January 19th, 2006 by Matt
photo from rahimadatia on flickr
The January 23rd issue of BusinessWeek has a great article about C.J. Prahalad, a business strategist / consultant / professor who has very innovating and challenging views about how global business will change over the next several decades. He points to his native India – specifically to Bombay for this article – and shows that while some people see abject poverty, filth and apparent hopelessness, he sees a hotbed of capitalism and innovation without equal anywhere in “first world” countries.
He goes so far as to argue that the third world economies are producing some of the the best innovations in cost reduction, process efficiency and quality in the world. He looks at the streets of Bombay and sees money-making enterprises – from sugar-cane stands to faxing services to hot dog stands, people are making money – however little it may be – in just about every place you look.
Continue reading ‘The Great Process Innovators of the 21st Century’
April 26th, 2005 by Matt
I was talking with my friend and associate Steve a few days ago about opportunities we have in our company to make some significant culture changes. We, in our company, are in the midst of a turnaround of sorts, as we reinvent ourselves following the burst of the telecom bubble and our recovery from some leadership failures. A core group of our new leadership team is working hard to not only improve our business model, but truly change the way our people interact with each other and trust each other. Naturally, they are meeting some resistance, but Steve and I admire, agree with and support their efforts. In fact, I’m very excited about the future prospects for our company if we can truly change.
Some of the issues that we have to deal with in our cultural transformation include:
- Passive-aggressive communication, e.g. saying “yes” just to end the discussion when we really mean “no”
- Entitlement culture – expecting work and results to come to you, rather than seeking them out with initiative and drive
- Lack of realization about the changing business needs and changing roles – expecting current jobs and roles to exist in the future as they are today
Of course all of the above issues are not ubiquitous to all parts of the company, but there are definitely pockets of these behaviors and attitudes. As Steve and I talked about some specific areas of change in our organizations, Steve came up with the term for those that we thought “didn’t get it”: the Legacy Thinkers.
Continue reading ‘Legacy Thinkers’