Click the image for details Introduction Those who like to judge others from a moral high ground are either stupid, evil, or both—there is no fourth option. 01 Recently, I was shocked by a segment on a job-seeking entertainment show, and now that I have some free time, I must address it. A young man who claimed to be a three-year sales champion was asked by the host to introduce his most successful sales case. He said he sold a set of courses priced at over 5,000 yuan for training children's emotional intelligence to a sanitation worker earning only about 2,000 yuan a month. As soon as he said that, the whole scene erupted. From the host to the bosses present, they all criticized the young man's character, saying he sold a product the customer didn't need. He was immediately eliminated in the first round, with the bosses' high-sounding reasons and sharp accusations making me "moved" by their positive energy. Subsequently, the incident went viral online, and clichéd chicken soup articles like "I Don't Doubt Your Ability, but I Doubt Your Character" once again force-fed职场 people. Who says a sanitation worker earning 2,000 yuan a month can't let his child take a 5,000-yuan training course? These people show off their compassion and use the guise of caring for vulnerable groups, but they make discrimination against sanitation workers seem so natural. And this young man, you're too naive. You don't understand the psychology of these bosses and hosts. Many people want to have their cake and eat it too. On such occasions, it's time to put up a facade of virtue. Even if they secretly hope their employees will do anything to bring benefits to the company, they must show high "moral integrity" and touching "sentiments" at this moment. The most basic ability in sales is "empathy." If you don't even understand that, it's not that your character is bad; it's precisely that you've shown a lack of ability in this matter. 02

** 1,** "Character" is positively correlated with "ability": no one's ability comes out of nowhere. Capable people are usually diligent, self-disciplined, and serious; incapable people are usually lazy, indulgent, and sloppy, and from this derive more related positive and negative qualities.

** 2,** Talented people tend to engage in value exchange with the company, have better fallback options, and set higher bottom lines in their actions, but they may be seen as "disobedient." Less capable people tend to engage in personality exchange with the company, have worse fallback options, and set lower bottom lines, but bosses find them "obedient."

** 3,** The cost of doing evil for capable people is high, while for incapable people it is low.

** 4,** Ability matched to the position is the foundation of effective management, while character is difficult to assess.

