Skip to main content

A lesson in platitudes

We will defeat the pandemic. This is a world where one has to be resilient. One has to change. There will be two types of people who will face this. One - the agile, the nimble and the others, the one who refuses to change. The one who refuses to change will perish in the pandemic. The one who succeeds will be one who is open to change.

Work from home will be new norm. Companies have to embrace this future. There is no other way this can happen. Everything has to be reimagined.

This is the VUCA world (god as much I hate this term, it is true, this is the real VUCA - a VUCA that nobody conceptualised). And for navigating a VUCA world, one has to be agile.

There will be a lot of disruption. Things will change rapidly. And we will be the ones who will help navigate that change.

No, all of the above are just words. The English does not make up for the shallow analysis. Please dont use any of them when talking to anyone about the pandemic.

It is ok to say, I dont know.

PS: I am not going to share the secret of where I got this from.

If you want to talk, get to specifics. Especially about your industry. Your company. Your function. That will help. For the rest, I will google. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...
Post a Comment
Read more

Staying contemporary II

So, if that is not the way to training people on customer service what is? I have not crystallized on an idea right away, but there are some formative thoughts. But more than that, as a trainer, it is important that a training deliver cutting edge stuff to you. Especially when it comes to senior managers. Usually companies have a culture of service (by and large) - when you train frontline management it is important that we reinforce the culture (how do you do it - therein lies a later post). But as you go higher up, what does one do? What do they expect out of it? What can we give them that we already dont know? Most senior managers would be well read in those usual suspects - the HBRs, the McKinseys and other magazines. So, giving them anything out of any of these publications would be a waste of time for them. And mind you, most of these publications are not necessarily ahead of the curve as much as they are on the curve. So, what constitutes your trainings? How do you get them?...
3 comments
Read more