Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. He knows he has to run faster than the fastest lions if he doesn't want me to kill her. Every morning a lion wakes up.
He knows he has to beat the slowest gazelle if he doesn't want to starve. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.
In the same way, every day in the world, millions of people wake up to earn their survival, and a large number of them in different corners of the planet intend to succeed in business with new ideas about products, services or processes.
Most are aware of the change, but not all are aware of its magnitude, depth, speed, effects, and interrelationships.
This is how everyone talks about the demographic explosion, but few are aware of the speed at which the world's population is doubling and the effects this has on the economy, politics, society, technology and ecology. among other issues.
Deep and even radical changes have had, are and will take place in an infinity of aspects, ranging from politics, climate change, technologies, sciences and culture.
Such a thing never occurred. The emergence of a new technology is causing change so fast that the change itself changed.
Traditional players who play by traditional rules assume that change will happen the way it always has - slowly.
The rules of the game have changed, whether we like it or not. These rules are not optional. The key is to know how to recognize them and act accordingly. Ignoring them will not generate anything positive.
In most cases, it would be much easier if we could use the old rules and assume that change will be the exception throughout our careers. Before and not long ago, several generations passed without major modifications regarding the way our ancestors lived and worked. After completing an apprenticeship, it could be expected that most of the knowledge learned would last a lifetime.
The traditional definition of security: "I will learn a technique, I will get a job and I will stay calm for the rest of my life can no longer be applied".
Holding on to the past can prevent us from seeing the present by not allowing us to accept change. In the matter of economic and social organization we are especially susceptible to the remaining ideas. Since few of us have an opportunity to appreciate the whole of society, we learn to trust the images taken from the past. Some of these images can be significantly lasting, especially if they are not pleasant to us. But an outdated image can be dangerously misleading.
Today's traditional players, the big winners, may be tomorrow's losers.
The game changed due to the new rules. The old rules worked because they were compatible with the old tools. We have new rules because we have new tools. It is necessary and fundamental to be aware that technology modifies reality, modifies the way we think and act.
The first thing to do is accept that there is a new big picture, even though we still can't see it clearly. It is futile to fight against the new general panorama; the goal is to become part of it.
The great objective is to radically transform the way of thinking and analyzing based on the change and modification of their respective rules.
A slow pace of post-WWII technological change enabled management to make sound internal decisions in areas such as manufacturing and new product development. A heavily regulated industry with deep state intervention to make activity more predictable.
While a relatively simple environment made an organization that revolved around order and control feasible, the shortage of effective managers as a consequence of the war, as well as the demands for rapid growth, made it almost inevitable.
This order and control model was built based on the assumption that most managers were not trustworthy, so elaborate surveillance systems were developed, which significantly increased employee frustration, with which degree commitment decreased, while giving managers little opportunity to develop their potential. The vision of the worker as a cog in the system led to them being considered as pieces that could be dispensed with, which generated a continuous decrease in the degree of commitment of employees to companies.
These conditions of confrontation had as a consequence an escalation in the wage demand, rigid work rules and burdensome bureaucratic procedures. The result, in industries such as steel or automotive, were high cost levels and low productivity levels. Despite this, the system functioned as a product of the low level of international competition. The workers were very controlled, but very well paid. Shareholders received dividends, albeit at the cost of sacrificing investment in the factory, equipment, and research and development.
This type of organization had been adequate for the competitive challenges of the postwar period, although with considerable costs in the human, social, and even ecological aspects. But this model was totally inadequate to face the new competitive environment.
Money, technology, information and goods cross national borders with unprecedented speed and ease. The cost for product transportation, transfer and communication of ideas is getting lower.
Today's intense global competition and deregulation have left companies in virtually every industry with much greater uncertainty. Superior competition demands a constant response to the initiatives of other firms. It requires continuous improvement of quality and products, while controlling costs. These new external demands are exceeding the response capacity of the organization of order and control.
The new competitive environment requires a flexible and adaptive organization, as well as a different pattern of work behavior. Managers and workers must be fully aware of what the customer wants and what the competitors are doing.
Managers are becoming increasingly aware that it is impossible to respond quickly to changing customer demands and meet low-cost, high-quality requirements without radically improving coordination and teamwork.