** 5,** Companies that emphasize "character" often end up with poor "character" within the company: internal factions, complex political struggles, and bad money driving out good. Over the years, I've exchanged ideas with many bosses, executives, and HR managers, and overall there's high agreement, but in practice, I still see many misunderstandings. 03 The most common misunderstanding is mistaking some clearly incompetent and foolish behaviors for character issues. For example, many bosses or HR executives often set a trap during interviews: "Why did you leave your last company?" Once the interviewee starts complaining about their previous employer, they fall into the trap and are judged as disloyal or having poor character. Instant elimination. In reality, friction between a company and its employees is normal, so it's okay to vent a little, but the mistake is the wrong occasion: you're complaining about an old employer to a new employer that hasn't even hired you yet. What will the new employer think? This is clearly a lack of empathy, not a character issue. The marketing expert I respect most is, of course, Mr. Ye Maozhong, because I worked and grew at his company. Once Mr. Ye said, "Lao Miao is a good brother. He left the company over a decade ago but has always supported us and spoken well of us." I joked in reply, "I'd like to say something bad about you, but it wouldn't do me any good, so I swallow it every time." The young man mentioned in this article, on a TV show, boasted about selling a 5,000-yuan course to a sanitation worker: first, he didn't realize it was inappropriate to share such a case on such an occasion; second, he was probably brainwashed in his previous job into thinking that kind of sales was good. Both are clear signs of lack of ability. In the workplace, we often see talented technical experts repeatedly passed over for promotion, and the reason given by leaders and HR is often "character issues": arrogance, disrespect for leaders, lack of consideration for colleagues, and often speaking negatively about the company. Please, these are clearly deficiencies in communication and organizational skills. Stop talking about character. There's also a popular term "reliable" (靠谱), which some people regard as a benchmark of character. In reality, whether it's being "reliable" as a person or doing things "reliably," it's quite technical: breaking down tasks, grasping key points, and providing feedback at milestones are not easy, so most people seem not so "reliable." 04 Another misunderstanding is that many people think if a capable person does evil, the harm is greater, so they are wary of capable people. This idea seems intuitive, but it's overthinking or watching too many movies. You're hiring an employee, not an opponent; you're running a business, not engaging in political or military struggle. You may never encounter someone who is deliberately and fully committed to doing evil. Not to mention the rule mentioned in a previous article that "capable people rarely do evil," the degree of harm from evil first depends on the resources the evildoer controls. A vice president doing evil is much more harmful to the company than an ordinary employee, not because the vice president is more capable, but because the vice president's position controls more resources. The second factor in the degree of harm is the bottom line of the evildoer. In most cases, the less capable, the lower the bottom line, and the greater the harm. I remember over a decade ago, a regional sales manager of a company, earning over 5,000 yuan a month in salary and bonuses, sent over 6,000 yuan home, and even claimed a sauna expense on the company. It was extremely bad. The harm wasn't so much the economic loss to the company, but the low bottom line and the terrible influence. 05 The third common misunderstanding is that when a company faces widespread poor management, it often tries to change by appealing to employees' "quality" rather than adjusting the relevant systems and institutions. For example, FMCG companies have seen a general decline in recent years. Sales staff fail to meet performance targets, income drops significantly, and terminal management has changed greatly, making visits and terminal maintenance less effective. As a result, many frontline salespeople start taking part-time jobs. I've seen some with six or seven part-time jobs; when the company called them back for meetings, they didn't even know which company was calling. This phenomenon is very common now. In some companies, the part-time rate among frontline sales staff is as high as 90%. Everyone knows except the boss. Are all these people lacking professional ethics? Are they all of poor character? At this point, simply educating employees to be "dedicated and love their jobs" is useless. What needs adjustment is the sales incentive and reward/punishment system, and the sales function itself needs to change. Governing the country by law and fighting corruption by law is more effective than advocating the "Eight Honors and Eight Shames." 06 Let's return to the previous conclusion: the essence of management is to use a professional human resources management system, use core abilities matched to positions as the main benchmark for evaluating talent, use incentive systems to stimulate performance, and use systems to prevent wrongdoing. The premise of management is to treat people as "people," not saints or devils. How to make the organization efficient is the professional expertise of management. But many managers, due to professional incompetence, resort to this thing called "character," hoping people will act spontaneously. This is no different from trying to invent a perpetual motion machine. This also fits human instinct: when we see someone being friendly to us, we naturally feel goodwill; when someone shows compassion, it's easy to win our favor; but when someone shows exceptional ability, it can make others feel pressured. Such cognition is exploited by some chicken soup masters, who produce anti-intellectual chicken soup like "character is greater than ability," poisoning many companies and职场 people. Character is hard to measure and even harder to extend in assessment. A person who loves animals may not care more about colleagues; a person who is filial may not be more obedient to leaders; a person with a sense of responsibility to family may not have a sense of responsibility to the company. Moreover, some jealous and resentful people in the workplace, when their abilities and performance are crushed, attacking character is their last resort for being unreasonable. In fact, these "high-character benchmarks" who shout "gratitude" to the boss and sing "long live the unity" while wielding moral clubs to drive out dissidents are precisely the biggest black sheep in the company. 07 A piece of advice for young people in the workplace: remember, a boss who advocates "suffering loss is a blessing" always wants to take advantage of others; a company that hopes employees have a "grateful heart" always wants to maximize squeezing employees while giving minimal returns. What you need most is to improve your abilities, provide maximum value to the company, and get reasonable returns. No one has the right to judge your character, and no one has the right to put you on a moral court. Those who wave moral clubs at you at every turn basically have ulterior motives. They are either stupid, evil, or both—there is no fourth option. 08 Back to the young man at the beginning. In this case, the real key point that those bosses showing off their moral integrity on stage did not pursue: How was that 5,000-yuan course sold to that sanitation worker? Was there deception? If it was a normal sale, one willing to sell and one willing to buy, although it's not a successful case, there's nothing wrong with it. Having been in sales for many years, I've seen salespeople force customers to scrape together the initial payment by taking all their savings and borrowing from all relatives and friends, and I've seen them pressure distributors to mortgage their houses. This is the market, completely unrelated to "character." If it was using the other party's information asymmetry and making false promises to get them to pay, then he's just a low-level liar, that's all. -END-