Economic cost vs. ecological cost

The rate at which global population and resource consumption is growing is alarming. Yet, high users of resources continue to ‘drain’ these resources. In my opinion, the main reason is that the economic costs of many products we use today do not reflect the ‘true cost’ to the environment. For instance consider two diverse products
we ‘consume’ so regularly i.e. the cars we drive and the water we use in the household.  
We need to find ways of pricing/taxing these products so as to drive conservation behaviour among the high users.

Global financial crisis: What can we do?

Not a day passes by without bad news on the economic and financial front. Globally, we seem to respond to these challenges with more and more ‘band-aid and plaster,’ when what we need is ‘surgery and soul searching’. The fact that we are living way beyond our means (economically and ecologically) is the root cause of the fast-deteriorating global economic health. This is compounded by the creation of ‘imaginary money’ through various speculative financial instruments. Unless we address these two fundamental flaws, the global economy will plunge into further crisis. At an individual and corporate level, we all can respond with less GEM (Greed, Ego and Materialism).

Focu$

As businesses grow bigger and more complex, it is easier to hide inefficiencies and lose sight of value-addition. An ‘acid test’ for any job in such large organisation would be an affirmative answer to the following:
How does your job (irrespective of level) have a definite and direct impact on demand generation, customer value, operational efficiency and/or capacity building?
If not, what purpose does the job serve?

Consumer ignorance

Take a harder re-look at your business success – how much of this is due to well-informed and comparatively advantaged reasons and how much is due to ‘consumer ignorance’?  For instance, how much of monies in savings accounts can be earning consumers much higher interest in a fixed deposit (without any additional risk)? The smarter businesses do recognise that such a gap exists and use the ‘window’ to build solid value creation capabilities, while others continue to ‘bank’ consumer ignorance!

New Year: So what?

WHILE the dawn of a new year is good time for warm fuzzy feelings, given the global challenges we face today, it is also a time to ask some hard questions. How can my lifestyle be more responsible and responsive to the ‘alarming’ depletion of nature’s resources (even if I can economically afford it)? How can my business do the same?  If those of us who have an abundance of GEMs (Greed, Ego and Materialism) can ‘prune’ it, the world will be a better place.
 

Rethinking capitalism

‘Division of Labour and Specialisation’ as articulated by Adam Smith is one of the main reasons for material improvement in the human quality of life.  This also means that as human beings we have to ‘cross-serve’ each other. In the process, we have assigned financial values to different activities. Have we now taken this to bizarre limits?

For instance, a farmer, a nurse, a teacher (all of whom make such a significant contribution to our lives) seem to get such a minuscule return for their efforts compared to someone who makes a million times more by a stroke of a single speculative transaction.
Could the protests on Wall Street be just the start of a worldwide epidemic?

Freedom of expression in business organisations

Around the world, we expect democratic governments to allow reasonable freedom of expression, rightly so.
How much freedom of expression do we allow in business organisations? Perhaps it may be unrealistic to expect a ‘Tahrir Square’ in the office, but how often do we hear the CEO/senior management being told by junior staff, “I think there is a better way of doing that”?
If encouraged, this can promote a healthy organisational climate and provide a ‘reality check’ for the CEO/ senior management.

‘Governance without Guilt’

The claim of ‘Garments without Guilt’ by Sri Lanka’s apparel industry is a good example of a credible customer promise that the industry does truly ‘live’ by.
How many business organisations can make the claim and more importantly ‘live’ ‘Governance without Guilt’? I am not referring to the well-crafted words in glossy annual reports, nor the glamorous ego-boosting awards.
I mean sincerely ‘Governance without Guilt’ in the way we treat our customers, staff, investors, suppliers and the environment.

Open-ended quality thinking time

IN our consulting practice, we work with CEOs and senior management from diverse industries and countries. One common striking feature I see is the lack of quality thinking time. Despite the advances in technology (that are supposed to make us more time/resource efficient), we seem to increasingly fall into the ‘activity trap’/‘busyness syndrome’. Many of the costly business failures would have its roots in the lack of quality thinking at the top of the organisation. When was the last time you dedicated a full day to just think? If this does not happen at the top of the organisation, where else would it happen?

The Corporate Ladder Vs. The Corporate Carousel

I recently asked a prospective job applicant to MTI what she hopes to achieve at MTI?  “To climb the management ladder,” was her response. My response was, “We do not have a ladder, only a carousel that helps you to go around the organisation”
What we need today is more rounded managers, able to appreciate a 360 degree view of the business. To do so, we must willing to pay a premium not just for every step of the ladder, but for every destination in the carousel and the value it brings.