Thus, the urgent need for continuous improvement in the levels of quality and productivity necessitate greater coordination between the different areas and processes of the organization, as well as between the workforce and management. Lower level workers must be able to communicate directly with each other, as well as be able to coordinate activities with respect to activities and processes. In this way, the functional structure gives rise to the formation of work teams that revolve around the processes, in such a way that they can solve problems and make coordinated decisions. Both the number and the center around which these teams are formed change very often, in response to the rapidly changing business environment.
This kind of rapid accountability and adaptability is possible because the basis for assigning roles and hierarchies is the task, rather than the hierarchy. Knowledge replaces formal authority as the basis of influence. Thus, this new management method is called organization by task.
For task organization to improve coordination, transformation must be accompanied by equivalent changes in competence and the degree of commitment by employees.
If we consider what are the fundamental industries today, such as microelectronics, biotechnology, the new materials industry, civil aviation, telecommunications, automata plus machine tools, and computers plus software, they are all industries dependent on brain capacity. They can all be installed anywhere on the planet. Where they are installed depends on who can organize the brain capacity to take advantage of them. In this new century the comparative advantage will be human creation. Because technology is the foundation of human-made comparative advantage, research and development become the deciding factors.
In the 21st century, lasting competitive advantage will come much more from technologies applied to processes and less from technology applied to products. Reproduction engineering (back-engineering) makes it possible to quickly copy new products, but it is more complex to copy processes, but that does not mean that it is not feasible. What makes the big difference is group intelligence, modern human relations management aimed at shaping a team chemistry that leads to high-performance work systems.
Thus, while the North Americans concentrated their attention on the technology of the products, the Japanese and the Germans focused on continuously improving the technology of their processes. Therefore, what was once an effective strategy, that is, focusing on the generation of new products with the intention of exercising a monopoly on their exploitation, became a bad strategy. So while the Americans invented the camcorder, recorder, fax, and CD player, the Japanese exploited it in terms of sales, job creation, and profit. The bottom line is simple: Those who can make a product cheaper can take it from their inventor. In today's world it is of little use to invent a new product if the inventor is not the cheapest producer of it.
Companies that survive and succeed move from high-volume production to high-value goods.
Thus, the highest profitability and the fastest development of the steel companies no longer depend on the huge plants made up of more than 5,000 workers who produce steel bars on a large scale, but on steel destined for special uses: steels destined for corrosion produced for certain automobiles, trucks, and home appliances, powdered steel that can be compacted and set to make extralight components, steels mixed with silicon, nickel, or cobalt for turbines or high-temperature components for aircraft. The steel industries are being transformed into service companies. The services of the steel companies help the client to choose the type of steel and alloy he needs, and then examine, cut, collect and distribute the material.A similar transformation can be seen in the plastics industry, where high profits are no longer generated by the production of large batches of basic polymers, such as polystyrene, but of special polymers created by unique combinations of molecules that can withstand varying levels of pressure. and temperature and be adaptable to complex structures such as cell phones or computers. The same thing happens with the chemical industry.It is made of special polymers created by unique combinations of molecules that can resist various levels of pressure and temperature and are adaptable to complex structures such as those of cell phones or computers. The same thing happens with the chemical industry.It is made of special polymers created by unique combinations of molecules that can resist various levels of pressure and temperature and are adaptable to complex structures such as those of cell phones or computers. The same thing happens with the chemical industry.
These companies are profitable because consumers are willing to pay a supplement for the goods or services that exactly meet their needs, and because they offer high-value products or services that cannot be easily emulated by competitors that produce high volumes throughout the world. world.
In this way, competitive companies in developed nations have, are, and will be moving towards products and services adapted to certain purposes and with high added value. Large corporations no longer focus on production; their strategies increasingly target specific knowledge and highly specialized services.
The main assets of a high-value company are not tangible elements, but the ability to search for solutions to particular needs, and the prestige that is earned by having successfully achieved that objective.
The organization's formal organization chart is of little importance as a true source of power in high-value companies. Power no longer depends on these companies of rank or formal authority, as happened in high-volume producing companies, but on the ability to generate added value, that is, on the ability to discover problems and find solutions to them.
If technology creates man-made comparative advantage, grabbing that human-made comparative advantage requires a skilled workforce from top to bottom. The qualities of the workforce will be the basic competitive weapon of the 21st century.
