Whistling Cows: Retaining Talent with Compensation

Author: Jiang Dingwei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: When I was in elementary school, I watched an animated film called "The Three Monks." It tells the story of a monastery with only one monk, who had to fetch water for himself. Later, another monk joined the monastery, and after some negotiation, they decided to share the task of fetching water, neither of them suffering any disadvantage. However, when a third monk joined, the three monks couldn't resolve the issue of fetching water, and as a result, no one went to fetch water, leaving everyone without water. If you watched this story and just laughed, thinking the monks were too foolish—what if each monk was responsible for fetching water on a rotating day? Since joining the workforce, I have worked in foreign-invested, private, and state-owned enterprises. Later, I joined an advisory company, providing consulting services to various types of businesses, and discovered that every company and organization faces problems similar to those of the three monks. These problems are even more complex, far beyond the simplicity of "one monk responsible for one day."