In Chinese, person is called Rén and the Chinese character for this is 人. The BMW company actually built a sculpture around this Chinese character inside as well as outside in one of the plants in Tiexi, Shenyang. The company wanted to emphases that although it was premium car manufacturer, the emphasis has always been on people. During my 4.5 years with them, I can only say that it was absolutely true. The mount of money, time and attention they spent on people development was simply unbelievable.
Anyways, this plant also happened to be where my office was located and I used to walk pass these sculptures every single day. One day I saw couple of cleaning ladies giving it a good scrub. As I walked past them, I thought it was a pretty good metaphor for self-development. You have to keep yourself well-scrubbed, not just physically in terms of being well-groomed, but also intellectually with the latest ideas and concepts for whatever work you are doing in your lives. That means continuously reading new books, listening to leading ideas from global experts, going for trainings to upgrade yourself and taking up new tasks and projects that you have never done before. I thought this was the meaning of this photo.
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