Their Existential, Strategic and Competitive Utility
Businesspeople use The Fundamental Human Concerns I introduce below existentially, strategically and competitively with “Aji”, an IR#4 business philosophy, to earn a living or become rich.
They use the money they earn, first, to buy the goods and services we all need to help us take care of our human concerns while raising our family, e.g. housing, food, transportation, medical, care, family, play, dignity, etc.
They use it, second, to build up their savings until they have enough to produce the annual income they and their spouse will need to afford the same services for 25+ years of unemployment during their old age.
The goods and services are needed for three reasons: to (1) survive, (2) adapt to life’s always changing circumstances and (3) live a good life.
Using The Fundamental Human Concerns and “Aji” practically, strategically and competitively to fulfill their financial intentions by designing steady streams of (1) fresh, (2) new offers, practices, narratives and strategies that are (3) highly valued and (4) scarce relative to demand, enables businesspeople, and entire business organizations,
… to double their productivity, value and incomes.
Businesspeople use The Fundamental Human Concerns practically and existentially, or meaningfully, at home with their spouse.
They use them with their spouse to design their Lifestyle, Financial and Business Ambitions, commitments, focuses, practices and outcomes for their marriage, family and household finances so they can survive, adapt and live a good life.
When businesspeople’s finances are satisfactory they are able to take satisfactory care of their human concerns and deal with life’s never-ending breakdowns. This enables them to avoid chronic financial stresses that ruin people’s health and shorten their lifespans by as much as 20 years.
Using the interpretations in this paper effectively, strategically and competitively helps households, marriages and families earn and save enough money to survive, adapt to changes with their bodies, marriages, households and competitive situations.
Since the meaning of life for human beings is not obvious, perceivable or commonsensical, learning why and how taking satisfactory care of these concerns enables businesspeople and their spouses to make their lives worthwhile and meaningful from their point of view.
This enables them to avoid “existential despair” and loss of dignity later in life.
Existential despair is triggered later in life when adults, especially “arrested adolescents” whose narratives about life and actions are immature and shallow, realize they squandered their opportunities to live a life that matters or was meaningful to their spouse, children and/or themselves.
At work businesspeople use The Fundamental Human Concerns strategically and competitively.
They use them strategically to design thoughts, commitments, action plans, and goods and services, to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.
They use them competitively to (1) design, (2) assess, (3) deconstruct and (4) anticipate new offers, practices, narratives and strategies, including goods and services, to execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy effectively, strategically and competitively so they can fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.
Using these 13 fundamental human concerns plus the other four sets of financial, marital, career and business concerns I introduce in other papers for The “Aji” Course gives businesspeople, and entire businesses, a new philosophical and practical orientation to produce and increase their competitive capabilities and advantages, productivity, value and incomes.
This enables them to compete directly and successfully in The Fourth Industrial Revolution’s rapidly changing, complex, intensely competitive and technologically advanced competitive situations.
The reason fundamental human, financial, marital, career and business concerns are so important is because failing to take care of them to a satisfactory standard thwarts people’s intentions to produce outcomes that will enable them to survive, adapt and live a good life in that domain.
When a satisfactory standard of care is not produced, such as when businesspeople earn and save too little money to avoid running out of it with their spouse during their old age, people suffer continuously from insufficient care, a sense of failure and are unable to live a good life. This affects everyone around them, including their children, in-laws and grandchildren, as well as society as a whole.
The chronic financial stresses triggered when people know they do not have enough money grabs hold of them, dominates and worries them. It is unrelenting, inescapable and unbeatable.
How do we know whether we are taking satisfactory care of our concerns? It’s not mysterious or subtle.
When our actions do not produce outcomes that meet a satisfactory standard and cause thwarted intentions and suffering,
… some fundamental concern(s) is not being taken care of satisfactorily.
