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Saturday, January 14, 2006
Batuhan: When dancers unlearn to dance
By Allan S. B. Batuhan
Foreign Exchange
Over a decade ago, then editor of the Harvard Business Review Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor of Business Strategy at the Harvard Business School published a bestselling book entitled “When Giants Learn to Dance.”
It was a thoughtful and well-written work, which still guides the thought processes of many successful organizations today. At its heart is the proposition that, irrespective of the size of an organization, it must not lose the spirit of entrepreneurship, or else its very existence itself may be under threat.
A lot has been said about entrepreneurial qualities being important in any organization, but no matter how many times the point is made, it seems it can never be said enough.
Bigger, it seems, has always been synonymous with slower in the corporate world.
But does this always have to be. Does being nimble as a company necessarily have to stop once its number of operations becomes greater than one. Once an organization goes global, does its pace then become only as fast as the world turns?
The answer, it seems, is almost always a yes. How often have we been disappointed with the service that we get from most large organizations? How many times have we been let down by their products and disappointed with their slow response to our complaints and suggestions?
Probably too many than we can bother to count. Bigger is definitely slower. Or not.
Although exceptions may prove to be more difficult to identify, there are certainly those that have managed to keep the essence of “smallness” alive and well within their huge corporate structures. These are the ones that continue to delight us and make us willingly part with our money time and again.
But why is it difficult for a company to be entrepreneurial in the first place anyway?
Well, the easy answer would be that natural entrepreneurs are often quite rare within the general population. And since an organization’s “personality” is made up of those of the people that run it, it must stand to reason that to be enterprising, a business needs to have people with this characteristic.
So people then must be the answer. Get people with a natural flair for enterprise and put them in your organization. Surely this has to be it?
Of course, getting the right people in is very important. There’s no question that inventive, enthusiastic and well-motivated employees with a good feel for the market are very important. That’s why in many leading organizations, competency-based recruitment is built around the objective of getting “natural-born” entrepreneurs. Interviews and assessment try to weed out the bureaucrats from the innovators, and this is not necessarily accomplished by examining degrees and CVs alone. In many cases, personality traits, experience and temperament count a lot in the successful search and selection process.
Still, getting the right people in is only ever a start.
I am reminded immediately of the 2004 Olympics and the plight of the celebrated US men’s basketball team. Talent-laden and full of NBA superstars, it failed to win the top prize that many had already conceded was theirs for the taking.
Something else then needs to be present, apart from having the right people.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (January 14, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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