Ray Lin, Long Beach, California

A For starters, you can ask yourself, "What caused this problem in the first place?" Or better yet, ask yourself, "Who caused it?"

In our experience, whether it's a compulsory union striking a Chinese factory, a Dutch works council threatening a walkout or a card-signing campaign at a non-union plant in Ohio, when local union issues erupt, the troubles can almost always be traced back not to workplace conditions, but to workplace leadership.

In fact, it can usually be traced back to one or two people: a plant boss, or a foreman, acting abusive, insensitive or secretive, or all at once. Basically, bad management most likely caused your strike.

This is actually good news. It means that you can minimise the chances of a future strike with the opposite approach, by employing plant leaders who are transparent, candid, fair and respectful.

Of course, in China, as in most places, your plant managers and factory workers won't always agree.

There will be honest differences over work rules and the like. But if you insist that plant leadership practises two straightforward principles, you may find union activity fading away in time. The fact is, with good management, unions aren't really necessary at all.

The first principle is really a mindset. It's an understanding by management that your workers are your own people. They live in the same town. They work for the same company. Their lives and futures are entwined with yours. You will win or lose together. When your plant managers have that mind-set, it is much more natural for them to practice the second principle: giving workers a voice and a sense of dignity.

Now, those are motherhood-and-apple-pie words, and easy to scoff at as corporate jargon. But these concepts really matter.

All employees - not just the ones carrying briefcases - need to be heard. Factory workers, in particular, need to know they are more to the company than just a pair of hands at a machine. Their ideas count.

How does a plant manager prove that? First and foremost by listening, both at organised forums where workers are encouraged to discuss ways to improve operations, and informally, walking the floor. Nothing builds resentment like a factory boss standing in his glassed-in office, overseeing from on high. Everyone 'below' knows he is missing half of what he needs to know, and is being paid several times more for it.

Plant managers also give workers dignity by communicating with unrelenting candour and transparency. About what?

Well, everything. Costs, the competitive situation, growth plans and economic bumps ahead. Perhaps most important, plant managers need to let workers know which issues are negotiable.

That information cannot be 'revealed' in formal negotiations; such a bomb invariably leads to macho, chest-thumping behaviour - and war.

What you need are local plant leaders who are comfortable with dialogue.

That builds trust, and it is trust that deactivates unions. When managers operate transparently and fairly - and workers know it - there is no need for a third party to broker the conversation between them.

There is just one team, working together to win.

All employees - not just the ones carrying briefcases - need to be heard Q There's an old saying, "It's not what you know, it's who". How true do you think that is in terms of career success?

Ling Chen, Jiangsu, China A It doesn't matter.

You just cannot let yourself believe it.

Oh, sure, sometimes a person gets ahead because his father used to work with so-and-so, or his college roommate was part of the family or he used to play golf at the same country club with, and so on.

Connections happen.

When they do, mediocre people can certainly leap forward faster then they seem to deserve. Yes, that's discouraging. But the minute you start thinking connections are more important to career advancement than brains, positive energy, and zealous hard work, you are signing up for a bad attitude, or worse, our favourite nemesis, self-inflicted victimhood. You start thinking, "It doesn't matter what I do. Some dope out there with a better pedigree has the edge".

Not only is that selfdefeating, it's just not true.

The world is filled with people who started with nothing and because of their brains and passion created their own connections. Put your head in that place, and keep it there. The victimhood vortex takes you only one place: down.

Jack and Suzy Welch are the authors of the international best-seller Winning. You can email them questions at Winning@nytimes. com