For instance, when businesspeople who used to earn enough money to afford food and medicine whenever they needed it but who failed to save enough money to afford 25+ years of unemployment during their old age find themselves having to reduce the quality and quantities of the food and medicine they buy so that they no longer have a satisfactory amount of either one,
… their situation is anything but subtle.
This set of 13 fundamental human concerns is one of five sets of fundamental concerns used in “Aji” to produce and increase competitive capabilities and advantages, and to double productivity, value and incomes.
“Body” is the most expensive fundamental human concern, by far.
It includes housing, food, transportation and medical care.
Here are the 13 fundamental human concerns I will explain in this paper:
Body
Work
Play
Family
Sociability
Education
Career
Money
Membership
World
Dignity
Situation
Spirituality
“Aji” includes the additional sets of fundamental concerns I list below because they are practical and enable them to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.
Businesspeople use them to design steady streams of fresh, new offers, practices and narratives that are highly valued and scarce relative to demand. This enables them to execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy effectively, strategically and competitively enough to double their incomes:
1. 6 financial concerns such as 3% average inflation and 8% average stock market returns
2. 12 career concerns, which are “Aji’s” 12 strategic intentions, and include ambitions, ethics of power and highly valued accomplishments
3. 22 business concerns such as constitution, strategy, capital structures, sales, production and profits
4. 14 marriage concerns such as one’s vows, or public commitments to one another, companionship/intimacy/sex, raising children, play and retirement
I first learned about fundamental human concerns in the paper, Permanent Domains of Human Concerns by Dr. Fernando Flores and his co-author Michael Graves, which they wrote in 1986. In it, they introduce the set of 13 fundamental human concerns and give brief philosophical explanations for how and why they exist.
In this paper, I share my interpretations of the same concerns from a practical, strategic and competitive orientation that is focused on how businesspeople need to understand and use them to increase their productivity, value and incomes.
This enables businesspeople to double their incomes, which, in turn, helps them fulfill their existential, financial, career and business intentions.
Many of them report with considerable surprise that they are also able to develop conversations, commitments and actions with their spouse that are more mature, productive, dignified and satisfying.
* We urge students to invite their spouses to read this paper.
What is “Aji” and why are fundamental human concerns part of it?
The 13 fundamental human concerns are part of “Aji’s” IR#4 Philosophies of Care and Power, which is Part #2 of The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy.
“Aji” is a new business philosophy.
#1 – It is based in a different interpretation about what it means to be a human being.
#2 – It uses a different interpretation of knowledge, a new epistemology, and understanding about how human beings know what is and is not real and true.
“Aji” enables businesspeople, and entire business organizations to exploit the new strategic and competitive capabilities computers and the internet make possible.
It could not have existed, been used or even imagined before personal computers and the internet were invented.
It’s not hard to learn but it is a very, very different way of thinking and acting to make money.
Instead of being task-oriented it is strategic and competitive.
“Aji” shows businesspeople the strategic and competitive intentions and skills needed to double their productivity, value and incomes, by transforming their computer into a learning, communication, coordination and production machine, and the best moneymaking tool ever invented.
Pivoting away from IR#3’s task-oriented, labor-based and commonsensical business philosophy, knowledge and skills is one-way businesspeople, increase their productivity, value and incomes.
Taking care of people’s fundamental human concerns at home and in the marketplace, and making offers to help others do the same, is another way businesspeople increase their productivity, value and incomes.
IR#3’s business philosophy, businesspeople and businesses think of human beings as things with mass and weight that think, have feelings and move. Their value as workers is their ability to work with and like a single-purpose machine, e.g., a screwdriver, electric drill, tractor or spotlight, that has been enhanced with common sense.
Businesspeople, like the single purpose tools they used in IR#3, are able to:
Work hard… like a machine
Keep busy and be determined to produce the result… like a machine
Enhance the results they produce with their hard work, busyness and determination by using their common sense to make incremental improvements to their practices
But this orientation only works with single-purpose tools invented before computers and the internet.
