World`s business game really changes with ultimate technologies? (part 1 of 2)
By Eduardo Gaspar – Co-Founder | CEO | MGNet – Linkedin
Let´s talk about very famous books! Best Sellers indeed…
Better Change, Built to Last, Customer Intimacy , Conceptual Selling, Strategic Selling, Competing for the Future, Managing in a Time of Great Change, Stop Selling Start Partnering, The Unwritten Rules of the Game.
Back then in the 90´s, when they were written, there were no Smartphones , WiFi , Big Data , Analytics , Artificial Intelligence, Digital Marketing, and so on.
Do you believe these books are out of time?
Let´s take a quick look on some citations, to see if they still apply to today´s business.
Better Change – 1995 – Price Waterhouse :
“…to get better change – the kind that makes a big difference and can be woven permanently into the fabric of the corporation. (…)
– Key to high performance and dramatically improved results;
– Fueled by energy and creativity;
– Guided by a balanced set of performance measures;
– Supported by empowered and motivated employees;
– Driven by customer needs;
– A way to convince the people to value improvement and innovation.”
Built to Last- 1995 – James C. Collins and Jerry I.Porras :
“What are the secrets behind visionary companies outperform the competition?
..Visionary companies which have shown they can bounce back from adversity and stay at the top of the heap years after year )
– Give it a trim and quick! Do, adjust, act ,move;
– Accept that mistakes will be made. Dump Flops fast but remember: you can learn much from failure;
– Take small steps. Small experiments can be seeds that grow into large strategic shifts;
– Give people the room they need. A measure of autonomy and decentralization can lead to the increased quantity and variation of products ideas.”
The worst things you can do when managing a company are: centralizing everything in your hands, refining or hiding information from your employees; certainly this management style will help you to increase your control and power, however it will condemn your company to failure in the 4th. Wave of Information.
Customer Intimacy – Fred Wiersema -1996 – The New York Times Bestselling coauthor of “The Discipline of Market Leaders”.
“When two organizations move from a simple supply- and- by relationship, to the technical and operational complexities of a customer – intimate relationship, the unique responsibilities of each become unmistakable. They develop a new mindset, a new way of doing business – with new structure, new strategies, new values and mostly a new Vision!”
Some companies are satisfied in providing only the basics to their customers, not even caring to have a better understanding of their needs and goals… it is an absurd to see this happening today considering that information is available easily and mostly for free! I have seen many companies in high technology fields, who didn’t understand (and didn’t even care to discuss) the benefits from evolving from the “industrial way of handling business” to the information era, the 4th Wave! The consequences were that or they lost key customers or saw their business shrinking or were sold or had to close the doors!
Managing in a time of Great Change – Peter Drucker -1995
” … believe me , the trend toward outsourcing has very little to do with economizing and a great deal to do with quality.”
“…you have to learn to manage in situations where you do not have command authority, where you are neither controlled nor controlling; “
“… today perceptiveness is more important than analysis. In the new society of organizations, you need to be able to recognize patterns to see what is there rather than what you expect to see. You need the invaluable listener who says, “I hear us all trying to kill the new product to protect the old one.”
Keep in mind that if you are selling services that require knowledge, the most valuable treasure is people (say your employees and collaborators); using a metaphor: under fire (economic crises for instance) , the last thing to do is dismiss the “troop” replacing it by a less prepared one!! It´s very simple: a new troop doesn´t know anything about your war & enemies, and there isn’t enough time to transmit the information, so the new troop will be useless for a long period; you will not have enough time to defend yourself from the enemies and keep your territory (you will lose customers and business).
(to be continued…)
