toward it. Those leaders succeed by being competent, strategic, and not petty.

Childish leaders, however, tend to be more like turtles on top of a fence post. You know they didn’t get there by themselves and only reason they’re there is because someone put them there.

Vision. Competence. Strategy. An ability to recruit the very best people on to your team. 

Trump is none of those things. He isn’t visionary. He isn’t competent. He’s not good at developing relationships to accomplish big things. He can’t recruit even mediocre people to his team, let alone the absolute best. He’s had more bankruptcies than I can recall, and the suggestion you’re making is that he is good at business... which IMO is silly. 

While he is a poor businessman and while he is extremely childish and laughably incompetent, he very much IS extremely good at branding and steering the social conversation. Unfortunately, he’s not selling a visionary future. He’s selling flimflam and graft much like a modern day PT Barnum. He’s the snake oil salesman that rode into western towns and bilked people from their money, just on a bigger more modern scale. 

So, at the core of your question IMO rests a bigger question...

What does it mean to be a GOOD businessman? Does it mean having an ability to successfully rob from the most vulnerable and navigate corrupt systems, or does it mean having the ability to grow something from the ground up, something that enhances the community, and to gain mass support by recruiting people to step up and help execute on and achieve your vision?

[dimreepr]

30 minutes ago, iNow said:

What does it mean to be a GOOD businessman? Does it mean having an ability to successfully rob from the most vulnerable and navigate corrupt systems, or does it mean having the ability to grow something from the ground up, something that enhances the community, and to gain mass support by recruiting people to step up and help execute on and achieve your vision?

 

 

Sounds like a modern day Jesus

Edited December 24, 2018 by dimreepr

[iNow]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

Sounds like a modern day Jesus

‘Tis the season

[dimreepr]

4 minutes ago, iNow said:

‘Tis the season

Well, Trump is the Grinch  

[Ten oz]

Trump is transnational with a focus on personal short term gain. Long term good be it for all our for specific entities are problems tor others to resolve when the time comes. Some businesses are ran that way. Get what you can while you can then walk away with all you can. It isn't a sustainable model but it is one which can produce short term gain at the expense of the future. Like adding increasing amount of wood to a fire will generate increasing amounts warmth right up to the point when the wood runs out. 

Since the Reagan era one of the Conservative talking points has been that Govt. needs to be ran more like a business. I think that mantra is commonly understood to mean Govt. should be leaner, less wasteful, and more focused on wealth creation. Via the mantra wealth gets viewed as a common good. The more wealthy people are the more they will hire people and the result will be lower unemployment and more prosperity for all. Anything which doesn't directly support wealth creation like regulations & taxes are viewed obvious evils. So the relationship between some business attitudes and political ones do definitely overlap. People are literally voting businessmen into office. It is a shame in my opinion. Businesses and the way they are managed aren't dependable. Even successful entrepreneurs have checked resumes. Trump himself has had 6 bankruptcies. Govt must maintain more reliability than that. Govts should be ran like non-profits focused on community stability overtime. 

 

 

[Airbrush]

It is personality disorder.  People keep forgetting this because most people are not narcissistic to such a degree.  For a person with severe narcissistic personality disorder, nobody else really matters, not even their own family.  Short-term personal gain is ALL that matters, and no worries about climate change or future war, because he will not be around to suffer thru it, and to hell with everyone else, including his own grandchildren.

[Ten oz]

15 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

It is personality disorder.  People keep forgetting this because most people are not narcissistic to such a degree.  For a person with severe narcissistic personality disorder, nobody else really matters, not even their own family.  Short-term personal gain is ALL that matters, and no worries about climate change or future war, because he will not be around to suffer thru it, and to hell with everyone else, including his own grandchildren.

It is an interesting in evolutionary terms. On a micro level those who are selfish are potentially more likely to survive and get what they want. Yet on a macro level humans overall survive and thrive best in groups which require a certain amount of altruistic behaviors. Of course it is all relative to scale. Groups can  succeeded with narcissistic behaviors shifting the emphasis from an individual  to a tribe. Tribalism enables a group to exercise altruism selfishly. So if there are just 2 tribes in need of the same resources the more selfish tribe probably gets more of the resource. Yet selfish tendencies can prevent a tribe from creating allies. So when it is multiple tribes in need of the same resources the selfish tribe's advantage is lost. 

A business can be an extension of an individual person or a group (tribe). To what extent selfish vs altruistic behavior works varies greatly. I think for any industry where the long term good of people is an inherent priority (healthcare, education, govt, etc) the issue become more difficult. Individuals are often best when self obsessed yet groups are not. Narcissism  should be expected in our leadership yet rejected in the products produced by that same leadership. It is complicated. To an extent it is why the economy ebbs and flows as it does. Business environments go through periods of constraint and compromise followed by periods of cashing it all in.