It does not work to increase productivity, value or incomes when businesspeople use computers and the internet,
… as their too-low incomes and savings prove.
For instance, hard work and busyness increase a human being’s productivity and value when using a forklift to move pallets.
The same approach does not work when using a computer and the internet. Hard work does not make a new offer or narrative fresh, highly valued or scarce relative to demand. “Aji’s” strategic and competitive knowledge, which is Part #3 of The Strategy, makes it look easy.
This is why I invented “Aji”. The philosophy enables businesspeople to exploit the new strategic and competitive capabilities computers and the internet make possible just as IR#3’s business philosophy, knowledge and skills shut them down or make them invisible.
Human beings are linguistic beings, historical beings and selves… NOT “things”.
In IR#4, and when using “Aji”, businesspeople are not thought about, treated, taught or worked with as if they are human machines with thoughts and feelings.
To produce and increase competitive capabilities and advantages, and to double productivity, value and incomes, businesspeople who use “Aji” gradually learn to see themselves as:
1. Linguistic beings
2. Historical beings
3. Selves
… who naturally and spontaneously speak their concerns, situations, capabilities and strategies into existence.
I know. These are strange-sounding words to most businesspeople. But most businesspeople who learn what they mean come to love them.
They are practical, simple and powerful. They explain human beings and the marketplace so clearly and simply, businesspeople are able to see how to double their incomes in a completely new way.
And, as I have already said, these new ways of understanding human beings are not hard to learn or understand. But, they are a very, very different way of thinking about how to make money.
Because they are so different, they may make you dizzy, disoriented, confused and perplexed, at first.
Because they are so practical, true and real, however, they will make a completely new intuitive sense very quickly.
Using the fundamental human concerns — as well as those for finances, marriage, career and business — enables businesspeople to make completely new interpretations about their computers and the internet as well as about money, value, strategy, competition, leadership, identities and even marriage.
They will enable you to produce and increase your competitive capabilities and advantages, productivity, value and incomes.
They will re-open your “spaces of possibilities” to make money, earn a living or become rich.
The 4 fundamental reasons businesspeople learn fundamental human, financial, marital, career and financial concerns are to:
1. Take satisfactory care of their (1) human, (2) marital, (3) financial, (4) career and (5) business concerns
2. Cope with life’s and the marketplace’s always changing situations, or the:
Threats they need to avoid
Obligations they need to fulfill to (1) keep existing opportunities, (2) produce new opportunities and (3) avoid avoidable costs and risks
Opportunities they need to exploit in order to fulfill their intentions
3. Acquire the capabilities they need to fulfill their intentions to survive, adapt and live a good life
4. Design and execute strategies, or action plans, needed to survive, adapt and live a good life.
13 Fundamental Human Concerns
When businesspeople use “Aji” they work inside a competitive, fundamental business philosophy that interprets human beings as (1) linguistic, (2) historical, (3) selves, rather than as “things” with thoughts and feelings who are able to work hard and keep busy like single-purpose machines.
The reason it is important to distinguish these three characteristics from one another is because each one gives rise to a different set of fundamental human concerns that human beings must take care of to a satisfactory standard to be able to:
Survive
Adapt to life’s always changing circumstances with one’s body, at home or in the marketplace
Live a good life with their spouse and children
The existence of these 13 Fundamental Human Concerns and people’s built-in intentions to take care for them to a satisfactory standard in order to avoid pain, suffering, despair, illness and death drives the production of “money” and “business” into existence.
Because we are “linguistic beings” our biological organization and structures such as our nervous system have us speak about our body, family, work, play and sociability.
Because we are “historical beings” who learn language invented in the past, we speak about education, money, career, membership and world.
Because we are “Selves” who are weak, frail and vulnerable, especially when we are very young or very old, who need help from others every day, all day, and who have personal and public identities we speak about dignity, situation and spirituality.