Essay, What managers can learn from great philosophers?

2014
Arturo Govea
The Philosopher Francis Bacon once wrote, "We must obey the forces we want to command".
This quote is definitely true, and as Luc has said: in order to think you need to understand the
laws of thinking, and this is true in other areas, to play the game we first have to understand the
rules, but I dont think this is enough and I will discuss more in my second argument.
To support Bacon I will use Albert Einsteins words, he said something like You have to learn the
rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else; and this procedure is the
way people become managers, engineers, accountants, artists; first you have to be trained and
learn the basics about whatever you are persuading like become a manager, then you have to get
experience, lots of it, and finally you become an expert and youre called a manager, what happen
next?, you can manage!, you can command the forces you first had to obey.
But the story doesnt end here, Im convinced that obey the forces is not enough, maybe you can
command them just by obeying, but what if you can make the forces to obey you. To support this I
will bring Bruce Lee to stage, he was a philosopher and a martial arts fighter, he said that for kung
fu you first have to learn the rules, then master the rules, dominate them, and finally you have to
dissolve the rules, forget about them, and this works for other areas; the point here is that you
cannot be limited by the rules, you can create new rules, I think Bacon refer to nature when he
said forces, but even if you cannot create new forces of nature you can create new ways of handle
the forces and not just obey them. And I think this course is a good example to support my view, in
this course we have talked about change, cognitive bias, thinking in new boxes, etc; and Luc has
said that there is not recipe for thinking; there are some laws, but to think you have in some
degree disobey the forces, and use your experience, intuition and passion. I chose a Bruce Lees
quote to end my essay: Obey the principles without being bound by them.