It was a time and not long ago when “business of business
was to do business, when money was the only driving factor and margins were
sacred, when dept of hierarchy was worshiped and an employee thinking out of
the box was ignored,when company was the supreme entity and customer was just
a source of income. And then, in this era of “pure business”, few rebellions
were born. They broke all the dogmas and talked about values. They uttered the
taboo words-“worshiping the customers". They talked about not just technical but
people skills. Business world was going through a new paradigm shift where
values and organization culture was given a due credit of success.
Enterprise today has entered into this new era centred on
“people”, “idea” and “values”. From experiential retailing to participative
decision making, from customers’ feelings to employees’ breakthrough ideas,
it’s all about people. This path breaking transition is still in progress. This
decade has seen an authority ladders going down and organizations becoming
flatter. “Innovation” is the new key to success and “People first” is the new
mantra. With so much changing so fast, what does tomorrow hold for us? How will tomorrow’s enterprise be run?
I guess the future lies in understanding the true definition
of business; it is not about money making by the sole owner or an entity, it is
about profit or gain for each and every internal and external stake holder
connected to that business. And this gain need not be just monetary always. To
achieve this wider objective, enterprise should include all the stake holders
in the organizational process. And equally encourage them to contribute towards
this objective. Well, the evolving leadership and governance styles and company
policies today are very well doing that. Then what is that we expect from tomorrow? We expect this “people” focus to become
more intense, the aspect of culture and organizational values to become much
stronger, binding the employees and customers together with this non tangible
entity called enterprise.
With creating a free and fun work environment to facilitate
genesis of new ideas, doing away with formal cubical structures and bringing in
bean bag culture, giving employees’ power to choose their carrier path, profile
and working style, companies like Google has already started the dawn of this
tomorrow.
Why do start
ups take an accelerating growth path under favourable conditions? Why a person
works more passionately for a work which incorporates his/her own opinions and
ideas? It’s the sense of ownership, the sense that “I care for this
organization and its mine” which drives people to work passionately rather than
any monitory, power or carrier growth rewards.
Giving employees a participation in organizational process
to much higher extent, grooming them and assigning a mentor if required, transparency
and aligning individual values to
organizational culture as a whole can very well be some of the ways of future
“best business governance” practices.
Future of management is right here, in our hands. We know
our theories and frameworks. We have laid enough structures and designed
strategies. It is time to put all these basics into a whole new dimension...dimension
of incorporating this very important “human” factor, which will run and direct
the future of enterprises. Organizations’ destination might be the monitory
objectives and the headlights leading there may be all the strategies but the
wheels driving till there are “the people”.
People- archy is here!
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