IMOVATION
Steve Jobs said it. It’s smart to adapt an idea and enhance it. The combined power of imitation and innovation can take your company to dizzying heights. And Apple is not the only outfit which did it with impunity.
Paper money (read credit and debit cards) was predicted by Arthur Hailey in his 1970s book “The Moneychangers”. Diners Club started it. American Express built it up.
In discount stores, Korvett came in first. Wal-Mart globalized the phenomenon.
For fast foods, no one remembers White Castle. McDonald’s immediately comes to mind.
Closer home, in the detergent market in India, Nirma took up cudgels with Surf. But eventually, it gave way to Wheels in the market place.
Shoji Shiba advises managers to “jump into the fishbowl” for a real feel of the environment and change accordingly. According to him, those with a “third eye” do that the best as they think about users at the bottom of the pyramid.
INTELLECTUAL COPULATION AND ORGIES
Copulation at the physical level often results into the perpetuation of our species. Copulation at the intellectual level often results into newer ideas, which arise out of each partner building on the ideas of the other, thereby resulting into a synergistic orgasm. On the whole, the organization gains.
Once in a while, it is good to push all the routine work away and indulge in intellectual copulation. This could mean intense discussions with a buddy whose thinking matches that of yours, attending a management seminar on a topic of your interest or even sharing your learning and experiences either with youngsters in the team or with students at a nearby management institute. It would keep your learning batteries charged up and ensure that you get back to the task at hand with renewed gusto.
INCENTIVES
Very few outfits have realistic incentive schemes, making each stakeholder a virtual partner in business. Such outfits seldom have IR issues bugging them. Often, the challenge faced by Personnel guys is to link incentives not only to absolute quantities but also to productivity norms. Calling in an external industrial engineer who has some clue as to the way your industry is configured surely helps to design a better incentive scheme.
ashokbhatia 