Does it seem like being an executive is hard? Does it feel like business keeps getting tougher and tougher? Does it sometimes seem like all your experience and training doesn’t give you the answers you need?
You’re correct. Business IS getting harder. Public companies used to last for 60 years. Now they only last 20, and this is getting shorter.
Fewer companies are profitable. For most, corporate existence has become a never-ending fight for survival.
And you don’t need me to tell you about the relentless pressure from globalization and technology.
But you DO need me to tell you about an extraordinary resource that your organization is almost certainly squandering in some form or fashion:
Its people.
Here’s why.
For hundreds of thousands of years people needed to work in teams. We were weak and slow, without claws or fangs. Working together was a matter of life or death. We evolved to become extraordinarily social beings who are most productive when we feel safe in a group.
The bad news is that traditional business thinking overlooks this. Which means we unknowingly squelch our people’s productivity, and leave vast troves of unrealized potential sitting under our noses.
The good news is that this lost productivity can now be found and measured and unlocked.
I’d like to discuss it with you in these articles.
—Alex