Brain capacity will create new technologies, but the specialized workforce will be in the arms and legs that allow us to use the new product and the process technologies that are being generated. Natural resources, capital and new product technologies are rapidly moving around the world. People will move, too, but more slowly. Skilled people will be the only enduring competitive advantage.
Companies need to be able to use new computer-based manufacturing and design technologies, employ statistical quality control, manage inventory just in time, and operate flexible manufacturing systems. Information technology must be integrated into the entire production process, from initial designs through marketing to final sales and support services, such as maintenance.
Achieving these goals requires the office, factory, retail store, and repair service to have average workers with levels of education and skill that they never needed before.
Skills are required to solve the problems of producing unique goods. People must have a deep understanding of what can happen when those new elements come together, and then they must translate that knowledge into plans and instructions in order to produce the expected results.
To employ statistical quality control, each production operator must learn some simple operational investigations. To learn what needs to be learned, each worker must have a certain level of basic mathematics. Thus, without statistical quality control, it is not possible to manufacture today's high-density semiconductor chips. It is possible to invent them, but not to manufacture it.
With the third industrial revolution, knowledge occupies the position previously held by land and energy. Knowledge generates advances in technology that create imbalance conditions in which high rates of profit and growth are possible. Knowledge allows new things to be done in new ways.
Within this new framework, the technical skills necessary to succeed will rapidly increase and change. Few will be able to count on a valid job qualification for life after the first twelve or sixteen years of education. Since the necessary skills will depend on the deployment of rapidly changing new technologies, in many cases an on-the-job training effort will be required.
Under these new circumstances, veteran workers sell the experience and work techniques of an earlier stage. Young workers sell newly acquired skills. Therefore the experience becomes less valuable. Over the past quarter century, the benefits of experience have been declining at any level of education. Old knowledge and experience are far less valuable than they used to be.
In the 21st century, no country that wants to be rich can leave any citizen without a continuous education process. A knowledge economy requires two types of skills that are related to each other but are very different. Knowledge creation requires highly cultivated creative abilities. The expansion of knowledge requires that there be extensive quality capacities, and also a good educational level in the middle and lower part of the production structure.
If workers can read instruction manuals, less time should be spent teaching them to operate the new equipment. Productivity and profits are increased. Workers who cannot read, understand, and understand instructions waste other workers' time. The best educated have more time to dedicate themselves to activities with high added value. In more modern times, math-trained workers make inventories and statistical quality controls just in time feasible production technologies.
People within this new reality of high global competitiveness must learn to learn, or rather to unlearn what is no longer valid to move on to learn new techniques.
Competing globally with possibilities of success requires the firm commitment not only of managers and employees, but also of unions and the State.
The new realities, the new market requirements and the new techniques that yes or yes must be adopted if it is to compete, imply paradigm shifts, legal changes, changes in attitudes and skills.
Currently, both teamwork and work teams are required for specific purposes. Making this feasible involves a change in the attitude of the workers, from an individualistic tendency to a tendency to work and think together.
The application of the work cells, as well as the productive approach centered on products and services requires a high degree of versatility in the workforce.
Flattening the organization, decreasing the number of supervisors and inspectors to reduce costs, improve communication, and increase levels of quality and productivity require a workforce that practices self-discipline and self-control.
Empowerment, teleworking, and management for total customer satisfaction do or do require a profound change in attitude. A change in attitude that implies, among other things, abandoning the point of view: "They and us."
The new forms of management require workers who are more committed to internal and external clients, who are fully concerned with both quality and efficiency and participation in the implementation and execution of prevention systems.
A cultural change that makes feasible the effective application of applied statistics, such as statistical process controls, is essential.
It is impossible to successfully carry out kaizen or six sigma without a commitment from staff. Total commitment to a new work ethic and work discipline.
Suggestion systems such as quality control circles, the five "S" s, total productive maintenance and quality management require this commitment. Commitment that can only be achieved through broader and deeper participation.
In this new reality, companies, business associations, the State, unions and universities must commit themselves not only to provide training for workers, but to plan and motivate continuous training and training typical of the new times.
Generating and facilitating this profound change will be everyone's job. Well, they are all in the same boat, and if it sinks they all sink. Seen in such a way the situation, the only way to adapt to the changes to continue, or recover the levels of competitiveness, is to leave behind the paradigms that are no longer valid, and become aware of the new realities.
