Times are changing fast. Very Fast. Hell too Fast. Generation Gap occurs every month - okay, if its exaggeration, you count it every year... What is true today becomes ridiculously obsolete tomorrow. Hyperactive markets are thriving, and active players are now merely surviving. In such chaos, I get mad at insanity to cheer strategies... sustainable competitive advantage... key success factor... SWOT analysis...
Go and meet the American security officers who were all too set, predictive and ‘let it come' mindset individuals... go and meet them to check out their strategic plans before 9/11. All crap in front of chaos. Globalization - or lets say, Glocalization is making certainty out of diction.
Being a student myself, and now meeting present grads give me a great sense of concern over the trap minds, our educational system is producing. I don't know about most of the world, but I know about rest of the world - our educational system is getting irrelevant at an exponential speed, ensuring more dumb-head managers, controlling for nothing.
We are living in Google - Wal-Mart - Disney - TATA - world. Growth is no more about tickling ahead. Kaizen, once a quality tool, is now, nothing but a source of early destruction. TQM and 6 Sigma is good to read, useless to apply and pathetic - I repeat with more certainty - pathetic to suggest. It was good for the industrial revolution but what it has to do in an era of "crazily freaking talent world".
I meet managers - senior and senior citizen managers, and let me describe both. Senior managers are those who have grown through learning - senior citizen managers are just victims of longetivity. Aging is an animal trait, shared by humans... Learning instinct is what makes human more sexy creation - and by sexy I mean "pleasure to watch".
I was "panelized upon" to meet a senior citizen manager few days' back who said, "Young guys and gals are just not mature enough to take the leadership roles". I murmured, "May you live a few more 10 years to see how tremendously WRONG you were". Bet me on this - Leadership will belong to those with the most weird way to see the life, and guts to be different - not merely better. Getting better might be the strategy for the day - but getting different is for sure going to be the slogan for future. Getting better is TQM & CQI - getting different is TGA (total guts application) and POL (Passion Over-Loaded).
"The creative age is a wide-open game" comments Richard Florida. How true it sounds...! White elephants should start dancing else get busy winding things up. To thrive in this creative age - talent will be the only key success factor, but with the sorry state HR is in, we need more Ulrich and others... Recruiting for Passion should be the only damn criteria - everything else follows...
My clients and seminar attendees ask me the same idiotic question every time... "How to get in control of high-turn over". Let me answer them now once and for all - "Reduce the measuring time length of turnover - that's the only way out". Why are we so convinced about hiring for a job! Why! Why? Hiring for projects and assignments might do it for us...! Try it! Try it as you are not left with much to loose anyways.
Our business schools will need to play a bit more serious role. Get off with providing notes on Innovation - Damn it! Notes and prescriptions for creativity and innovation. What a shame! Creating Gut-full, obsessed to win grads should be your challenge for the decade...
"Built to Last" is one of the greatest management books of all times - so what, "Harry Porter" is even bigger fiction. Nothing is about built to last today. It's all about "Built to Try, Thrive, again try and Thrive..."
Our companies are somewhat exceptional...They are willing to call top international consultants to their organizations, paying them heavily, and then saying - "It doesn't work that way in our context" - What a waste of resources - time and money. Remember, "You miss 100% of the shots you never take".
The success rate is directly proportional to failure frequency - the more you fail - the more you succeed... keep playing safe and you will never become a star. Its just like that. Strategy sucks - Action is sexy. Almost 80% of the strategic decisions are failure - ask your employees, informally, and you will get to know that even 80% is under-rated. Even then, strategy takes almost 60% of total available time - shame shame!
Children are amazing. They are fearless, damn creative and super beings. Unfortunately though, the world of traditions, norms and methods corrupts them. Companies are willing to pay a hell lot of money to fresh grads these days, but damn it - they corrupt them within first 6 months of their exposure to the company.
Change is the only constant - we have heard it quite a few time. Let me give you some more constants to think upon... Human Stupidity and Hunger for more. Although both belong to the change family, it was important for me to name them separately. Now assume that if human stupidity is constant and you as a leader say that you are always right... think who you are... its just an equation - I haven't said anything. Leaders with the slogan, "I don't know" will rock the world.
I don't want to conclude my article, as then I will commit the same crime - the crime of summarizing. The only summary to any discussion can be - lets talk more about it! May you get the passion to challenge the status quo... this is a prayer for all... educational institutions, corporate firms, government, and all those who think that everything is "under control"- damn it.
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