Management’s Point of View ~A Small Good is Like a Great Evil, While a Great Good May Appear Merciless~

November 13, 2025

The origin of the admonition, “A small good is like a great evil, while a great good may appear merciless,” is from the Chinese classic The Caigentan (aka, The Unencumbered Spirit: Reflections of a Chinese Sage), but I first heard this from Dr. Kazuo Inamori, who was the founder and honorary chairman of Kyocera. The idea is that what we don’t want to hear is often what we need for personal growth, while what appears to be kindness can lead to self-indulgence.

To consider how to apply this in day-to-day business, and based on several episodes that came up during one of our recent Beer Bash sessions, I decided to present two distinct themes: one being “A small good is like a great evil,” and the other being “A great good may appear merciless.”

A small good is like a great evil

• One of our staff members recalled a situation where he was working in a sales job and got in trouble for too easily acceding to client demands. She made a hasty commitment to an overly tight delivery schedule to please the customer, even though he knew, in the back of his mind, that it would be logistically challenging. Indeed, the schedule couldn’t be met; they made the delivery, but product quality suffered, leading to a large number of returns. The customer, who had been initially happy with the accelerated delivery schedule, was dissatisfied in the end. Meanwhile, the production team, forced to do the impossible, became demoralized.

• Another staff member talked about a previous job where his boss would kindly say, “I’ll handle that,” taking on various tasks on his behalf. At first, he was pleased, thinking, “What a great place to work; my boss is so supportive!” After a few years, though, he felt a sense of impatience as he watched his friends at other companies steadily accumulating experience and developing themselves under the supervision of more demanding bosses. He decided to come to the United States to make a change and started working here at TOPC. He said that he gained as much experience here in a year as he would have in three years at his previous job.

A great good may appear merciless

• Another episode came from someone whose first job after graduation was at a bank. Banks are very demanding, rule-oriented places to work even now, but back then, it would have been even more so. The guidance he received from her boss was strict, and at the beginning, she complained quite a bit to his friends and colleagues. But as she became used to the job, she began to realize that the harsh instruction was teaching him about the nature and value of the job, as well as what it meant to be a professional. As she continued on, she came to deeply appreciate the significance of working as a team.

• Yet another member of our staff shared the story of realizing that she had forgotten to include some documents in a batch she had sent to a client, at which point her boss made her drive all the way from Hiroshima to Yamaguchi, two hours each way, to hand-deliver the missing papers. She felt frustrated during the drive, thinking, “Why do I have to go to all this trouble…” When she got back to the office, her boss grinned at her and said, “You probably won’t make that mistake again, now will you?” She said that she then immediately realized her boss’s true intention in saddling her with the long trip.

Taking these anecdotes together, we can see that the difference between a “small good” and a “great good” lies in the timeline over which the recipient obtains a positive result. For instance, the customer who received his shipment by the promised deadline was surely happy at first. Likewise, the employee whose boss took on his tasks and lightened his workload was pleased in the short term. In the first case, however, deficiencies became apparent later, causing a breakdown in trust, while in the second case, the person’s growth was hindered. These are both examples of short-sighted good intentions that go wrong in the long term.

Conversely, the person who went to work for the bank struggled initially, and the employee sent off to Yamaguchi to deliver the missing documents was unhappy during the four-hour drive. But, taking a longer-term perspective, the bank employee learned about professional values and teamwork. Likewise, the staff member sent off to Yamaguchi would have learned to thoroughly double- and triple-check that everything is included when mailing things out, thus taking care never to make that same mistake again.

Either way, even if painful in the short term, staying on the straight and narrow is the best shortcut to long-term growth and development.

What made me the happiest this time, as I listened to these stories, was that all the other staff members were listening intently and were able to discern the meaning for themselves. Usually, when you say tough things to people, they take it negatively or feel put upon. Our employees, however, don’t take challenging things emotionally in the short term; they understand, in the longer term, how such things are connected to growth for themselves, their teams, and the company as a whole.

The approach of someone who desires true growth is sometimes accompanied by severity. The person who understands this and is willing to make the effort can grow from such experiences. The thing I want from the bottom of my heart is for our employees to adopt a long-term perspective, to avoid indulging in short-term kindness, to continue striving for their own growth and that of those around them, and to forge onward in that personal commitment.