It is the second day of the Change Management seminar I am running here in Dubai. During some lively group discussion one of the delegates explodes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
The truth for organizations that wish to be innovative, cutting-edge and ahead of the game, is you must have continual performance improvement at all levels. Else, your competitors will pass you by.
Much is being written and discussed about the difference between management and leadership. Most of it hackneyed causing more harm than good; but that’s another story. Limited thinking will cause people to turn to clichés as an excuse for not stretching themselves to achieve better and more improved levels of performance and output. If you only seek to manage, then clichés will satisfy your needs. If however, you seek to lead, clichés will only stifle your business improvement aspirations.
In this current business environment where your competition may be global, the ability to gain market intelligence has never been easier. So, the past formulas for success today could be the triggers for the failures of tomorrow. Organizations can no longer rest on their past successes and expect those to carry them gloriously into the future with same measure of success. Just look at the American motor vehicle industry over the past fifteen years.
The group conversation became even livelier, when I further espoused that the successful organizations of tomorrow will be those that are not seeking perfection, stability and rational processes. Rather, the rewards will come to those organizations who are led by people that embrace and enjoy chaotic environments, charged with emotional and intellectual curiosity!
Young children break things; most of the time attempting to pull them apart and see how it actually works. Maybe we should break things more often, analyze how it works, and then determine if we can rebuild it to perform even better? Cancel the clichés and champion the child within.
“When it ain’t broke may be the best time to fix it!”
© Ric Willmot 2008 All rights reserved.
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