本分和平常心（1）

很久很久以前，我们公司就开始提倡“本分”和“平常心”。怎么开始的和为什么会开始我都不记得了。网上可以查到许多对这两个词的解释，我只在这说说我自己的简单想法。 “本分”，大概就是该干嘛干嘛，该是谁是谁的意思。要想搞明白什么是本分，也许要从什么是不本分来看。

Source: http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/126998120102244121787/

本分 and a normal mind (1)

> By Duan Yongping · his NetEase blog (nteswjq.blog.163.com, now closed; read from web archives) · 2010-03-24 · [Original link](http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/126998120102244121787/) ([archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20100402065445/http://nteswjq.blog.163.com:80/blog/static/126998120102244121787/))

A long, long time ago, our company began promoting "本分" [doing what's right and proper] and "平常心" [a normal mind]. I don't remember how or why it started.

You can find many explanations of these two words online; here I'll just give my own simple thoughts.

"本分" probably means doing what you should do and being who you should be.

To understand what 本分 is, maybe you have to look at what isn't 本分.

For example, repaying debts (with interest) is 本分, and not repaying isn't. Think about how many people and companies around you don't repay their debts and you'll know how many aren't 本分. There are many examples of this kind; you can think of them yourselves.

Over these years we've done pretty well on 本分, and sometimes we can reflect on whether we're being 本分; of course, it's not that we've never done anything that wasn't 本分.

I remember when I'd just started Subor, I bought a batch of parts from a Taiwanese businessman to assemble. The quality was good back then, and when he gave us the goods he'd already given 2% extra spare parts, but in the course of assembly some always turned out to be broken, and in the end I didn't pay him for the broken ones. Perhaps because he seemed very unhappy at the time, I always remembered this, reflected on it for a long time, and finally felt I'd been wrong. Unfortunately we never did business with him again, so I had no chance to make it up to him. Deep down I'm also someone who won't take a loss.

Here's an example where we did well; it was around '97, I think. BBK was just starting out then, money was very tight, and on top of that payments from export sales to Russia went far worse than imagined, so for a while we couldn't pay our suppliers on time. We held a suppliers' meeting, told everyone our situation, and offered two conditions for deferring payment: one, we'd pay 1% monthly interest; two, anyone willing could convert what we owed them into shares. Of course, if nobody wanted either, we'd just have had to pay cash. Thanks to the support of most suppliers, we got through that difficulty. It was really not easy then; I heard there was only 20,000 yuan left in the account. Later our colleagues in Russia tried every possible means and finally solved the problem by carrying two suitcases of US dollars from Moscow to Hong Kong.

Heh, I remember some years later I met a supplier I knew well and noticed he'd lost a lot of hair, so I asked him what happened. He told me that because he'd chosen the interest back then, he regretted it a lot, and now every morning he pulls his own hair in front of the mirror (I made this part up, because I think it may have been his wife who pulled it).

本分 is easy to talk about and really hard to do. It's easy to see others not being 本分, and harder to reflect on yourself not being 本分.

Our own level has probably reached the point of reflecting occasionally, so we still need to keep working at it.

I have to go out; next time I'll talk about a normal mind.