Business Problems are Similar, the world-over

"The impression that "our problems are different" is a common disease that afflicts management the world over. They are different, to be sure, but the principles that will help to improve the quality of product and services are universal in nature“

– W Edwards Deming

The concept that “our problems are different” is very familiar to all of us in a highly competitive business environment. However if we really sit back and try to analyse our situations, our problems are the same the world over. Some of the problems are:

• Growth is slower, most major economies are seeing a slow down now for quite some time, and the possibility of a reversal seems difficult in the medium term.
• Competition is fiercer. Everyone is fighting harder for a pie which is not really growing.
• Compliance and regulation are forcing organizations to increasingly focus greater resources on non-core activities
• Technology has become the great leveller. A David in a small low-cost setup can take on a Goliath anywhere in the world.
• Any innovation brought out in the market has a shelf life of a few months before it is replicated with a “better” low cost competition
• Managing an increasingly diverse workforce and motivating them is assuming a greater challenge

By focusing on some of the following traits we could address a majority of problems organizations face:

Trait # 1: Our inability to embrace the future while abandoning the past. In 1999, Peter Drucker wrote of the Internet Boom “It I not the access to information that is important. It is how organizations, business, and every horizon will change as a consequence that will matter”. The demise (?) of retail caused by the advent of e-retail is a classic example.

Trait # 2: Our inability to distinguish between efficiency and effectiveness. This has to do with management distinguishing between manual workers where efficiency is the key and knowledge workers where effectiveness; or getting the right things done is the key. Understanding the workforce and its environment is the key to its motivation.

Trait # 3: Our difficulties in collaboration. We find it difficult to play on our strengths while collaborating with others. While outsourcing is based on the concept of sticking to your core competencies, while getting non-core activities done outside, most decisions for outsourcing invariably get linked to cost and not on win-win for all.

Trait # 4: Our inability to link ideas with action. We invariably create great strategies (or perceived great) yet fail in the execution of these same strategies in the mistaken belief that these strategies automatically convert into understandable work at all levels.

Trait # 5: Our love of charting new plans based on past data. This limits our action and activities to known markets and industries. Is it any wonder that nimble, new start-ups are constantly upstaging existing established organizations?