Free I Bought The Monk's Ferrari by Ravi Subramanian

share an incident happened the other day. My wife and I walked into an electronics store in Bandra, an upmarket suburb of Mumbai. I wanted to buy an LCD television set and was looking for a large one. The salesperson showed me a large 46" television set and took me through all the features of the exotic looking Sony Television. I was nearly sold on it set till I realised that the one he was showing me was a Plasma television, despite telling him that I wanted an LCD television. When I reiterated to him that what I wanted was not a Plasma television, he went on to inform me that he did not have a 46" LCD television set in stock. It could well have been that he genuinely was trying to sell me a Plasma and had no mal-intent. I would have probably given him the benefit of doubt too, had he not told me that he did not have LCDs in stock. But now it seemed as if he was trying to sell us what he wanted to sell because he did not have what we wanted.
    It was too naive to even think that I would have bought a Plasma television mistaking it to be an LCD. The approach of the store sales executive made me feel that he was making an attempt to short-change me. Probably he was not ... But my mind was made up. That was the last we saw of that store. We walked out promising never to return because it could not sustain our trust.
    To be the owner of the Ferrari, it is important to gain people's trust. If you want to be valued, respected, trusted, understood, and followed, you must possess integrity of character. Winners, when confronted with tricky situations, just ask themselves one question—'What is right?' They answer this question honestly and then take decisions.
    It is important to take the right stance at the very beginning. Once you take a morally incorrect stance, even if you retract and tread on the right path, the damage is done. People will never trust you in the same manner that they could have.
    Let us take the example of a typical FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Good) sales process. A Hindustan Lever sales executive dumps carton after carton of Lux soaps on a distributor with the promise that if he is not able to sell them, he will take them back and brand them as defective pieces. For the record ... he books a sale—a large one, at that, and he continues doing this month after month. In no time, the sales executive becomes a star salesperson. On the other hand, there is another salesperson who struggles to sell only half the number of cartons a month, but sells it the right way. Clearly, the performance of this person lags behind. After about eighteen months of such sales practices, the lid blows off the former salesperson's antics. Given the past performance the organisation is lenient towards this person and does not sack him. His sales volumes obviously drop from the previous high. However, the individual still sells more than the second executive.
    Six months later, if an opportunity of giving one of them a larger role was to arise, who would the company give it to? If I was the decision maker, I would unhesitatingly give it to the second sales executive. If you ask, 'Why?', the answer is clear. As a supervisor, I would give leadership roles to an average resource high on integrity, rather than a brilliant resource with suspect integrity. Ideally, however, I would prefer an individual with integrity as well as high competence. But, if I am unable to find someone I would compromise on competence rather than on .integrity.
    The bottom line is, the Ferrari can be yours only if you are absolutely unwilling to compromise on integrity and ethics.
    While maintaining the highest standard of ethics is important, it is also the key to manage your personal life without any blemishes. Often, ethical compromises in one's personal life, tend to reflect in your professional life as well.
    The HR manager of an organisation I know of, was on the take, and would demand and take kickbacks from the recruitment consultants to hire candidates