The history of organizations is built on the learning of those who were leaving a mark along the way, either because they are already well ahead or because their results forced them to leave a trail of lessons not learned but available to those who want to build and turn into triumph which for others meant defeat.
The flags of innovation and technology as a tool for success are the permanent invitation to recognize that the future is built based on the foundations of history and not on the expectation of possible situations.
For many companies it is imperative to lift anchor and venture into new scenarios that involve redesigning management and taking risks in areas that take them away from the traditional security provided by the products and services that until now constituted their income. They recognize that we are in a new competitive context that forces us to face fear and leave the comfort that the comfort zone provides.
Leadership begins to stop being a showy and convenient speech to become a requirement, corporate challenges force us to recognize that borders are disappearing and “comparative advantages” are no longer so robust, entry barriers are becoming easier to jump and we are surprised at the number of competitors who are in our same race.
The strategies that led the industry champions to remain leaders are beginning to be replicated and modified by those who come up with new and better ways of doing things, not only in terms of product but in a much more practical and more welcoming design. in whom until recently they were our most loyal customers.
The incursion of social networks in management processes and their use by companies to gain new customers and to find out what they think of the company is just one example of the turn that technological tools have taken from being a factor of fun and leisure to a potential source of employment or a way to make yourself known by what you express in your public profile.
The new business paradigms force us to expand the boundaries that define organizational action, it is about strengthening the culture that we live within companies, recognizing that our suppliers are, more and more, a necessary ally to generate products and services for demanding clients and willing to change us for another at the least opportunity. It is about identifying that the new markets we want to reach and enter expect differentiators from us that offer experiences worth repeating and not just a transaction that ends with the invoice.
Internationalization and globalization mean that we have to negotiate with traditional schemes, that we can challenge the imagination to be bold in designing new service options for our clients, that we imagine new management models that include the mandates of the global compact, is say that our company is financially sustainable, socially responsible and environmentally friendly.
The new generations of collaborators and managers have different interpretations of what organizational strategies, management structures, and reward and motivation schemes mean. The new ways of doing business invite us to recognize that the future is a reality that is built from the imagination but is supported by the reality of a present that challenges the status quo and of a past from which the organizational essence is nourished.
I hope that these brief reflections will motivate us to continue finding new conditions and situations in which we can show that we are at a crucial point where history requires us to recognize that it is not enough to remain in the turbulence of less and less predictable markets. New business theories, sustainability reports and government regulations will lead us to be the protagonists of a story that hopefully can be told in the present tense by generations that have not yet been born.
